Passport Office Dummies

from seanie in doheny & nesbitts;
It’s the battle of the small people. Or is it? The unions, through the likes of Blair Horan of CPSU (salary €120,000) maintain that the current wave of action is in support of lower paid workers in the public (civil) service. My eye. The people who are actually fighting the cuts are, apparently, those self-same lower paid workers. Withdrawal of counter service, no phone answering, not using your mobile, are all weapons in the current war. How many managers, middle, senior and uber-senior managers actually man the counters in social welfare offices? Take a guess. You are right. The doorman at the passport office – what do you think his salary is?


Union leaders have taken no cuts. Blair Horan has been asked on many occasion what was the goal of the action to row back the pay cuts. He will not answer directly, but refers to ‘ongoing discussions’. I wonder what his real agenda is.

It’s not just the union heads and union middle management (who have their own battle with falling members and falling union dues) who are using the low paid for their own ends.

If low paid workers get any rise it follows as night follows day that relativities will be the next hurdle. How many middle managers would countenance overseeing staff who earn almost the same as them? Senior civil servants have already managed to have their putative cuts reversed. As far as they are concerned it’s the lower orders sorting themselves out.

Needless to say the government is quite happy to have all these idiots fighting among themselves.

And, as usual, the common man is the loser. And always will be.