ISME warns: Public Sector Overpaid- diasaster in offing

[Hana]

the ISME would have all their staff working for less than the minimum wage - which they have constantly argued against. If the tiger dies it will be the likes of the isme, the property developers & the vintners fault...

[Tribe 14]

I don't think it's a question of choice, though. There is a worldwide business trend to avoid unions, unions haven't responded to it well enough by organising properly, and our government is only one of two in the OECD which has failed to legislate for union recognition where a majority want it.

Where people are given a free choice, they usually prefer to be represented by a union: have a look at this US study if you're interested: http://www.news.wisc.edu/629.html

[cyberianpan]

The hairy lefties of p.ie are claiming that we're not comparing like with like (amusing that they seem now to believe in income inequality), however I think I'd like to see breakdowns here, financial services, where I work a lot has well over 100,000 workers nearly all of whom have degrees. The firm I work for has over 200 employees & more than 100 of these have postgraduate qualifications. Very few upper firsts in science & computers go to work in Civil Service ?

The Civil Sevice certainly has hordes of adminatrons: hospital cleaners, clerical assistants, "person whose job it is to place 6th rubber stamp on form 3rd cycle" etc.

Any college "where they work afterwards" survey that I've seen has not had >50% showing as civil service (now ok anyhow less than 50% work in civil service)

TCD Comp Sci 2004
Employers:
Accenture
An Bord Gais
Dell
Edgespace Ltd
Ericcson Ltd
ESB
IBM Ireland
JP Morgan
Kalido Ltd
Symantec Ltd

Anyone got figures showing total employed in public service & total of these who have full degrees ?

cYp

[cyberianpan]

The people in the private sector have largely abandoned unions and have opted to fend for themselves in negotiations with their employers. Not going as well as collective bargining by the sound of it. That should not be a surprise really.

It is not so much as they "fend for themselves" ... in private sector pay is (on average) determined by market, individuals then negotiate their personal variance with their employer. If the individual isn't happy they leave for higher pay. Unless of course you wish to suggest that employers collude on a global basis to fix pay ? (now that would be some co-ordination problem , let alone beeing impossible to hide)

cYp

[Schuhart]

I think there’s an element of truth on both sides of the discussion, but might it benefit from some data?

CSO data on earnings can be found here. The best paid public sector workers seem to be Garda and Prison Officers. I take it they don’t require third level qualifications but, in principle, you can see why it would be necessary to pay a lot to attract the kind of people you need to be locked up all day and night with criminals.

The next group down seem to be teachers, who presumably are largely qualified people. (I’m dimly aware of some issue regarding unqualified primary teachers, but I don’t know chapter and verse on that).

Taking what’s left, the pay of administrative civil servants seems to be of the same order as bank staff – which would seem to be a roughly equivalent type of job – in out of the cold, and shuffling papers in front of a computer.

Thought occurs – the real cost of the public service isn’t salary, but the cost of unfunded defined benefit pensions which will surely balloon in some predictable timescale.

[kittyn]

As for what you have said Tribe, I have no idea where you got your information from but the majority of employees in the Private sector are highly educated with most professions taking at least five years of study.......!

Simply untrue. 63pc of the population do not have a third-level qualification (IDA Ireland).

Are you trying to tell me that all the un-educated third level employees in this country are in the Private sector, I think not........ Many public sector employees are also without a third level education. It is a very sweeping statement to make the all Public sector employees have a third level education and the private sector does not, I'd say its more or less a fifty / fifty split

[Tribe 14]

52% of public servants have a third level qualification, compared with about 25% of private sector workers. Public servants are more likely to be professionally or technically qualified (nearly half) than their private sector colleagues (about 12%). Figures from IMPACT, who's spokesman says:

"The CSO figures for average industrial pay are not a study of the entire private sector. Rather, they describe a limited sample of manufacturing jobs. The public sector pay bill includes a very wide range of professions from the top to the bottom of public service organisations where staff are more qualified and more likely to be professionals, technicians or managers. It is deliberately misleading to say that public sector pay is 40% ahead of comparable workers in the private sector, or anything like that."

[ibis]

The assertion that the public sector is "better qualified" than the private sector, and that this justifies their higher pay, is entirely meaningless unless the following can be shown:

1. that it's true in the first place

2. that the gap in qualifications is the same size as the gap in pay

3. that qualifications, rather than utility, is the best determinant for wages

Both the private and the public sector contain skilled and unskilled workers - highlighting one or other set of them is a pointless exercise.

[kittyn]

Well I find that figure hard to believe, but fair enough...... Maybe we should all move into the public sector then and get much better pay for way less hours

[Hana]

from the CSO stats roughly 2/3rd of the population work in the manual skilled to non skilled sections of the workforce, mainly in the construction, manufacturing and hospitality industry - all Private.
The professional class only accounts for 9% of the work force - and some of them work in the public sector, the stats tell us that 5% of pop work in public admin, meaning only 4% of population is a professional person in private industry.
Over only 26% of our pop has a 3rd level qualification.