Irish Times Attack On Public Sector Workers

In a recent opinion-editorial Gerard Howlin published an attack on public sector workers, arguing that future pay talks should work to undermine working conditions, specifically on the question of remote working.

Howlin claims working from home is inadequately policed and poorly managed. In a great tradition of Irish Times opinion-editorials, no evidence is advanced for these claims. No statistics, no survey data, not even a personal anecdote.

Any office-based civil servant will tell you that adoption and entitlements for working from home is unevenly distributed across and within departments, that home workspaces are increasingly subject to surveillance, that trajectory has been towards return to the office, that entitlements are conditional, not legally binding and inadequate against the caprice of those working at higher grades.

Many of those working at management tiers share Howlin’s views and their reports have little recourse.

Howlin says that a 1% pay increase across Ireland’s 420,000 public sector workers will cost the exchequer €430 million. This sounds like a big number. Out of the exchequer’s total expenditure this will amount to a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of a percentage point; an average of €1000 for 15% of the state’s workforce.

A workforce which includes the most important people in our society; teachers (79,000) and nurses (77,000). People who pay their rent, bills, childcare costs, stimulate the economy like everyone else, but unlike everyone else care for the most vulnerable.

Due to inflation, their real pay has fallen, allowing the government to levy part of the cost of their inaction on public sector workers. Nurses and teachers are on lower pay than many public service roles, and their conditions suffer further because our hospitals and schools are starved for renovations and investment.

Howlin notes that teachers and nurses can’t avail of working from home entitlements, but in focusing on this he is trying to divide them from office-workers within the representative body because they’re a much more sympathetic class than office-workers or opinion-editorial journalists. He is trying to divide representative bodies who know there is strength in unity.

This plays into the sentiment, pushed hard by the media and a political class, that collectively organised and represented public sector workers are parasitic. This is not helped by Sinn Féin’s nickel-and-dime approach to opposition as though they would dare impose price caps were they in power.

Our elected governments and opposition have moved further to the right on issues such as immigration. Recent years have seen the intimidation of library staff across the country, and departmental workers occupying premises close to Leinster House. The only people working in the shadows to nefarious ends are the rich in the tech and property sectors, who have made this country their playground.

Housing is unavailable or unaffordable. Data centres push up the prices of utilities (while they pay less for per unit) and steal our water. Confronting them will be of vital importance as our weather gets more extreme over the decades to come. By keeping workers who don’t need to be in the office we can reduce the commutes of teachers and nurses who can’t afford to live near their workplaces.

We can avoid renting expensive premises from landlords and in-house IT systems rather than being rinsed by consultants like Howlin, who lauds the achievements of his cousin Brendan as a government minister, with no declaration of any conflict of interest. We might ask Howlin what verdict the electorate gave on his relative’s supposed achievements.

One point on which Howlin is right is a lack of strategic vision for what the state should be. Local authorities should be present in people’s lives delivering housing, cheap green energy and affordable childcare. Public sector workers should be articulating this vision, not just in pay talks or press releases, but in their work, building their power through strikes and community engagement. The workers need to be reminded just how important they are.