We are all in this together, so public service bashing is a waste of time

SUDDENLY, just before Christmas, and all because I wrote some stuff about public service pay increments, I started getting letters from trade union leaders.

They were all leaders of unions in the public sector, and sad to say their letters weren’t very kind. I have apparently gone from being a “more rational voice” to being someone who has given added impetus to the popular media sport of public servant bashing.

More than that, actually, I’m a bit of a disappointment because my opinions have added to the deep sense of demoralisation among public servants. Teachers have been particularly incensed that someone who believes in children should be making wild suggestions about the withholding of increments on teachers’ pay. And of course the point is made again and gain that (a) any proposal to freeze increments would be a breach of the Croke Park Agreement, and (b) it would wildly discriminate against lower paid public servants.

There is the tiny matter of fact that the Croke Park Agreement is essentially silent on the matter of public sector pay increments — save to say, at one point, that incremental progression should always be linked to performance and nothing else. No-one in the public sector takes that too seriously! But also no-one, apparently, doubts my sincerity. It’s just my naivety and my judgement that’s in question. If someone like me suggests that public servants as a whole should be asked to forego their next pay increase (not take a pay cut, or lose their jobs) that’s just giving ammunition to all those right-wing commentators who hate the public service. By giving aid and comfort to the enemy, I’ve joined the ranks of the enemy.

I guess I’ll have to live with that. The funny thing is, I’ve been waiting for letters from public service trade union leaders for a long time.

I think this was one of the very few columns in any newspaper that actively urged public sector trade unionists to vote for the Croke Park Agreement. In April 2010, it looked very likely that the Croke Park Agreement could be rejected. There was huge anger in the public service about the way they had been treated, and it was being expressed in a lot of no votes in most of the unions.

It was my view then, and I wrote it here, that I’d never met a public servant who couldn’t care less about letting their country down.

“Public servants,” I said, “to a greater extent than most bankers I’ve met recently, care about the public service. They care about its standards and its outcomes, and they care about the fact that without decent public services, thousands of people — poorer people, carers, disabled people, sick people, vulnerable people — would suffer.”

I believed at the time, and said so, that voting for Croke Park would be an act of leadership. I said in that piece that for the next couple of years at least, our public services can only be sustained by the shared sacrifice of public servants. That’s why voting no would be understandable, and maybe even satisfying. Voting yes would be hard. But it wouldn’t be the first time that Ireland’s public servants put their country first.

Funny enough, not one single trade union leader replied to that piece. Nor to the dozen other pieces I’ve written in the last two years defending the public service from attack.

But there was a peculiarity about the Croke Park Agreement. It didn’t seem, on the face of it, to offer much to public servants. No pay increases, no career prospects, no extra jobs. But it did protect them at a time when others were under sustained attack from the recession.

Public servants often work side by side with people in the voluntary and community sector. And it has always struck me as really odd that the voluntary sector would be afforded none of the protections offered by Croke Park.

I work every day with organisations providing invaluable services to suffering and vulnerable people. Almost without exception, those organisations have seen their budgets massively cut — often by public servants at the behest of the Department of Finance. There is no protection for them against wage cuts or forced redundancies, despite the value of the work being done. They have learned, the hard way, how to do more with less.

Throughout the voluntary and community sector, workers have made sacrifices year after year to keep services afloat. They have done it without any guarantee that their own jobs will be safe at year’s end. And as for increments? The idea is greeted with a hollow laugh in most voluntary organisations nowadays.

More than a year ago I wrote to the leaders of the trade union movement in Ireland, pointing out that there was a huge number of workers, all of them providing public service to a high degree, but all employed in the community and voluntary sector. They are public servants in deed if not in name. And I pointed out the obvious anomaly that one form of public servant could get an absolute guarantee against redundancy, while many others were forced to live in fear on a daily basis.

Sadly, I never got a reply to that letter either.

But when all’s said and done, whether I have a spat with public service trade union leaders, or they with me, doesn’t matter a lot. I know how much we need our public services, I know how much they have delivered and contributed over many years. And I know how much damage has been done by public service bashing. I’ve no interest in joining that club.

But this is a time when — and there’s no easy way to say this — knee-jerk reactions won’t solve any of our problems. There’s probably never been a moment in the history of our country when leadership was more important. And I’m not just talking about the kind of leadership that always has to play safe.

We can’t get out of this mess without pain. Everyone knows that — everyone who works in the public sector knows it, just as every private sector worker knows it, and just as the tens of thousands of us who are in between know it. We can’t do what we’ve always done in the past. We can’t cherry pick only the ideas we like, and dismiss everything else without a moment’s thought.

I know I’m as guilty as anyone else. I come from the sort of background where you judge someone’s ideas by checking out what political party he or she belongs to. That’s immensely satisfying, of course, but ultimately sterile. We should have a rule in all public discourse from now on — if you don’t like the ideas under discussion, you’re not allowed to just knock them, you have to put forward an alternative. And be prepared to have that critically analysed too.

We all have one vested interest that over-rides all the others. We want to make sure that our kids don’t have to inherit the mess created in this generation. Well, if we’re going to deliver on that, then sooner or later, we’re going to have to start listening to each other.