Congress President Speech to Public Sector Rally
24 Feb 2010
SPEECH TO PUBLIC SERVICE WORKERS AT GMIT, GALWAY TUESDAY 23rd FEBRUARY 2010.
Good evening everybody and thank you for turning out in such impressive numbers on this cold February evening.
1. There is a dangerous misconception which is beginning to take root in this country and society that if we all just keep our heads down there will be no further cuts to our pay and public services. This has no basis in reality because the fiscal consolidation to which this Government is committed and has undertaken to follow through with the EU Commission and which saw cuts of €4 billion in budget 2010 requires a further adjustment of €3 billion in 2011 and yet another €3 billion in 2012.
The notion that, if we keep our heads down and swallow our medicine, the problem will go away is utter nonsense. It is one that is being deliberately promoted in order to create confusion and undermine our resolve. Indeed, if we accept this notion we will inevitably witness a repetition of what happened last year when the Government in April 2009, declared the intention of implementing a balanced combination of measures to deal with the crisis. Then, in August, in one of the most dramatic policy reversals in the history of the State they decided that the burden of the adjustment would be borne exclusively by working people whether they depend on public service provision or work in providing them, while the wealthy would contribute nothing at all.
And anytime this glaring inequity is highlighted they point to the earlier Budgets in 2008 and 2009 to make the assertion that the wealthy did contribute. In fact, they contributed little or nothing. The income levy of 2% was imposed on people earning less than the minimum wage, a further 2% on those earning more than €75,000 with an additional 2% on those earning more than €175,000. Actually when you look at the measures taken to date we see that €13.2 billion has been taken out of the economy of which €9.2 billion, or almost 80%, has come through public spending cuts.
2. The fact of the matter is, whether we like it or not, we must lay out a determined programme of action running right into the summer, carefully and incrementally escalating and ramping it up in such a way as to minimise the implications for ordinary citizens of the country - to the degree that we can - and maximising the prospect of a negotiated outcome. Otherwise we will end up drifting along to the end of the year and into another budgetary assault on jobs, pay and pensions. Come what may the Government has committed the people of this country to a fiscal consolidation plan which requires an adjustment of €3bn one way or the other, and the reality is that it is far easier to target less than one-fifth of the workforce than it is to confront the powerful and wealthy who dictate the agenda in our society.
Of course, once we contemplate effective action our opponents will immediately and cynically represent our actions as an attack on the people who most depend on public services and the people of the country generally. This will give full vent to the campaign that represents the people who work for the public as lazy, and the public service itself as bloated and inefficient. In fact, far from inefficient or bloated the numbers in the Irish public service as a percentage of total employment, at 18.8%, compares favourably with most EU members including countries with good quality provision such as Sweden at 28.3% and Finland at 21.3% as well as France at 25%, the Netherlands at 21.3% and the UK at 19.7%. And even if we are to measure it in terms of the proportion of GDP committed to public expenditure we still rank substantially below the average for the Eurozone even notwithstanding the collapse here.
Whenever we get anywhere close to putting these figures across they are immediately dismissed on the basis that they are irrelevant in the context of the enormity of the economic crisis gripping this country. This accusation that we are somehow indifferent to the realities of the situation is utterly unjustified. We are acutely aware that the strategy which has been followed in this country for several years and which prioritised speculation over sustainable development has resulted in the collapse of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of something in the order of 10-12%. This is unprecedented in the economic history of any developed country since the 2nd World War. It has resulted in State revenues falling by one third in less than two years and in a tripling of the level of unemployment over the same period.
3. None of this was caused by the working people of this country. They did not participate in the reckless decisions made at the top of our banking system which have resulted in the accumulation of toxic assets on a scale unseen since the 1930's. But the fact that we did not cause the crisis and collapse does not render us unaware of the reality that we cannot waive the consequences away. Indeed, we actually hope that the measures taken by the government will have the affect that they and their cheerleaders on the political right have declared they are likely to have. However, we believe otherwise and we greatly fear that rather than restoring stability they will be seen, in the fullness of time, to actually aggravate the problem.
It was disconcerting to learn, for instance, that some among the establishment were surprised at the failure of the launch of the NAMA project to restore the flow of credit in the economy. Surely they must have known, as all of us know without being experts in the banking system that bankers would continue to do what comes most naturally to them which is feathering their own nests regardless of the support extended to them by the citizens of this country.
We of course hope that in time those in public life - and there are many of them in all parties including the Government parties -who are genuinely committed to the interests of the people of Ireland as their absolute priority can be persuaded to see the folly of systematic deflation as an alternative to a measured and sustainable economic strategy.
5. But one way or the together we have to face the reality that for a very long time to come the resources available for the provision of public services will remain diminished. It will also be quite some time, even if the correct policies are pursued, before our economy generates levels of resources equivalent to those we had become accustomed to in the earlier years of this century.
It was precisely on the basis of this realisation that the public service unions advanced the transformation proposition. It envisaged a radically different public service. It would present challenges for all and many aspects of it would be controversial on our side. But the fact of the matter is that this Government passed up the most imaginative improvement in public service provision and in the delivery of public services for all of those who live and work in Ireland since the foundation of the State. Indeed probably a more dramatic transformation and improvement in public service provision than has been accomplished by any developed country over the past quarter of a century.
This could only be achieved in the context of the most firm and absolute guarantees of continuing high quality public service provision by directly employed workers secure in their employment with their pay and pensions intact as negotiated and agreed. The Government chose to pass up on this prospect cutting pay instead - including the despicable act of dipping into the pockets of people struggling on less than €30,000 a year to cut their pay by 5% after they had already been hit 12 months earlier in the form of the so called pension levy.
Incidentally, cutting pay was not the worst aspect of Budget 2010. They even stooped lower than that by taking €760 million from the people dependant on social welfare and a further €1.1bn out of public service provision while the wealthy were asked to contribute nothing.
6. The sad reality is that the negotiations with Government during the first week in December were not collapsed for reasons that had anything to do with public service provision or budgetary constraints. The actual amount of money that would have been generated by the measures emanating from that negotiation would have, at least, equalled that generated by the pay cuts.
The negotiation was sabotaged for an entirely different reason which had to do with the imperative of cutting pay of all workers across the economy - an agenda which, until then at least, had not been progressing too successfully despite all the spin to the contrary.
How could they set about breaking the resolve of workers across the country to resist pay cuts if - having spent the period since last August softening up public opinion for it - they then failed to cut the pay scales in the public service? This was the agenda of those who successfully sabotaged the negotiations. Whether it intended it or not the Governments policy was ultimately determined by the lobbying of powerful vested interests - a lobbying exercise which has now managed to convince some of those who hold public office that it would be a good idea to cut the minimum wage in Ireland and to attack the incomes of those on the lowest wage rates agreed through long established industrial relations practice.
Can you imagine being so bereft of ideas that the only solution they can find to a crisis generated by prioritising speculation over sustainability and pandering to the interests of the wealthiest is cutting the pay of the poorest among us?
Often times, trade unionists describe what has been unfolding over the past year or more in terms of an attack on public service workers. That is to fundamentally misunderstand it. It is actually an attack on workers, all workers, an attempt to achieve the effects of a currency devaluation by cutting pay which means that, unlike devaluation, only working people carry the entire burden of the adjustment.
7. In fairness, many people in public life and other commentators who opposed an agreement were not driven by this surreptitious pay cutting agenda. They bought the line so carefully orchestrated over those days - that what was at issue was merely a 12 days lay off cynically misrepresented as an additional twelve days holidays for public service workers. This was never anything other than a peripheral aspect of the proposition representing a bridging mechanism to extend over one year only, 2010, while the various elements of the transformation agenda were put in place.
A fair solution to the issues at stake is still possible, a solution which links better public service provision with stable and secure employment and a framework for restoring the agreed pay scales. The key to arriving at that is a proper negotiation focused on the provision of decent public services within the limits of available resources completely decoupled from the wider issue of cutting pay across the economy.
There will be those who will represent us as endeavouring to reverse the budget and undermine the democratically elected Government. I want to state emphatically that agreement can be reached. We have no more interest in undermining a democratically elected Government regardless as to how much we disagree with it, than we approve of powerful vested interests in business dictating the agenda.
However, the government has equally a responsibility to deal with the issues as presented; to observe good employment practice, to respect agreements freely entered into and to deal properly with its own employees.
All of this can still be done. It is not yet too late to avoid a major confrontation. And if it were done it would add enormously to the creation of stability and confidence so urgently required in our economy, and in our country.
But you must all prepare to take resolute action in an intelligent and carefully planned way in the not too distant future to bring this dispute to a fair conclusion because the sands of time are running and they are running out fast.
JACK O'CONNOR, PRESIDENT OF IRISH CONGRESS OF TRADE UNIONS AND GENERAL PRESIDENT SIPTU.
