Irish Examiner view: Changing nature of work widens gap between the rich and a growing majority

Society must address profound, but unavoidable, changes to prevent further weakness and division of our popu;ation

Just as the private sector struggles to find chefs because the reward-and-commitment ratio is often out of kilter, the military struggle to attract and retain personnel for the very same reason.

For many years, China imposed strict one-child rules on families, but the realisation that an aging population needed renewal, alongside unprecedented affluence, brought that policy to an end in 2015; most families are now encouraged to have two children. 

Despite those historic restrictions, often enforced through the most severe measures, China’s population grew. 

That growth defied China’s laws and showed how human instinct and ambition prevail, even if that means defying logic and outflanking repressive legislation. 

It is not necessary to go as far as China to find examples of how actuality and theory collide, of how logic can be made to seem impotent.

Last November, the Irish Hospital Consultants’ Association (IHCA) pointed out that there were 730 consultant positions either vacant or unfilled in our health service. 

The association said there were 45% more unfilled senior medical-specialist posts than ever before; this great shortage is confirmed by lengthening waiting lists and exacerbated by the pandemic. 

The shortage is, the IHCA assures us, a reflection of the inadequate pay offered to consultants.

How that argument might be squared with actuality is again an open question. 

The HSE’s annual report for 2020 was submitted to the Oireachtas in the last few days.

It recorded that one HSE employee received more than €640,000; the recipient is understood to be a hospital consultant who delivered significant locum cover.

The report records that a second consultant received €590,000-€600,000 last year, while a third was paid €510,000-€520,000. 

These figures do not reflect any private income these individuals may have generated, possibly in facilities provided in a public hospital. 

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Those figures, even if exceptional, refute arguments around consultants’ pay as profoundly as China’s population growth made a mockery of the state’s one-child policy. 

It is not churlish to suggest that even if those figures around the €600,000 mark were halved, most people would regard them as generous.

The health service is not the only setting where these issues are in play, albeit at the other end of the spectrum. 

The navy is struggling to attract chefs. The service needs 54, but has to recruit at least 18 to reach that number; that navy chefs start at just below €30,000 — less than 5% of the top hospital consultant’s package — is significant. 

Just as the private sector struggles to find chefs because the reward-and-commitment ratio is often out of kilter, the military struggle to attract and retain personnel for the very same reason.

These arguments are, of course, subjective — as any of the Deutsche Bank’s 450 full-time or contract workers who heard yesterday that their Dublin jobs are to go might confirm. 

Nevertheless, they underline a regressive trend of the age: The widening gap between the rich and the growing majority. 

Another great trend of the age — the changing nature, security, and location of work — will help some workers to navigate these issues, maybe in ways that focus on quality of life rather than monetary reward. 

It is increasingly important that society addresses that profound, but unavoidable, change and how it might weaken and divide, if it is to avoid the kind of trauma that characterised China’s last century.