Civil servants demand pay restoration before tax cuts

Mid-ranking civil servants have demanded the Government give priority to restoring their pay and conditions of employment before introducing any general tax cuts.

Addressing its annual delegate conference in Killarney today, Public Service Executive Union (PSEU) president Brendan Lawless said a disproportionate amount of the burden of repairing the public finances had fallen on public servants.

“If the Government has scope for easing on austerity, we want our money back”.

Mr Lawless said in better circumstances, people subjected to pay cuts and disimprovements in conditions, who had paid a disproportionate amount for the country’s economic collapse, were entitled to be first in the queue for any restoration.

“More than that though, the message needs to go from public servants to the political system that tax cuts damage the ability to deliver public services while those who have suffered disproportionately from austerity through income cuts and longer working hours deserve and indeed demand that they be treated fairly and that they begin restoration of their losses at the earliest opportunity.”

The PSEU represents around 10,000 mid-grade civil servants as well as some executive staff in companies and organisations such as eircom, An Post, the National Lottery and the Irish Aviation Authority.

Mr Lawless said the union would also resist any attempt to change members’ pension arrangements.

He told delegates that they should prepare “so that they understand the implications of any such battle if, or more than likely, when it arises”.

He said that any attempt to interfere with existing pension arrangements for staff in the Civil Service had been made in the talks with the Government that led up to the Haddington Road agreement last year.

He said the Haddington Road deal had provided protection to pension arrangements until at least 2016 “but it would be a mistake to assume that the issue will not arise again”.

Mr Lawless also urged delegates that they needed to consider change to the existing union structure in the Civil Service.

He said the process of negotiating the Haddington Road agreement had highlighted the fragmented nature of the public service union organisation.

“Our employer, instead of dealing with a tight organisation speaking with one voice, finds itself in the position that it can operated with tightly-controlled unanimity while on our side our response is disjointed, sometimes mutually contradictory and often no better than the lowest common denominator.

“That cannot be in the interests of public servants. Indeed it has not been in their interests in the last five years.”

“It is now almost three years since the Commission on Trade Unions recommended that there should be one union for administrative public servants and soon we will need to decide if that is what we wish as this issue cannot drag on forever.”

In a bulletin to members issued before the conference the PSEU general secretary Tom Geraghty said longer working hours introduced for his members under the Haddington Road agreement last year represented the equivalent of an average increase of 13 working days per year .

Mr Geraghty said a civil servant earning €50,000 per year at the start of the economic crisis in 2009 has lost around €483 per month as a result of pay cuts, the pension levy and higher taxes imposed in the intervening period, their trade union has maintained.

He also said that the cost of the public service pay bill had reduced by 17.7 per cent or €3.3 billion between 2009 and 2013.

He said €1.8 billion of that reduction had been generated by the original Croke Park agreement.