Younger civil servants leaving due to low pay rates, says CPSU

Recently-recruited civil servants are already beginning to leave because they cannot cope on the lower pay rates they are receiving, the Civil Public and Services Union (CPSU) has said.

At the start of the union's annual conference, its general secretary Eoin Ronayne said recently-recruited staff in the lower-paid clerical grades in the Civil Service were receiving about €7,000 less than their counterparts doing the same job who were taken on before the economic crash.

He said “the low entry points imposed on the lower-paid clerical officer grade means it will take new recruits six years to reach €11.50 an hour”, which has been deemed by campaigners to be needed as a “living wage”.

Mr Ronayne said the starting rate of €9.70 an hour was “totally unacceptable and that, unlike others, these workers did not get any allowances or premium top-ups”.

Better opportunities

“Many of these new State employees are third-level qualified and when they realise it will take over 18 years to get to the mid-€30,000s they head off to better opportunities,” he said.

Lower-paid civil servants are the latest group of State employees to demand an accelerated process for reversing pay cuts introduced after the collapse in the public finances.

Mr Ronayne said despite the Lansdowne Road pay agreement favouring lower-paid workers, his members’ expectations were “at an all-time high given the strength of economic performance and the promises made by all hues of politicians in the election”.

He warned that any new government “must speed up full pay and conditions restoration”. He criticised in particular the two additional hours a week that civil servants had been required to work without additional pay.

Mr Ronayne said the issue of the restoration of pay and conditions for staff in the Civil Service “was not going to go away and that whenever a new government is formed it would be a critical issue for it to face up to”.

Call to reverse cuts

Separately, in an address to the conference today, the president of the CPSU

Tony Conlon

will argue the time is now for the Government to reverse cuts to the terms and conditions of civil servants.

He is also likely to urge the incoming Government to repeal as a matter of urgency the various pieces of financial emergency legislation that underpinned the cuts imposed on staff in the public service.

“Last year our members accepted the Lansdowne Road agreement, which returned some of the cuts our members suffered over the past eight years,” he said. “While recognising that it had positives for our members, including flat-rate increases for all grades, it is time to rethink our position on the basis of the upturn in the Irish economy and the forecasted growth rate of between 7 and 8 per cent.”

“CPSU members have suffered more than most. In some parts of the private and semi-State sectors, earnings are increasing while some never faced cuts even during the downturn in the Irish economy. Our members, through their sacrifices have contributed greatly to that upturn but there comes a point when our losses in pay and conditions must be reversed, and I believe that time is now.”