Publlic sector pay – who pays?
On Monday November 8th, I was listening to RTE’s “Drive Time” show, where a list of the various benefits to which people in the public services were entitled was broadcast. During a break the presenter read out some text messages. One was from a social welfare employee called Kay. She expressed her displeasure at facing a pay cut, and felt that resources should be given to her department, especially in the area of countering that great evil Social Welfare Fraud. “Kay” was perturbed about the way in which many claims for the dole were being fast-tracked. To her mind, this was allowing no end of fraudulent claims to get through. (Listening between the lines “Kay” was probably irate at payments to “fuckingforeigners”, “black bastars”” and other children of a lesser god.) She ended by describing the injustice of having to take a pay cut while giving out money to people who don’t deserve it.
Does “Kay” not read the papers or listen to the news? We are living through an economic slump. Businesses and factories are closing on a daily basis, throwing thousands of people onto the dole. These people have worked in the private sector, and have had to face the ups and downs of the free enterprise system, unlike “Kay” and her colleagues in the public service, with their lifetime-guaranteed jobs. In short the days of the lad doing a nixer with the labour are gone. There are no jobs, not even part time. The same is true in Northern Ireland and the UK. I image that “Kay” is “no chicken”; she is obviously stuck in a 1980s time-warp dominated by Thatcherite-Tebbittite notions of the “work shy” who should “get on their bike” In fact, here ideas are motivated by prejudice; pity any poor bastard whose payments have to be processed by such a person. Most of those who find themselves unemployed need money in a hurry, to pay the bills. They may have families to support. It is bad enough that they lose their jobs without having to face needless penury because the department of Social Welfare can’t organise payments quickly. If it were left to them they mightn’t get any payments for at least a year, and even then they would lose the information,
The department of Social Welfare is one of the biggest spending parts of government, but perhaps uniquely is spends such a large proportion of its budget on trying to find excuses for clawing back the money it has already spent. It does this in pursuit of supposedly fraudulent recipients. No other department as far as I know, goes to such lengths to uncover fraud, even though the amounts are much larger. But then the main reason is that people who defraud say the department of the Environment are not poor people. Indeed they are usually very much a part of the establishment, at both local and national level. That’s how they’re able to get away with it.
“Kay” is a very sad specimen of humanity, though my experience with the department of Social Welfare leads me to believe she is far from unique. Now if the government really wanted to do something about the public finances or curb public spending, they should, at the very least, shear “Kay”’s pay and allowance. They ought really to sack her and her ilk, but this government, made up of crooked cowards, hasn’t the balls to do that. If they were feeling generous they could send her on a long course of counselling that might help her deal with her paranoia and the clear issues she obviously entertains about her fellow human beings.
But I think “Kay” should be applauded for her honesty. She has shown that all the hipe from her department about providing a service, and looking humanely on benefit recipients as clients worthy of common respect, is nothing but spin. Benefit recipients are still all “on the make” until such time as the department of Social Welfare’s inspectorate declares otherwise. Such people are “living it up” at public expense, though I think they’d have to pursue multiple claims to come close to the pay and allowances of even the most junior clerical officer.
Minister Hanafin must take responsibility for the snarling attitude of her employees, which seems to be so general that it must but
Two-faced
the result of training. It’s bad enough being poor, without having to put up with the prejudice of pen-pushers.
