SIPTU chief O’Connor favours public sector reform

SIPTU general president Jack O’Connor has stated that he favours public sector reform, and that those stating that unions were an obstacle to such change were “disingenuous.”

Mr Connor, whose union represents more than 70,000 public servants and 140,000 private sector workers, said: “Union members in the public service are faced with a threat to their jobs. The assumption that public service jobs are secure is a nonsense in the context of impending exchequer deficit of 15.6% next year. There is also a threat to the levels of pay that people may take as sacrosanct, but nothing is sacrosanct in a economy that is collapsing.”

He added: “The unions have never been opposed to public service reform, contrary to the image that has been portrayed by sections of the media. It is as much in the interest of union members generally, and union members who work in the public service, that we have a good, efficient, well-managed public service which is not top heavy, as it is in everybody else’s interest.”