Of course there’s no money left — public sector unions spent it

Trade unionists demanding higher wages for their members would do well to remember that they helped to create this mess too, writes Eilis O’Hanlon

NOW is the winter of our discontent. Or at least it promises to be if the threatened wave of public sector strikes goes ahead. The suspension of the Dublin Bus stoppage, pending a ballot on the proposed 11.25pc pay deal, may offer only temporary relief, if, as expected, gardai and nurses and teachers follow their lead by taking industrial action.

If anything, it may even encourage them to do so, just as the 18pc pay deal for Luas drivers brought forward the stand-off on the buses. Four days in November have already been pencilled in by the Garda Representative Association for possible strikes, despite the obvious risk of alienating public opinion. That they’re willing to take the risk arguably shows their desperation at the impossibility of living on the wages of a rank-andfile garda recruit. It doesn’t seem unreasonable that new recruits should receive the average industrial wage of €33,000 a year, after all. Not when Police Service of Northern Ireland recruits start on the equivalent of €32,000, and the rent allowance has gone the way of the dodo. Gardai do an often dangerous job. Some pay the ultimate price. That’s more than can be said for a junior infants teacher.

Of course, teachers have causes for grievance, too. The differential in pay for new entrants to the profession is undoubtedly problematic; workers should not be paid differently for doing the same work. They’ll get their own ballot on industrial action in 10 days’ time, and it would be a brave man who would bet against them voting for a walk-out. Nurses likewise.

But is it really a coincidence that they’re all coming now, not as single spies but in battalions?

Trade unions know that collective chaos is more effective than periodic inconvenience. Inciting the perfect storm that could come if gardai, nurses and teachers all up the ante with industrial action feels increasingly like a cynical exercise in provoking a crisis just when it seemed that a certain calm was returning to the public finances — especially at the end of a year when the Fine Gael-led government was lambasted for belatedly trumpeting a recovery that few actually felt. Public sector unions are scornful of any talk of recovery whilst putting in pay claims that could only be afforded if there was a recovery. So which is it?

Of course public sector workers are struggling financially, but only because everyone else is, too. Private sector wages are hardly at boom-time levels either, whatever certain sections of the media might say. The Irish Times, favoured read of civil servants on a sinecure, actually carried a headline in August declaring: ‘Private sector earnings rise 1.5pc as public sector pay falls.’

The truth was in the small print below — private sector earnings had risen, according to the Central Statistics Office, to an average of €703.83 a week while public sector earnings had dropped to €905.97 a week. Most of us would much rather see our earnings fall to €905.97 than rise to €703.83.

The gap between public and private sector workers has closed somewhat, but it’s still significant. Public sector unions seem to expect their counterparts in the private sector to show solidarity and support even when their actions cause serious difficulties to small businesses. Not much solidarity there.

The passengers on Dublin Bus aren’t getting pay increases, nor are patients in hospital or the parents of schoolchildren who will suffer if a teacher strike goes ahead. You wouldn’t have to ballot them on an 11.25pc pay deal. They’d bite your hand off to take it. The only difference is they can’t hold the country to ransom in pursuit of equally needed pay increases.

The Government’s argument is that it cannot give in to every demand because to do so would provoke a further series of stoppages. Whether they have the nerve to hold the line in the face of multiple coordinated strike threats is doubtful, but it’s hard to fault that logic. An explosion in the wage bill for the thousands who work in the public sector would throw any prospect of fiscal responsibility right out the window.

Clearly some additional money must be found, but the totality of demands cannot be afforded. Still, opposition deputies continue to promise the moon and stars, having the unique position of being able to make promises whilst knowing they’ll never have to deliver on them. Power without responsibility — the age-old prerogative of the harlot, as the saying goes.

Something has to give, and former FG leader Alan Dukes was clear what this should be. If there is money available, then spend it all on capital investment was his suggestion on Newstalk last Friday. That creates jobs, drives growth. This is what is called making choices from a realistic list of options.

There was no such restraints from professional protester Richard Boyd Barrett TD, who declared himself all for “ramping up capital investment” whilst simultaneously supporting every wage claim going and every demand for funding. Why make choices, after all, when you can have everything?

How is this to be paid for? Presumably by snaffling it from what he called “corporate vultures” and from the magical Apple money tree. In short, Boyd Barrett doesn’t have a clue where the money will come from, and nor do the unions.

Arguably that’s not their job. Their only duty, they might contend, is to get the best deal for their members; but it doesn’t feel that way. Their programme is ever more avowedly political in intent, with Unite’s recent call for a €2.8bn expenditure package reading more like an alternative programme for government than a mere Budget proposal. Their actions certainly have huge economic implications.

If, for the first time in years that there’s any leeway on spending, the available money gets swallowed up in pay claims with no resultant boost in productivity or trade, then the effect will be to increase, not diminish, public discontent, because none of that expenditure will improve education, or reduce waiting lists, or bring down the crime rate.

Right now, trade unions are exploiting what they see as the weakness of the sitting minority government, reliant as it is on the kindness of strangers in the Dail, in the belief that ministers are too vulnerable to resist and have no choice but to give in and say yes.

But what if they really have no choice but to say no? What then?

It’s back to that winter of discontent, and all because unions are still yearning for the good old days when Fianna Fail bunged deals their way to keep them sweet and everyone had their snouts in a trough filled with Monopoly money from the housing boom. That money’s gone, and the unions would do well to admit that part of the reason the cupboard is bare is because they helped to squander it.

‘The passengers on Dublin Bus aren’t getting pay increases’