Ironic that public sector workers seen as well-off
I SEE Dan O’Brien has begun the ramping-up of anti-public sector rhetoric in anticipation of a possible economic downturn (‘If the economy turns down
next year, austerity will return and private sector workers will pay the price’, Comment, November 29).
He claims that public sector pay is now higher than in advance of the last wave of austerity in early 2008.
As a public sector pensioner, I do not see how this can be so, given that the massive cuts made at that time have not been reversed. Whereas the process of restoration has begun, it has hardly scratched the surface, while the better-off in society (many in the private sector) talk of economic recovery and block-book fashionable restaurants on Saturday nights.
However, even if we assume that Mr O’Brien is correct that public sector salaries outstrip the private sector by some 40pc, I believe the anti-public sector rhetoric is based on good oldfashioned
snobbery. Recruitment to the public sector is scrupulously fair and transparent, whereas, in the private sector, certainly after I did my Leaving Certificate in 1971, recruitment was on the basis of one’s background and even nepotism. The banks, insurance companies etc hired from the fee-paying schools, whereas recruitment to the civil service was mainly from the non-fee paying sector, eg Christian Brothers’ schools.
I joined a rugby club in 1972 and, as a civil servant, I stood out like a sore thumb among business and professional people. I experienced a distinct sense of otherness even though I had grown up in the same south Dublin suburbs as my teammates and fellow members. I was not generally ostracised but I did feel different. My work experience was totally different to my peers. It simply would not have occurred to any of them to sit the Civil Service Executive Officer exam held in conjunction with the Leaving Certificate. If anything, they looked on me with a sense of pity at how little I had made of myself.
It is ironic that today it is such people who would now accuse me of robbing the national till. I am amazed that there is little public analysis of this element in the antipathy towards the public service.
If public service workers are so much better off, why did the private sector workers not join it? If they did not do so because they felt it was socially beneath their status, have they really got a moral right to complain when times are hard? Sean O’Donnell
Monkstown, Co Dublin