Public unions too stupid or too demented to admit we're broke
Wednesday July 15 2009
The news from North Korea is grave. The beloved leader, Kim Jong-il, is believed to be terminally ill, and the search for an heir is under way.
The consensus is that his successor must be just like his father, inheriting "Kim Il-sung's thoughts, Kim Il-sung's characteristics and Kim Il-sung's leadership".
In other words, an Irish public service union boss.
Indeed, North Korea seems to be the inspiration of both our trade union movement and of our public services. However, in a Hibernian inversion of the North Korean model, the leader of this state does the bidding of the public service, whereas in dear old Pyongyang, the public service does the bidding of the incomparable leader. Which is why Jong Il Begg, or Kim O Konnor are probably extremely well-suited for the forthcoming vacancy in the socialist paradise north of the 38th Parallel.
It is nine months since economic Armageddon hit this Republic. In that time, about a quarter of a million people in the private sector have lost their jobs. In the public sector, the story has been a little different. Yes, some temporary jobs have gone there, but they were temporary all along.
Just one job went in the public sector. Financial Regulator Patrick Neary was allowed to take early retirement, with a €630,000 pay-off and a pension of €140,000 a year.
Otherwise, the serious jobs are still there: permanent, pensionable and, what do you know, still with rising incomes. Yes, public-sector pay actually increased by around 4pc in the last year. Everyone with jobs in the private sector lost money.
Let me put this slowly, for the politburo of Ictu and Siptu and Fukyu and all those other insane public-service bodies, who have been inhaling too deeply in the public trough. There is no money. Do you get that? There is no shagging money. The notion that you can continue to enjoy your present incomes, with lovely fat pensions to follow, compares with Pyongyang's plans to capture and colonise Arizona.
We are borrowing €30m a day to pay public service wages and pensions. Even a North Korean economist would realise that this is unsustainable. Comrades Begg and O'Connor clearly have not.
I have not yet made up my mind whether this is because they are too stupid or too demented. It really doesn't matter. The result is much the same.
As Alan Ruddock revealed last Sunday, pay in the public sector is 47pc higher than in the private sector -- for those in the shattered, battered latter category who still have jobs, that is. Alan has a strong stomach: he has trawled through Comrade Begg's speeches searching for shiny gobbets of wisdom, which is rather like wading through the late Kim Il-sung's public utterances looking for a Shakespearian sonnet.
Anyway, our intrepid explorer came up with this pearl from Comrade Begg: "Our problem is not the size of our public service, but the collapse of our tax base."
In the entire and voluminous history of trade union brainlessness, has there ever been a remark as devoid of cerebral content as that?
Every single penny in tax-take goes on public service incomes, but that is still not enough; and so we still have to borrow over €200m a week, just to match the public-sector pay bill alone. And worse still is the proposed cure: the terms set for Colm McCarthy's committee to propose economies.
This is well-named as An Bord Snip, for it is limited to making cuts in public services, but none in the number of public servants.
The latter will remain as numerous as ever: they'll just have less work to do.
And, of course, since we all know that these economies will not be nearly enough, the International Monetary Fund will sooner or later move in, bearing glittering scythes. It will sack droves of public servants, cut all pensions, slash judges' pay, and halt all tribunals, and best of all, it will savage TDs' incomes and expenses.
It will do this. This is as certain as the Saharan sun burns. And the reason this will happen is that Fianna Fail -- and that piece of reptile's foreskin otherwise known as the Greens -- would prefer to have some nameless foreigners take the blame for the necessary fiscal surgery than impose it themselves.
In the meantime, terrible and probably irreversible damage will have been done to our economy.
But, of course, neither that, nor even the loss of sovereignty to the IMF, matters much to our political masters.
Provided outsiders are seen to be doing the dirty work, which of course Fianna Fail will protest vehemently at, the gamble is that the party will once again be returned to office in the next election.
That there is neither pride nor dignity -- and least of all, patriotism -- in such a ploy is utterly irrelevant.
For as the heirs of Kim Il-sung or deValera alike will tell you, political power is the purpose. It is all that counts, no matter how ignobly or basely it is achieved.
kmyers@independent.ie
