Public servants will strike — and strike hard — until politicians wake up and get the message

WHEN will your editorial writers give up attacking public sector workers and unions as if they were responsible for what has happened to the economy?

We are lectured almost without exception by people earning comfortable, if not exorbitant, salaries themselves of the need for us to pay for the excesses of politicians, bankers and developers.

Mary Harney, of the €400 haircut and €1,000 meal at public expense, defends Brendan Drumm who earns more than Barack Obama and then some — all paid for by us — while at the same time issuing dire warnings of the “need” for cuts for the lowest paid.

You accuse us of trying “to bring the country to its knees” (October 22). No we are not.

We are trying to bring the Government and the elites to their overpaid senses. May I remind you that we are a substantial part of the country — the ones who are holding its infrastructure together — and not some separate group who are willing to be set up for routine vilification.

Let us see exactly how serious the Government is about cuts. If it abandons its criminally wild NAMA plan to squander billions on yet more property gambling and speculation, we may begin to take it seriously.

If it abandons the even wilder plans to take yet another punt on what is being called R&D — to the tune of billions of euro annually — then we might begin to take them seriously. No one in the public sector — from the president down — should be earning more than €100,000 a year — an ample salary for any but the obscenely greedy. The country is awash with educated, intelligent, competent people of integrity who would be decently appreciative of a salary like this. We are told the private sector would pay multiples of this salary for the fabulous talent that has destroyed our economy.

On the other hand we are told public sector workers are paid more than their counterparts in the private sector. They can’t have it both ways.

But the lie is exposed: the neo-liberals like Mary Harney and Brian Cowen want to introduce the same inequality in the public sector as pertains in the private.

It’s a game where those at the top in either sector retain all of the profits, perks and privileges and those who do the actual work are deliberately kept at a disadvantage.

We will strike and we will strike hard until our politicians get the message. There are billions of savings to be made other than by inflicting needless poverty and hardship on hard-working people.

Miriam Cotton

Woodlands

Clonakilty

Co Cork