Confronting reality - A time for equity and not privilege

THE response of the teachers’ unions to a suggestion that salary increments due next year be deferred is as dispiriting as it is predictable.

It is also indicative of the denial that a huge number of us have yet to even confront much less overcome.

The teachers’ out-of-hand rejection of the modest suggestion, one that does not propose a pay cut, reflects a deep disconnect with today’s terrible reality but experience has taught us not to be surprised by the insistence that €22m pay increases be paid no matter what cuts are imposed elsewhere. Their position seems willfully disinterested in the fact that the country is bankrupt and that Europe is facing a financial crisis unlike any in the history of the European Union.

Next week’s budget must find savings of €3.8bn — and that figure might be closer to an incomprehensible €20bn in 2012 should the euro collapse in disarray — but the initial response from the teacher unions is that it’s business as usual.

This detachment, and it would be unfair to accuse the teacher unions of being the only fantasists arguing against inevitable cuts, has dangerously deepened the divide between public and private sector workers. It destroys the sense of solidarity needed to overcome today’s crisis. It also brings into question the Government’s backbone and commitment to social equity. Responding to the suggestion that would mean no more than deferring increases INTO general secretary Sheila Nunan claimed primary teachers would deliver over one million hours of extra work under the Croke Park deal and they expected the Government to honour commitments made to employees.

Well, let’s wait and see if that reform is real and isdelivered rather than just agreed. The benchmarking fiasco was an expensive lesson and taught us that promises do not mean delivery. And, in case Ms Nunan has not noticed, contracts on pay and pensions are no more than mementoes of better times in many companies where survival rather than compliance is the only issue for employer and employee.

And to be fair teacher unions are not the only lobby group insisting, despite all of the crushing evidence around them, that they should escape the full brunt of budget cuts. Business, students, hospital and social welfare support groups and many more all argue that they cannot afford further reductions. Who can? Very few indeed but that does not mean they can be avoided.

Neither can a review of the Croke Park deal. Pay and pensions represent 36% of all government spending, public sector pensions costs jumped by 66% between 2006 and 2011 and will cost €2.9bn this year. It is not an attack on public servants to recognise that this is unsustainable and to characterise it as such just deepens the divisions in this teetering society.

This will be the toughest budget of modern times and unless Mr Kenny’s Government is scrupulously fair in its implementation, in a way that others have not been, then it may also prove the most divisive.

Suggesting, as Reform Minister Brendan Howlin did yesterday, that there is a legal difficulty with challenging public sector pension arrangements does not serve the idea of social equity or inclusion and is simply not good enough. It’s time for some backbone.