Getting write down to business

Comment I received an angry letter during the week from a teacher in Donegal in response to my column last week in which I said public servants must be prepared to accept further cuts in pay. He said that he and some of his colleagues were thinking of emigrating, “depending on by how much the Government will cut our salaries”.
The letter writer is understandably annoyed at my condemnation of trade union leaders who are calling for industrial action in protest against proposed Government cuts in public spending and especially against cuts in public pay.
Now I would be very concerned if my correspondent – or anybody else, for that matter – felt they had to emigrate because they could no longer survive on their salaries.
But where would they go to? Jobs are not that easy to find abroad. This is a global recession and Ireland is not the only country where the economy has almost collapsed.
And if they really investigate the situation and the plight they believe they are in, they will find that, in all probability, they will be paid even less if they go abroad than they are being paid here at home in Ireland.
So emigration is not an option unless you are out of work, cannot find another job here at home and own a house with a huge morgtage that you cannot sell. Even then, I would caution against emigration.
My correspondent goes on to say that he did not think that state employees’ salaries had ever been cut in this country before now.
“The Government, as you know, bailed out banks to the tune of billions – free hand-outs to capitalists and at the same time, they are reducing public servants’ pay and reducing the services we provide, and cutting social welfare.
“I wish there was an election tomorrow.”
This letter is just one example of the anger that is out there at the Government as they try to tackle the economic mess we are in.
He says he cannot wait for the election. He and hundreds of thousands of others.
What they really want, I think, is an opportunity to have revenge on the Government that they blame for the crisis. Because any alternative they elect would – more or less – follow the same economic path. Both Fine Gael and Labour agree that we need to cut public spending by €4 billion next year.
But it is so easy to blame the Government for the economic crisis. It is so easy to blame them for mismanaging the economy when times were good. The Government, under Bertie Ahern, threw money here, there and everywhere during the Celtic Tiger years. They negotiated benchmarking with the teachers’ unions, for example, which gave teachers comfortable well-paid jobs.
Very few objected or objected to the other national pay deals that gave workers in general, and public sectors workers in particular, pay rates and conditions superior to the pay rates and conditions of workers in similar positions throughout most of Western Europe.
Those deals were done in order to buy industrial peace and following long and hard negotiations between the social partners.
None of us wanted to see patients being sent home from hospital because nurses were on strike. We did not want any more blue flus and rejoiced when the Government found the money to pacify the guards. We wanted the trains and the buses to run and to run on time. We wanted to see the schools remain open and we wanted ESB workers to maintain electric power to our homes.
In other words, we did not want to see the country brought to a standstill and crippled by strike.
So we were all fairly happy that our lives were not disrupted by major industrial action. We showed our appreciation continually by voting Fianna Fáil and Bertie Ahern into office.
That was then but this is now. The worm has turned. We no longer have the money to continue paying the same rates of salary we were able to pay during the boom years. And when I talk about “we” here, I am talking about us the taxpayers.
It was our money that the Government used and still uses to pay teachers, hospital workers, gardaí and other public sector workers. So, when public servants go on strike they are not striking against the Government but against us the taxpayers.
But do not get me wrong. I am not opposed to public servants striking for better pay and conditions. But I am opposed to strike action now when the country is on its knees. It is one thing to go on strike against a fat cat employer but another thing to down tools when a country that is broke cannot afford to pay them the wages they were used to.
However, I do believe that we should be paying more in income tax rather than cutting back essential services for those who depend on them.
As former Taoiseach Garret FitzGerald pointed out last week, the majority of us paid income tax last year at rates far below those paid for similar incomes in every other Western European country and in the USA.