Sir, – I have no issue with those below executive and managerial grades in the HSE being paid overtime during the pandemic. Many are in low-paying positions and could not have been expected to make and continue to make, the herculean efforts they do, without overtime.
Managerial grades are a different matter. These State employees are in highly remunerated positions with security of tenure, in most cases.
In the private sector when one’s employer has a crisis, executives are expected to devote all their time and energy to resolution, without additional incentives. Other than the obvious that their business will survive and thus their job.
Is it the situation that senior public servants, whose role in the bureaucracy of State is serving the national interest, will not do so in a crisis unless paid more?
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This is just another of the great disconnects between public and private sector that grates with the latter. It is all the more grating when, as some of us do, remember the benchmarking programme, which amazingly was a one-way system. When public servants asked for this, it should have contained the conditionality of a reverse process if private sector income averages decreased, which they have.
Where is equality in all of this – and then executive overtime is added to the pile. Some are clearly having a better pandemic than others.
– Yours, etc,
DAVID CASSIDY
Drumcondra, Dublin 9