An Phoblacht/Republican News  ·  Thursday November 30 1995

Shutters down at Central Bank

Central Bank analysts are worried. Still smarting from the massive profits gained by currency speculators in 1992 and `93, the bank is determined that the punt won't be taken to the cleaners again. Rather than act against the profiteering speculators or impose much-needed exchange rate controls the bank has taken a unique course of action.

Their solution is to issue a warning to banks not to discuss its interventions in currency markets. Where though does this leave the public who have no say in the bank's operations supposedly on our behalf? The faceless bank is renowned for its ``no comment'' and ``absolutely no comment'' policy. Now we are not to be told even the basics of what goes on behind the tinted windows of the Central Bank headquarters pictured above.

Good news on wages

Between April 1994 and April `95 top ranking chief executives in the 26 Counties took home an average salary of £117,000, a 16% salary hike on the previous 12 months. Bosses of smaller companies also did well, securing a 28% salary rise, average salary in this category £67,100.

These figures do not include bonuses, pension payments and other perks which add at least another 20% to the salary. The increases achieved by company bosses definitely gives ideas to the ordinary worker bees who have spent the last eight years getting wage increases that barely keep in line with inflation. The Programme for Competitiveness and Work, agreed in February 1994, limits wage increases to less than 3%. What chance parity of esteem and equal treatment for all workers in the next round of employer-union trade negotiations?

Executive job requirements

On the issue of executive salaries AP/RN would not want our readers to think that access to these top jobs is a closed shop. There was in the months from July to the end of September a 25% increase in advertisements for executive posts, 1,800 in all. So now you have no excuse. ``On your bike'' as Tory ministers have been heard to rant.

Or not, as Labour Minister for Labour Affairs Eithne FitzGerald might say. Adressing a seminar on unemployment she admitted to those assembled that ``the boom conditions of the last three years did little to touch the lives of the long-term unemployed''.

Giving a TV interview afterwards Fitzgerald said the long-term unemployed had little chance of getting work in the growing multinational computer sector because of their lack of technical training and other stumbling blocks. All is not lost though, they could aspire to work in the ``canteens'' of such companies.

There you have it, the employment visions of the coalition labour minister, almost on a par with her Six-County counterpart Baroness Denton. Denton has attacked yet again the unemployed for not being prepared to travel to employment opportunities. With caring ministers like this what more could you ask for?