Sir, – Una Mullally ("Workplace has become terrain of insecurity and exhaustion", Opinion & Analysis, September 1st) sheds light on the travesty that is the culture of under-employment and precarious employment in Ireland, and the experience of many thousands of people who eke out an existence on short-term and atypical contracts, unable to make medium or long-term plans given the flexible and insecure nature of their employment status. Such contracts reduce employees to an expense and a sort of commodity to be consumed by employers, rather than as a resource to be cultivated and treated with dignity.
However, your columnist misses the point by identifying the “inflated salaries of those in the public service of past times and the lack of accountability that typified many of our sectors” as a source of the employment problem. We will not create a fairer society by assigning blame to a sector made up of hundreds of thousands of public servants, the vast majority of whom do not receive “inflated salaries” by any standard. – Yours, etc,
BARRY COLFER,
European Trade Union
Institute Visiting
Researcher,
Pembroke College,
University of Cambridge.