Poll: private sector snubbed the protest
Bureaucrats outnumber Frontline 2:1
Sunday November 08 2009
The vast majority of private sector workers ignored last Friday's union-organised marches against pay cuts, according to a Sunday Independent/ Quantum Research poll.
The finding comes despite claims yesterday by Labour Party leader Eamon Gilmore that there was "a huge turnout of public and private sector" workers at the protests.
Mr Gilmore told a Labour Party conference yesterday that the protests showed that workers were not going to "lie down and meekly accept being singled out" by Fianna Fail and the Greens.
The poll, conducted among a sample of 500 people participating in the Dublin demonstration, revealed that 81 per cent were public service workers, while 19 per cent worked in the private sector.
As workers turned their backs on the day of protest, figures compiled by the Sunday Independent, from Central Statistics Office data, revealed that only one-third of public sector workers are 'frontline' staff.
Analysis pages 32, 33
Despite the huge union-financed publicity campaign accorded to the 'Frontline Alliance' of gardai, nurses, teachers, firemen, prison officers and army personnel, these workers make up less than 33 per cent of the total public service workforce.
The startling figures reveal:
• There are 37,000 local authority/regional authority workers -- almost as many as there are nurses working in the health service.
• There are 53,000 semi-state workers -- more than the number of primary teachers and gardai combined.
• There are 35,100 administrative and industrial civil servants -- more than the total number of gardai, soldiers and prison officers put together.
The best estimate from CSO data is that there are 128,000 frontline staff, out of a total of 370,000 public sector workers -- leaving two-thirds employed in bureaucratic jobs and other roles in the public service.
In the last year, gross spending by the Government has increased by 1 per cent while tax revenues have plunged by 17 per cent.
These figures emerged as another government minister warned that cuts in the public service are inevitable.
"There has to be much greater flexibility, we are going to have to get much more for less, whether that is less numbers or less costs, it's just inevitable" said Transport Minister Noel Dempsey. He also warned that if the Government does not dramatically cut costs "someone else will do it for us".
His remarks came as a telephone poll conducted among 1,305 callers to the RTE programme The Business yesterday showed that 88 per cent of those taking part believed it would be "good" if the International Monetary Fund (IMF) intervened in the Irish economy -- 12 per cent thought it would be bad.
Mr Dempsey also said he was "disturbed" about the divisions that were opening up in Irish society.
"There is a nasty streak being shown by some people in relation to this," he said, revealing that he has been accosted in the street by people making "snide remarks".
Mr Dempsey said "the politics of anger and envy is probably more nakedly displayed that it ever was before".
- LIAM COLLINS and MARC COLEMAN
Sunday Independent
