Madam, - The plight of Community Employment workers, job initiative employees and part-time health board employees brings home the deep injustice involved in implementing budgetary cutbacks.
In order to balance budgets, agencies seek to make savings by laying off their most vulnerable employees - those who are part-time or temporary - and by reducing special services to vulnerable sectors of society. Thus the most needy are made absorb the brunt of the cuts.
Justice would suggest that the impact of cutbacks should be felt equally by all - through, for example, an across the board pay cut.
In such circumstances, of course, cutbacks might be more difficult to implement. This might be no bad thing. And who is to blame anyway if an agency's budget becomes unbalanced? Certainly not the CE worker or the senior citizen depending on home help. - Yours, etc.,
MARK HAMILTON, Citywise (City Centre Youth Achievement Programme), Amiens Street, Dublin 1.