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Gilmore demands assurance on no more public sector pay cuts
Posted on January 26, 2010 at 07:06 PM
By the end of this week, the Labour Leader Eamon Gilmore TD told the Dáil this afternoon during Leaders' Questions, every employee of the State will have his or her pay cut for the second time in less than a year.
For those on €25,000 a year, this works out as €160 a month, a Garda or teacher in the middle of his or her scale will be down €400 a month while a staff nurse with 10 years experience will be cut by €560.
Eamon asked the Government if it had any appreciation of the level of anger among State employees, anger he said that is compounded by the sweetheart arrangement the Government made with senior civil servants to limit the impact of the pat cuts on those senior officers.
He went on to ask for an assurance that the Government will not be going back a third time to cut the pay of employees whose pay has already been cut.
The Tanaiste, who was standing in for the Taoiseach, declined to give that assurance.
You can read more about this on the RTE including the impact of the pay cuts on people at the bottom of the article as heard by a CPSU conference held in Dublin today.
The accompanying video shows Eamon's full contribution from Leaders' Questions today, while you can read the full exchange on the Oireachtas website.
Have you been hit hard with the pay cuts? Do let us know in the comments section below.
Tagged with Finance • eamongilmore • leadersquestions
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Comments
As one of the low-paid p.s. I am hit by approx.a €60 per week, or €3000 p.a.cut in wages alone, excluding the other health levies etc.I have seen increases in oil/petrol prices, and carbon taxes are looming. Children allowances have been cut and my eldest children are looking at dole cuts or minimum wage cuts if they find a job. Mortgage rates are due to rise.And on top of all that I don't qualify for a medical card.
At present in my employment there is a palpable anger both with the Govt. and also with the T.U. leadership. There is a real danger that one of two things could now happen. Either the angst directed at the T.U. leadership turns into complacency and the Unions are left with fewer and fewer members, or the extremists come to the fore and action, much more than marches in Dublin and elsewhere takes place.At this time I would welcome the extremists.
As of the effects of these cuts for the L.P. there is an opportunity now for the PLP to actively garner the support of 330,000 PS workers and their families. The LP was the only party to vote against the Bank Guarantee scheme and I believe it did reap some electoral rewards. If they actively come out on a Repetitive' basis and fully endorse the Unions in their current campaign, I believe this trend will continue. Michael Taft in his excellent blog, http://notesonthefront.typepad.com/politicaleconomy/ did a wonderful article on which towns and cities contain many PS workers and their families. These are,I believe the places where the LP should start the political campaign that Siptu are urging there members to partake in.
The TU movement will also need to repeatedly advise their members to vote Labour. FG are on top of the hill now because many people in Ireland still believe they have only 2 choices, FG/FF. It is now that Labour should return to their roots. The ICTU have 800k members approx., the largest civil organisation in the state, the unemployed are numbered in excess of 400k. If a fraction of these figures voted LP the results could be immense. Many in Siptu don't even know that we are affiliated to the LP.
As an aside, at time of writing my wife has informed me that in to-days Roscommon Herald there are 6 jobs advertised for a pop. of approx. 58,000 people. Ironically on the front page the headlines are that 26 Co.Cllrs qualified for approx. €500k in expenses over 2 years. All either FF/FG or Ind. Its time for the LP and the Unions to back each other up and move away from the Capital and into the rest of the country.
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