A chara, – Dave Thomas (March 8th) tells us that public sector pay will always be higher than private sector pay because of the: “highly professional nature of the work involved and the qualifications that are required to perform it”.
Has it really nothing to do with the political power of some of the trade unions? One large trade union, SIPTU, funds a political party in government. Remember what the cosy relationships between developers and another political party did to the country?
Nearly every other trade union can bring the country to the halt if something happens that it does not wish to accept. Why was benchmarking such a good idea in the so-called boom and any talk of adjustment of pay to market levels now met with such resistance – Is mise,