Civil Servants milking the tax payer

The trade unions representing Irish Civil Servants like to complain, alot. They like to tell us how unfair it is that they are paid so little. They like to beat the private sector workers with the "your paid soooo much more than us" stick and insist on getting "benchmarking" payments to redress the cruel imbalance. They like to get paid for every little change and performance related improvement they are just asked to make, never mind implement them. They like to moan about having to move down the country as part of decentralization but complain about the price of housing in Dublin. All in all they like to portray themselves as the poor down trodden servants of the nation.

Now it turns out they actually get paid up to 20% more than private sector workers. (Sorry, registration on the Irish Independent required and RTE seem to have deleted their copy of the story.)

Public sector workers should get smaller pay rises than those in the private sector in the new national wage agreement, the Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI) says in its latest quarterly report.

The call comes amid evidence that government workers may be earning 20pc more than those in private firms - even before the value of their pay-related pensions is added. The report says change is needed to keep down costs and halt the slide in Irish exports.

The Government wont do anything to reduce the pay of Civil Servants, remember your local TD gets benchmarked pay increases as well so they are laughing all the way to the bank.

No wonder SIPTU today voted to enter new talks on a national pay deal, its a bloody gravy train. If there is no deal then companies will just tell the unions to go screw themselves or they will go to countries where it would be cheaper to do business. That's pretty much every nation on earth at this stage, with possibly a few exceptions like Iraq and Afghanistan where you would need to spend a little more to protect your staff and premises.