Oppose the vilification and attacks on public sector pay

The Socialist Party stands against the establishment and media consensus that singles out public sector workers pay and conditions and public sector workers themselves as targets for vilification and continuous attack.

Every cut in public service pay and conditions applied to low and middle earners since the crisis began including the pension levy, the universal social charge, the across the board pay cuts in 2010 have like other cuts and impositions exacerbated the crisis by deflating the economy. We have four years of living proof to back this up.

Further cuts that have been legislated for affecting the trickle of new entrants into the public service including their lower starting salary and inferior pension conditions and every other cut being suggested by government TDs and right wing columnists will further the crisis.

There is an agenda to these attacks and the establishment and media consensus that backs them up. It is a case of divide and rule and of distracting working people outside of the public sector and the unemployed from the real causes of the crisis. I ask you why aren’t the Fine Gael backbenchers more exercised about bond payments?

To them incremental credit and allowances which has been part and parcel of public service pay for decades, surviving previous economic crises is an obscenity warranting the co-authorship of a newspaper article. Yet the €1 billion bond payment by state owned AIB on 1st October and other similar payments which dwarf the ‘savings’ they want to achieve do not merit comment.

The trade union movement leadership needs to come out from hiding and decisively counter this black propaganda