Noddy land

We all know the public service unions were obsessed with benchmarking over the last decade, i.e. comparing their salaries and perks with those of similar workers in the private sector. So let’s look at the facts and see how things stack up.

Low paid public workers 26% better off

It turns out that the lowest paid in the public service earn a staggering 48% more than their private sector counterparts in hourly pay (Central Statistics Office release, reported here). The gap falls to a 33% difference when measured in weekly pay, because private sector workers work a full week in contrast to the private sector week of 33 hours.

But wait, you’re not comparing like with like cry the unions, well the adjusted figure is 25.6%, so there. That’s still massive by any standard and doesn’t count far superior pensions and vastly superior job security.

“The original report published in July had found a staggering 48pc gap in the hourly pay of public and private workers, with a 33pc difference in weekly rates, but noted that this did not take into account key differences such as public workers having better qualifications.

However, the new analysis still finds a massive gap, which is widest for the lowest-paid group of workers. As workers move up the promotional ladder, the gap between public and private pay rates narrows, although it still amounts to 11pc for the best-paid employees.

The gap is also wider amongst women, who earn 22.9pc more in the public service than those with the same qualifications in the private sector, compared to a gap of 14.9pc for men.

For permanent full-time employees aged between 25 and 59, the pay gap is 12.6pc.

The report concludes that, all other things being equal, “employees in the public sector earned a premium over employees in the private sector”.”

So the union leaders’ case for taxing the private economy out of existence to pay for all this excessive generosity has been well and truly demolished, it is not fair to use their mantra. Isn’t it amazing how they dress up their selfish agenda of trying to protect outrageous pay and conditions by masking it as a campaign against cuts in public services?  Hey, if we cut pay and you do a full week’s work, well then service levels will actually increase, not decrease. Don’t believe the union lies, they’ll say anything, anything.

Is it too much to ask that the public servants in this country take a small bit of pain to help get things back on track?

Update 1: Brendan Keenan: We can’t afford the public sector pay bill

European Commission calls for radical cuts to reduce our national debt

“THE Government should cut the public deficit by raising retirement ages and lowering healthcare costs, according to a European Commission analysis of the consequences of the economic crisis.”

Also, given all the Lisbon hoo-ha, this great piece by Karl Whelan got overlooked yesterday,

Update 2: UCD Professor: Government must change seriously flawed NAMA strategy

Update 3: Lost in the noise as well was the late news yesterday that the deficit is increasing even more than expected in the emergency budget, apparently we’re down another 1 billion in taxes (RTE report here).

“The State took in €23.7 billion in tax in the first nine months of the year, which is €965 million (or 3.9%) behind the target set in the Budget.

Alan McQuaid of Bloxham Stockbrokers has said the Government still has work to do on cutting public spending, and has called on it to show public sector unions ‘who is boss’.”

Just remember that for all the nonsense talk about cuts, spending has still risen enormously this year while the econmoy has contracted by over 10%. 1 billion would keep John O’Donoghue living in luxury for 10,000 years according to Karl Whelan, but does anyone care about these billions or the NAMA billions? With Lisbon now as good as passed I wonder will as the yes people wake up on monday morning and realise that we are still in a massive hole of our own making and that we’re still digging. You’d think dealing with a major and real economic depression would sort of trump sucking up to Brussels…

Update 4: Jim O’Leary: Good news talk overdone if critical budget measures not taken to restore growth