Yellow-pack pay means we’ll have to settle for a yellow-pack public service

IT seems there is a problem with public service pay.

Too many public servants, some would argue. Too highly paid, say others. It’s part of the reason we’re bankrupt, according to some of the theoreticians and commentators.

Nobody’s ever quite prepared to say where the too many public servants are. They’re not in the schools, nor the hospitals. There doesn’t appear to be too many in the fire brigade either, nor in all the places that look after our elderly people and our disabled people.

And oddly enough, it seems difficult to identify who the highly-paid ones are either. The people mentioned above are all worth their weight in gold, we all agree. And even though we mutter a lot about the pay of, say, hospital consultants, when we’re really sick we want a good consultant, not a cheap one.

So it’s a bit of a problem, all these “far too many” public servants whose identity we’re not sure of, with salaries that are too high until we need them.

But somebody has found a solution. It’s a new idea, not too highly publicised, and certainly not something anyone seems to want to boast about. It’s yellow-pack public servants.

But oddly enough, it’s not all public servants. The solution to this problem of over-paid public servants, it transpires, is fiendishly clever. We’re going to pin-point all the lowest-paid public servants we have, and in future we’re going to pay them less. Higher-paid public servants (I kid you not) will be left alone.

Just before Christmas last, the Department of Finance sent out a circular to all government departments and agencies funded by the state. The purpose of the circular was to give effect to a decision made by the last government on December 2 last. That decision was to reduce by 10% the salary scales for new entrants to all the traditional civil and public service grades. The reduction was (is) to apply to anyone recruited after January 1 this year.

That may not sound too dramatic. What’s 10%, after all, to all these over-paid servants of the state? Well, it took the various government departments a little bit of time to work out how much the cut meant. But a week or so ago, the Department of Health was able to send around a similar circular, spelling out in detail what the cut will mean to people working in the health service.

People like cooks, cleaners, porters might all be essential. But they’ve never been well paid. In future, anyone employed as a trainee cook in the health service will be offered the princely salary of €16,609 per annum. Up to the end of last year, trainee cooks in the health service were paid around €350 a week. Nobody, I think, could argue that that’s overpaid — but any trainee cook employed in future is going to be paid €35 less.

There are thousands of people in the health service who carry out unglamorous and absolutely essential work. Cleaners, porters, laundry workers, attendants – they’re the people whose job it is, under supervision, to ensure decent standards in hospitals and facilities throughout the country. The rate for that job up to the end of last year was around a pretty modest €520 a week. In future, it will be €476, or €24,754 pa – a cut of around €50 a week.

To put it another way, if any of the people in these grades were hired in December last, they’d be worth an extra €50 a week, because they’d be in the door just before this arbitrary cut was made.

There’s a few points to be born in mind here, several levels of unfairness that apply. I know it’s not quite the same as forcing existing people to take a pay cut – that has already happened throughout the public service. But it is deeply unfair that the cuts are being applied in this way primarily to people recruited to the lower-paid jobs. The circular sent around by the Department of Health contains this curious paragraph, under the heading “Grades not encompassed by new rates: It is recognised that recruitment through open competitions is now commonplace for many posts in the public service, which previously would have been filled, either wholly or primarily, by promotion of serving staff. The 10% reduction does not apply to these grades, even where the persons recruited are new entrants to the public service.”

What this means is that if you’re recruited from outside to a higher paid job in the health service, the cut won’t be applied. It is only being applied to lower-paid jobs.

The second level of unfairness will be felt over time – and could well turn into a massive industrial relations problem down the line. All over the public service, from this moment on, you’re going to have people working side by side, doing identical jobs, and paid significantly differently.

They will be people with identical qualifications, identical training, and the only difference between them will be that some were recruited before the end of 2010, and some at the start of 2011.

How a situation like that is compatible with any of the principles of equal pay is beyond me. I don’t know who agreed to this cut, or even whether it was negotiated with the public service trade unions.

Last I heard, they had all signed up to the Croke Park Agreement. And the Croke Park Agreement, unless I’ve gone completely mad, guarantees two things to the people who voted for it.

First, it guarantees no more cuts in public service pay on top of the cuts already made. And second, it guarantees that if it does become possible to reverse some of the existing cuts in pay, priority will be given to low-paid public servants (those earning €35,000 a year or less). That’s a bit mad, isn’t it? On the one hand the Croke Park Agreement is full of fine language about low pay. And on the other the government is issuing circulars that reduce low pay even further. I’m not saying that we can afford to increase everyone’s pay — I wish it were possible to say that, but that’s simply not reality. But surely it makes no sense, at any level, that if we have to cut, the only grade scales to suffer are the ones at the bottom? Why doesn’t this apply to people recruited to – or promoted to — jobs that pay a quarter of a million a year?

And what, finally, does it say about the kind of public service we want? The examples I’ve given here are those that apply in the health service, but there are identical circulars now doing the rounds about special needs assistants in the education service, and a wide range of jobs in local government.

Why should we think we can introduce this sort of unfairness and inequity into key jobs and not expect the quality of service, alongside the morale of the public servants involved, to suffer?

If we’re going to embark on a national policy of turning a whole host of public service jobs in the yellow-pack jobs, does that mean we want to settle for a yellow-pack public service?