HSE redundancies - Deal ignores idea of social solidarity

HEALTH Minister Mary Harney did not need to be a fortune teller to anticipate a huge interest in the Health Service Executive redundancy package. Comparatively speaking the terms are so generous that anything else would have been unimaginable.

If they had been offered in a private company there would be a stampede.

The terms also underline again Government’s proactive and corrosive role in creating a two-tier society where one group of workers is more or less insulated from the chaos unfolding all around us while others face losing jobs, pensions and, in some circumstances, their homes.

It shows how our leaders are utterly in thrall to public sector unions because if they had any understanding or empathy with society as a whole they would have realised that the terms offered to HSE workers are little short of incendiary.

It is impossible to imagine that private sector workers might be offered a voluntary early retirement scheme for employees over 50 which provides for immediate payment of full retirement pension entitlements. It isalso unimaginable that full lump-sum entitlement would be paid without reflecting pay cuts agreed earlier.

It is also unlikely that the voluntary redundancy scheme would involve a severance payment of three weeks’ pay per year of service as well as statutory entitlements. If it is hard to understand how a Government tottering on the very edge of bankruptcy could offer these terms, it is impossible to understand how they could offer terms so at variance with the experience of the great majority of workers who have lost their jobs in the private sector.

Public sector unions will suggest that pointing these facts out is another attack on public sector workers. It is not. It is an attack on the practices and expectations that we could never afford, much less at this moment of great crisis. It is an attack on the idea that one sector of society is shielded from the world around it just because they are Government employees while the other feels the full brunt of the storm. It is an attack on the culture of entitlement that must be broken if we are to have any hope of recovery.

It is more than strange too that HSE management has reneged on a basic function of management. Surely they should have identified the redundant posts and acted accordingly. Now there is the prospect of essential staff leaving and, in time, being replaced by relocated HSE staff who would have no prospect of securing the job in open competition. Surely this is putting the interests of staff before the interests of the sick people who will depend on the service? Surely it is another indictment of the organisation that it says it can shed 5,000 workers without affecting services?

Public and private sector workers are two sides of the same coin and one depends on the other. In an equitable society that would be reflected in the similar levels of protection provided for each. The chasm between how public and private sector workers are treated is another indication of how dysfunctional our society has become. This issue must be addressed if we are to sustain any idea of a common purpose and the solidarity needed to rebuild this country.