Striking a deal for a fairer society

OPINION: One strike down, another to come. Amid all the egos and injustice, where does fairness fit in, asks MALCOLM Mac LACHLAN 

OUR PUBLIC services should reflect our broader social values. And therein lies a problem: we don’t know what they are.

From chaos may come a “reset”, but this will mean tackling the presumed entitlements of our social elites, in both our private and public sectors. This challenge puts it up to the unions – what are their social values?

Sir Michael Marmot launched the World Health Organisation’s report on the Social Determinants of Health, with the striking statement that “social injustice is killing people on a grand scale”. He was talking about a strong body of evidence that shows that in less-egalitarian societies, there is a greater burden of disease, regardless of absolute income.

For those who feel that health and wellbeing are a desirable but insufficient dividend for fairness, there is more good news. Research on organisational justice has also found that organisations that have fairer decision-making procedures and that can be seen to be distributing rewards more fairly – for instance in terms of productivity – are also more productive.

Fairness is good for business and good for health. It would seem that the idea of taking money away from public services (reducing the ability of public servants to contribute to the economy) and giving that money to the banks (enhancing their ability to profit from the economy) is quite unfair, certainly in terms of how the public seems to be allocating blame for our current situation.

The huge salaries and egos that drove some bankers, developers and investors to over-reach themselves, amid an almost regulation-free business environment, deserve to shoulder much of the blame. However, huge salaries and egos abound in the public sector too.

In Ireland, we have probably the best-paid university professors in Europe; possibly the best-paid public sector medical consultants in the world; and impossibly, a judiciary who apparently feels that their own salaries should not be included in any attempt to promote greater social justice. The regulator for all these is, of course, the Government. Its public sector benchmarking-ballot-box exercise worked a treat – we all went along with it, because we couldn’t quite understand how we were getting paid so much and it therefore seemed churlish, and dangerous, to question the basis of anyone else’s earnings.

The symbolism of salaries is massive, because they reflect what the Government – and should reflect also what society – values, and how it differentially values the jobs people do. In Ireland, professional and business elites have a distinguished history of puffing up their status and income. Within the public sector professions, the differentials between those at higher and lower levels are staggering – be they, for instance, in law, healthcare or education.

The public sector unions are right to challenge the Government’s proposals for “getting the economy back on track”, but they also have an obligation to advance a broader agenda for “getting society back on track” and that means addressing the injustices that they have allowed to develop – or more accurately they lobbied for – within the public sector.

Professors, consultants, judges and other “elites” should take greater cuts in pay than their more junior colleagues, either through taxation or actual reductions in income.

The unions were right to be aghast at the so-called bonus for Brendan Drumm, the chief executive of the Health Service Executive. Not only because of what this says about someone on his salary seeking it at this time; but also because of the astonishing lack of cop-on for someone in just such a position. What does it say about the responsibility of leadership, the opportunity for humility and the need to symbolise greater social justice, and yes, sacrifice?

Drumm is not alone and we can expect other inflated public sector workers of similar ilk to try and protect their privileges, and eschew the need for ethical leadership. Whether the unions are for or against them will be the acid test of their commitment to fairness, our health and the nation’s prosperity. The right to strike is fundamental, but the need for the unions to strike the right balance is also critical. It’s not just “the economy stupid”, it’s what it says about us.

Malcolm Mac Lachlan is professor of psychology at the Centre for Global Health and school of psychology in Trinity College, Dublin

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