FF & Greens threat on union subs is illegal

Those the gods destroy they first make mad. I’m reminded of this wisdom this week when I hear Minister Dempsey responding to the air traffic controllers dispute with a suggestion to ban strike action in essential services. The cabinet’s union bashing continues with suggestions that they will refuse to pass on union deductions from their employees in an attempt to break opposition to pay cuts. This threat should be ignored by public service workers. I say; Bring it on, Let me explain; It’s my view that any such attempt is illegal under data protection law.
It seems that they have learnt nothing in all their years in power other than bullying their workers. About 9 years ago my own union ASTI were locked in a bitter pay dispute with the government, a dispute that we lost and one that I believe our union has yet to fully recover from. Part of our action was to work to rule and not to supervise for absent colleagues. As a result school boards of management closed schools on health and safety grounds although staff were in situ and willing to work. The government moved quickly to withhold 5 days pay from teachers over the Christmas holidays. .

I was particularly annoyed by this move and was one of 42 teachers to take their case to the Data Protection Commissioner in January 2001. I pointed out that my membership of a union is a matter for me and the union concerned. The only reason I had notified the department of my ASTI membership was to facilitate me in paying my union dues, in exactly the same way that VHI, pension, AVC payments etc are processed. I pointed out that the salaries section had no other dealings with me and that if the department had an issue with me that they were obliged to write to me directly asking me if I had been party to a work to rule protest and then following a response taken the action they did


The commissioner investigated my case and found in my favour. The government was obliged to return the deducted pay, not just to me but to every teacher. This 2001 decision is highly relevant to the government’s latest plan.
The Data Commissioner satisfied himself that data relating to my ASTI membership “was obtained by the Department for the sole purpose of deducting ASTI subscription from salary and remitting such deductions to the ASTI and for no other purpose. Using the data for another purpose contravenes section 2 of the Data Protection Act 1988.” Following this decision the Department of Education was warned not to repeat this action as a heavy fine would be imposed.

There are many similarities in what happened to me and what the government is now proposing to do to IMPACT, SIPTU, CPSU members. If what is reported happens, Brian Lenihan will direct officials to assess each employee record, cancel their subscription to the union and presumably return it to their pay packet without written notification from the employee whose money it is in the first place. If they don’t do that they will have to hold on to their employees money against the employees instruction provoking a Fr Ted situation where the money will be resting in their account!
The facility to deduct union membership from salaries was offered to the employee from the state, not from the union. The state pays the union at the direction of the states employee. They cannot unilaterally decide to withdraw that facility without entering into a discussion with its employees. They cannot, to quote the judgement, take information for the purpose of facilitating payment and use it for a political purpose of discommoding a union. Am I the only one who sees this as being a breach of an employee’s confidential data and rights? If you can try this one on with an employee’s union subvention what’s to stop a similar move to thwart payment to a health insurance provider if the government doesn’t like the cut of them too?


Since I started teaching how we were paid has changed enormously. We were told that it was all about the cashless society. The ATM (beloved of those of us who cast a sceptical eye in bench marking) replaced the cheque. But what we’re getting now is the amoral society. One where the Greens and FF will do, as they put it euphemistically, what has to be done to put this country back on its feet. There’s many a public servant who’ll be on their feet soon enough but not in the way that Cowen and company imagine.

Drink! Feck! Arse! Budgets!

It’s a budget that Fr Jack would be proud of. If Carlsberg could do budgets they’d do this one! Drink prices hit the floor, the millionaire’s G&T drop in price as VAT & excise duty are reduced. The bill is picked up by the public servants and those on social welfare.
I debated the budget in South East Radio with Michael Wall (SIPTU), Michael O’Leary (a local financial services expert) & Cllr Michael Sheehan of Fianna Fail just hours after the speech. Dan Walsh did the needful and chaired the debate. Every year South East Radio has a budget debate and this is the second time I’ve done it. It’s an example of public service broadcasting that you don’t often hear in local radio. The response from the listeners was hugely critical of the budget, and I’m not surprised. As a budget, I must say that I’m still in shock. I’m shocked that Fianna Fail could walk all over vast swathes of people to appease the bankers, builders & IBEC so blatantly. If Labour tried a fraction of what FF & the greens pushed through there would be a schism.!

Lets punch through the noise and set Budget 10 in context. All the money saved last year has been channelled into the banks by the back door off balance sheet and not a cent of it was mentioned today. Its not as though we’re through the worse, the worse hasn’t started yet. There’s no stimulus here, SME’s are looking for credit, they won’t get it today and it won’t happen because the CEO of the Bank of Ireland gave away the game when he said that capitalisation will only lead improving the balance sheet of the banks, no mortgage holders or businesses need apply. Employment is the only way out of the slump.

We’ll soon be out of recession but we’ll be in depression then! By then anincreasing number of families relying on social welfare will be paying prescription charges per item, carbon taxes to heat their way out of fuel poverty, struggling to meet mortgages. against a backdrop of the ending of the embargo on repossessions.
How can you expect people who get less to spend more in an economy? The sub-text to the agenda is emigration, cut jobseekers assistance for young people and that will act to drive young people out. The other subtext from FF & the greens is that there is no alternative to cuts and that the rich should keep their heads down and let ordinary people carry the can.
On the way home I must confess I only stopped to fill the tank with petrol At home I saw Eamon Ryan on “Prime Time” tonight. I couldn’t help wonder if he regretted not running in the 2004 presidential election. Surely his chance of the park is now as real as Kenmare Hospital. The Green Party’s endless spin on the green or knowledge economy is running the risk of getting the word knowledge a bad name. The only green jobs created are for green senators counting frogs. That’s why the budget will get through. It won’t revive the economy it’ll knock it out. Once that happens emigration will start. In the end, Craggy Island may well seem more populous than John Bull’s other one

Are we all really in this together?

Can you believe it’s nearly a year since Brian Lenihan’s call to patriotic action? Fianna Fail’s instant mantra became “We’re all in this together”. Parotting this were the IBEC’s, the banks and the builders. The sums have been simplified to one of Social Welfare versus Pay versus The Rest must square off against tax revenues. The latest ESRI report says that the public service pay exceeds comparable private sector pay by over 20%. The government has indicated that a 5% pay cut for the public service will be introduced in the 2010 budget.
Public sector pay is being pruned to avoid tax increases. I accept that public sector pay is relatively high but private sector pay for many is at a low base. There’s many in the private sector who benefit from the minimum wage and few in the public sector. To me that is telling.
But before we charge headlong down the road of setting public against private sector lets ask ourselves why is public sector pay pay higher. For a start most public servants are unionised. Secondly and more importantly the key driver for wages in Ireland for me has been the need to get on the property ladder. In Wexford property prices were increasing at 1% per month about 3 years. There’s nothing to indicate that this figure was at the time exceptional on a national basis. One colleague who bought a house then still pays €1,300 per month (and will continue for another 27 years!) for a bed Semi D as part of the 100% mortgage scam that the Financial Regulator and the Central Bank turned a blind eye.
It is blatantly obvious that pay increased because people were buying houses irregardless, as to whether they were public or private sector. Buying housing was the national sport and lets be clear about it when some were fed up buying them here, Mick O’Leary provided cheap flights to where houses could be bought for even cheaper. If you think times are bad now, just wait till Ryanair cut flights to where the second or indeed third homes are and then tune in to Liveline!
But lets get back to the average couple who had just one house, and the way prices went it had to be 2 wage earners to afford a house. Most of these people could only afford houses miles from where they worked.
The long commute, the breakfast roll grabbed on the way to work at a service station, the sandwich dropped to the work station and the take away or €10 Tesco meal with the bottle of wine when they arrived home in time to watch “Fair City”. This was their life. Now the wine may be home brewed and the sandwich home made but the mortgage is still to be paid and to make matters worse interest rates will soon rise again. The fear of loosing the house through re-possession and unemployment strikes terror into the heart of many home owners.
But there’s more. Much to my surprise it seems that the real inequity according to the ESRI is at the bottom end of the pay scale. The real people to be cut are the lower grades of clerical staff like the CPSU members who went on strike earlier this year. One striker told me that she worked advising on social welfare entitlements and that some of her clients would get more than her. What now will she make of this threat to her income?
We’e not all in this together, some of us are more in it than others, and some of us are not in it all. 3 years ago we could boast 33,000 actual millionaires in this country. That didn’t include those so called ethical businessmen who sent their wives away to live abroad so that they could collect a rebate on a deal. Eamon Gilmore said the right thing today when he said that public sector pay should not be cut. The private sector relies on the public sector’s spending, would reducing spending power in the economy be in the interest of the private sector? I doubt it