Others more deserving of cuts than 24/7 staff

In a speech the other day to the 24/7 Frontline Alliance, which includes nurses, gardaí and prison officers, Seamus Murphy of the Psychiatric Nurses Association did not mince his words in speaking up for those he represents and those workers, in general, who are required to provide services on a 24/7 basis.

There is a belief that these workers are being unfairly tackled while others in cushier roles are not, because they are a minority of union membership.

He was, according to reports, scathing in his remarks about senior public service union leaders, who he said had been in ‘cahoots’ with the Government on how to achieve €1bn in cuts under Croke Park II.

There seems to be a large measure of truth in that comment. After all, the guys and gals he refers to have been hobnobbing with ministers, business leaders and others over the best part of the last two decades. Union leaders particularly those from the more powerful public sector unions do not appear to consider themselves as being the equals of their own members. Their salary and remuneration packages appear to bear a closer resemblance to the packages of senior mandarins than to members’.

I say appear because many of these ‘leaders’ refuse to publish that information, even to their own members. Whichever way you look at it, all of those lads and lassies earn several multiples of the average industrial wage. To top it all, most of them do not appear to have been hit with the cuts that their own members had to endure. This includes some of the union leaders representing the 24/7 workers.

So, what makes 24/7 frontline workers different to other workers? In simplistic terms it’s the hours they work and the shifts that they work to make up those hours. Again, simplistically speaking, the ordinary worker has the same start time and the same finishing time every day, bar having to do a bit of overtime every so often. We have designated Sunday as a ‘day of rest’.

The non-24/7 worker gets to have every Saturday and Sunday off to spend with his or her family. They also get to have Christmas and Easter off. In a few words, they get to work social hours versus those who must work unsocial hours.

Nurses, for instance, provide a necessary and vital service. I also understand that not only do they work irregular hours but they also work more hours per week than their colleagues in administration. Do their respective pay levels reflect that fact or is the fare of the HSE administration worker that much better? To get people, who have a choice, to work unsocial hours, we offer them better terms.

To get people to work overtime we give them an enhanced hourly rate. Lets not forget, we have to pay tens of thousands, sometimes millions, to some financial sector people just to ‘incentivise’ them to do the job they were recruited to do. Nor should we forget that we pay our politicians to actually turn up in the Dáil.

It seems that we must pay for flexibility. We must also recognise that when people work unsocial hours they should be compensated for it. That is not to say that current premium rates and other terms and conditions are not overblown. Lord knows, a lot of things went OTT over the last 15 years or so. It would also appear that there is widespread abuse of the system and it is not being tackled.

It is unfair and unreasonable to go after any particular category of worker, least of all those who provide a vital service during hours when most of us are enjoying ourselves, relaxing or asleep without first dealing with the abuses in the overall system. There are a lot of really well paid folk in this economy whose usefulness to society is questionable. It would be really unfortunate and unfair if 24/7 workers are hammered to protect those who are really gouging the system.