The campaign by gardaí for pay rises has focused attention on their earnings and how their terms and conditions compare with members of other forces.

Garda trainees receive an allowance of €184 per week for their first 32 weeks. They are attested at this stage and move on to the first point of the Garda incremental pay scale of €23,750 per annum. The scale rises to €42,138 per annum after eight years with two further increments after 13 and 19 years when gardaí reach the maximum point of €45,793. They are also eligible for allowances and overtime.

Police Service of Northern Ireland trainees start on a salary of £19,383, rising to £22,668 when they become probationer constables. Their seven-year incremental pay scale rises to £37,626.

FRANCE

The base monthly salary in France for a qualified “gardien de la paix” – a policeman on the beat who has been through police training and completed a one-year internship in a commissariat – is €1,924.

French police have been banned from striking since the 1960s. However, on October 10th last, three days after four policemen were attacked in their car in a banlieue of Paris with a molotov cocktail, the Alliance police union appealed for “minimum service” in all police commissariats. It urged police officers not to take any initiatives and not to intervene unless called upon. French police have staged demonstrations almost daily in recent weeks and many have responded to the “minimum service” appeal.

Like all workplaces in France, the police are subject to the system of “Comités d’Hygiène et de Sécurité et des Conditions de Travail” (CHSCTs). These committees can convene within a commissariat on local, regional or national level and bring together representatives of employees and the government. They make reports and recommendations, which may find their way into legislation or the government budget.

Police have the same status as all French civil servants. Their pay and benefits are determined in the national budget. LM

SPAIN

Spain has several police forces, including the nationwide policía nacional, municipal and regional police services and also the mainly rural, paramilitary Civil Guard.

Pay for members of the national police starts at about € 1,500 per month after tax, rising to €2,800 for senior officers. Salaries are broken down into a basic sum, worth just over €700 per month for the lowest rank, with the rest made up of complementary payments based on variables such as where in Spain one is deployed and the danger a posting might pose.

Members of the Civil Guard earn a similar amount to national police.

All branches of the Spanish police and Civil Guard are prevented by law from going on strike. However, some forces have staged work-to-rule strikes, doing their duties in a restricted way. Municipal police in the town of Getafe, near Madrid, carried out such an action in 2015, turning out for work but holding back, for example, on the issuing of traffic fines.

The Civil Guard has staged a number of demonstrations in recent years to protest against changes in their working conditions, such as the hours they are required to work, and to call for improved cooperation with the national police force. GH

ITALY

Italian police, in common with many of their colleagues in the Italian public service, are amongst the lowest paid in Europe. An Italian “carabiniere” with 10 to 15 years service earns a basic €1,400 per month after tax, a salary which he or she may be able to push up to €1,600 thanks to night shifts, overtime and special events.

Pay and conditions are decided by a national agreement between the various police forces and their employer, the Ministry of the Interior.

Despite the relatively low level of pay, however, no less than 127,804 people applied when the Polizia di Stato last December advertised 320 jobs for trainee deputy inspectors. In times of austerity and high unemployment in Italy, the policeman’s job is at least regular and guaranteed, even if badly paid.

Under the terms of 1981 legislation it is illegal for the security forces to go on strike. Constitutionally, this ban is highly debatable but, thus far, it has been respected by the various police forces: forestry, finance, traffic, municipal and carabinieri.

Faced with the far-reaching reform of the various police forces, including the fusion of some forces, proposed by the government, different police have in the last year threatened to go on strike. PA

UKRAINE

For many years it was unclear who had the greater cause for complaint in post-Soviet Ukraine – its police officers or the people they were supposed to protect.

The meagre monthly salary for a rank-and-file member of the militsiya was about €100, and many supplemented it by taking bribes or working with crooks who had access to the kind of cash, weapons and cars that the police could only dream about. “Clean” officers were ostracised by corrupt colleagues, and there was little compensation for those injured or killed trying to fight crime.

The rot spread through all Ukraine’s state institutions – the government, parliament, courts, prosecutors and police – until the public’s patience snapped in the Maidan street protests of winter 2013-14.

Following the example of Georgia after its 2003 Rose Revolution, the pro-EU politicians who took control of Ukraine in February 2014 made police reform a top priority.

With funding from several western states and US training, the discredited militsiya became the politsiya, many new officers were recruited and serving officers were tested before being allowed to keep jobs which now pay a basic wage of about €350 per month.

With an influx of young, better educated and highly motivated recruits, including many women, the old guard is being squeezed out. More than 5,000 existing officers failed the re-testing process, 26 percent of senior officers were sacked and and more than 4,750 officers were recommended for demotion.

Ukraine’s police force has not gone on strike, but resentful officers have held small protests against the reforms. Others are appealing against their dismissal, allegedly in cahoots with corrupt judges who fear the courts will be the next of Ukraine’s grubby institutions to be overhauled. DM