ESRI: Public service enjoy 26% premium over private

THE fourth assessment in three months of the pay gap between public and private sector workers has found that those in the public service enjoyed a 26% premium in 2006.

The figure arrived at by the Government think-tank, the ESRI, is the same as it concluded when it looked at the comparison at the end of last month.

It said the latest assessment used a different methodology in which it had “drilled down into differences within the public sector.

“We used new techniques to ensure we were matching not just on characteristics people bring to the job such as their experience and education but also more information on occupations,” said Philip O’Connell of the ESRI.

“We used those in a new way in order to match very closely between private and public sector. The conclusion really is that no matter how you do it you get the same answer that between 2003 and 2006 the gap between public and private sector increased very dramatically.”

However, Paddy Keating of IMPACT said the findings were fundamentally flawed and said once again the assessment did not compare like with like.

He said the figures released by the ESRI as well as studies released by the Central Statistics Office were being used as part of a policy to undermine pay in both sectors.

The ESRI found the public sector premium was lowest in the civil service and local authorities where it was 9%-12% and highest in the education sector, where it reached as high as 52.6%.

In a joint statement, the Teachers’ Union of Ireland (TUI) and Irish Federation of University Teachers (IFUT) rejected the findings in the education sector as “misleading” and “flawed”.

“By failing to compare like with like, this piece of research is essentially redundant,” they said. “Generally, private colleges are non-unionised and invariably employ a high turnover of staff on short-term contracts on a casual basis.

“Crucially, these institutions are businesses as opposed to centres of education. Profit is always the most important outcome for their management. It follows that pay and conditions of workers are kept low.”