And he has ruled out cuts in spending on health, welfare or public-sector pay.
Big cuts in public-sector pay and allowances have been pushed through in Ireland, Spain and Greece.
Public-sector pay is being cut by 5% and taxes are being cranked up.
ECONOMIST: Chronically weak growth is Portugal��s gravest problem
Firefighters do come quite low down in the public-sector pay league (see chart).
But the clincher is that public-sector pay is high and the quality of public services is among the worst in Europe.
ECONOMIST: A surprising boost in revenues fuels a debate about tax cuts
Lots of states, faced with swelling pension and health-care costs and yawning deficits, are seeking to curb public-sector pay and benefits.
And Mr Reichstul worries that public-sector pay restraint will mean that his best staff are poached by foreign firms in Brazil.
But planned reforms of public spending have yet to bite, and the government has been timid in conceding higher public-sector pay.
Unfortunately, public-sector pay restraint may be a little too arcane, and bust-ups with unions too familiar, to work as reputation-forming decisions.
It wants radical reform of public-sector pay, which at the moment is fixed by Congress without regard to performance or economic conditions.
Fixing public-sector pay centrally is never going to work very well, though.
To boost competitiveness and growth, as well as improve the budget, it must embrace radical tax changes, cuts in public-sector pay and pension reforms.
Only this week, Mr Chirac's government was busy yet again caving in to demands for public-sector pay rises after 600, 000-1m protesters took to the streets.
Maybe the public-sector premium arises from an incentive problem and hence higher public-sector pay can be used as an indicator of poor quality in this sector.
Only in September did it propose a budget squeeze, including a 5% cut in public-sector pay, of the kind that Ireland, Greece and Spain pushed through months ago.
ECONOMIST: The government insists it is neither Greece nor Ireland
With over 5m people, or nearly one in five of the labour force, working for the state, any squeeze on public-sector pay or benefits can draw crowds on to the streets.
In a fine pamphlet published on September 15th, he specified assorted defence projects that might be cut, and was frank about the need to reform public-sector pay and pensions.
In Greece, for instance, the hard-pressed Socialist government of George Papandreou talks up social cohesion as a reason to avoid unduly large public-sector pay cuts in its urgent fiscal retrenchment.
This week's strikes are probably a blip: multi-year pay deals have settled most of the tricky public-sector pay questions and there is scant sign of wage pressures in the private sector.
The Spanish have proved especially feeble, with ministers twice proposing and then swiftly backtracking on reforms, once over a rise in the legal pension age, and once over public-sector pay cuts.
He was particularly prone to quick-fix solutions in economic policy, resorting to regular currency devaluations, expropriations of private firms and inflation-busting public-sector pay rises rather than tackling the economy's underlying structural problems.
Economic growth, a cap on public-sector pay and pensions from 2011, an increase in the employment-insurance tax, plus the usual unspecified efficiency gains and programme postponements are to help Mr Darling shrink the deficit each year as a percentage of GDP.
ECONOMIST: Bashing the rich is bad politics and rotten economics
The long-term, difficult (and so on) decisions that he is touting mostly involve the economy, and specifically the tough line the government has taken with some public-sector unions over pay.
And nothing has been said about wage rises for France's 5m public-sector workers whose pay, under the last government's plans, was due to go up by only 1% this year after being frozen last year.
Given the Wales office has few executive responsibilities - and there has been a public sector pay freeze - how do the staff earn bonuses?
By contrast, only 14 percent of public-sector employees reported that pay discussions were either discouraged or prohibited.
Chancellor George Osborne said in his first Budget speech there would be a two-year public sector pay freeze.
The changes are against a background of pressure on public sector pay - with teachers to receive a 1% increase in 2013-14 and 2014-15.
Scottish Conservative MSP Murdo Fraser said the efficiency savings were necessary, but he said it was vital that public sector pay-offs were not too generous.
BBC: Call for 'value for money' Scottish public sector pay-offs
应用推荐