The betrayal of a public sector pay freeze

[Ori3]

Yes, we're facing the biggest economic crisis since peacetime. Yes money has to be found. But as a first measure, why instantly freeze the pay of teachers, police, firefighters, council staff and civil servants; key-workers who have risked so much during the pandemic.

These are the people holed up in a room looking after 30+ kids per day, supporting vulnerable people in social care, helping businesses access the furlough scheme, supplying universal credit, dealing with household emergencies, and tackling an increase in demand for urgent care services.

And their reward for helping to keep the show going? The certainty of a pay freeze for the next however many years and a conciliatory pat-on-the-head as added bonus. It's a joke.

And the awful irony of it all is that these are the sectors that protect most vulnerable and disadvantaged in our society, alongside looking after the nation's kids. They're the ones gluing it all together. Shut the schools and you've got a crisis. Stop social care and you've got a crisis. Get rid of the police force = crisis. Oh and firefighters? Who needs them? Council workers? Well all they do is push pieces of paper around and refuse to answer calls?! Get rid of them too.

In the words of Fight Club's Chuck Palahniuk:

“Remember this. The people you're trying to step on, we're everyone you depend on. We're the people who do your laundry and cook your food and serve your dinner. We make your bed. We guard you while you're asleep. We drive the ambulances. We direct your call. We are cooks and taxi drivers and we know everything about you. We process your insurance claims and credit card charges. We control every part of your life.

We are the middle children of history, raised by television to believe that someday we'll be millionaires and movie stars and rock stars, but we won't. And we're just learning this fact. So don't fuck with us.”

@GordonsAliveAndEatsPies

I don't think you read my comment right. I was calling bullshit on the mps who claim they'll be giving their extra pay to charity. Some of them might, but I'd imagine it will be a very small minority that do it, as I say considering that the majority of mps voted to not have fsm extended.

I didn’t need Sunak to point out to me that many public sector institutions have been unable to adapt and deliver over this period.

They are paid to do a job, and I think it’s been a woeful performance. Yet here we are people demanding a pay rise with no discernible increase in performance, in fact quite the opposite

You’d be laughed out of the room in the private sector asking for a pay rise just cos

@hamstersarse stop being obtuse, you can't say the public sector as a whole hasn't delivered, it's ignorant and ill informed. British Gas wouldnt service my boiler despite taking my money, Furniture Village wouldn't deliver my furniture despite taking my money and other companies delivering furniture, my solicitor didn't bring their staff back into the office when they could to take advantage of furloughing despite being inundated with work, but I would never be so ignorant to say the private sector as a whole hasn't delivered to its ability. You don't know every corner of the public sector, so stop presuming you do, by all means highlight the areas that have disappointed you, but that is not a reflection of a plethora of organisations as a whole.

Public sector workers have secure jobs and pensions during the worst economic crisis in our lifetimes. They are the lucky ones

Tell that to my 5 friends who've been made redundant from their public sector jobs in the last 3 years.

@CakeRequired I read your comment perfectly right.

I made no comment about MPs giving their rises to charity or FSM's (which you didn't actually raise in the post I was referring to as you well know). I was merely fact checking the one thing you did focus on in the post, that "they give themselves decent pay rises". I was fact checking, nothing more.

There's no such thing as secure eomployment in the public sector anymore. We get rounds of redundancy same as private companies.

Councils, for example, have had more financial responsibilities dropped on them in the last few years, without any corresponding increase in funding made available to them, or any way of raising funds, because the required rise in council tax would cause an outcry.

This includes increases in the numbers of vulnerable people who need care, etc.

Even before Covid, councils were running out of funds.

You might not see it immediately, but watch for the wave of redundancies in the public sector.

Abolish the public sector now. We don’t need you sucking money out of the economy. Flippin nurses, doctors and teachers! What a waste of space! I think all schools should close now so I can get back to educating my kids while working, and as for those paramedics saving peoples lives, who needs them and their pensions?

I don’t think anyone can complain about no pay rises when there is widespread unemployment, job cuts and pay cuts. You’re lucky to have a job. The country is in massive debt, we can’t afford pay rises.

And I'm tired of the people.saying public service workers pay tax too - their incomes come from the tax in the first place, in many ways it's just an inefficient way of cycling money around inside the public system.

I'm tired of private companies who spend their time sucking resources from the public sector via very lucrative contracts. Vast amounts of the private sector wouldn't exist but for the public sector. Civil servants are paid far less than their equivalents in the private sector. My DH, a very experienced chartered surveyor, left for a private company and more than doubled his salary.

Even before Covid, councils were running out of funds.

Northamptonshire and Croydon have gone bust.

Many private sector firms have had salary cuts and mass redundancies

Furlough cost billions

So a pay freeze whilst shit is kind of understandable

@VinylDetective

Even before Covid, councils were running out of funds.

Northamptonshire and Croydon have gone bust.

Was just about to post the same, and the number of councils who say they won’t be able to deliver a balanced budget next year should worry everyone. What do you drop? Refuse collection? Recycling? Highway repairs? Leisure facilities (largely contracted out already but with subsidies)? Childcare sufficiency? Homelessness prevention/relief? Early intervention for vulnerable families? Those of us who were working in local government in 2010 thought it was bad then but the next few years are going to be worse in terms of delivering services and that affects everybody.

[quote baroqueandblue]@notheragain41

Spot on. People aren't just lazy thinkers, they're yellow bellies too. Oh look dear, it's that nice Mr Sunak on the telly box again [/quote]
That’s incredibly patronising. Just because people disagree with you doesn’t mean they don’t understand

@Birdzandbees. Not sure how you work out I am being ridiculous. It is self evident that the economy is weak. The result is we will all need to economise and that includes public sector staff. Granting large rises right now would simply not be sensible. Using industrial power to disrupt railways and other public services to try and strong arm a pay rise is going to go down very badly I would suggest.

@Racoonworld

I don’t think anyone can complain about no pay rises when there is widespread unemployment, job cuts and pay cuts. You’re lucky to have a job. The country is in massive debt, we can’t afford pay rises.

I know people in the private sector who have done well, got payrises, businesses have done well. Not all private sector industries have done badly. Hospitality, Travel, Beauty, Retail and Leisure have been obliterated yes, but many industries were key services/supply chain and carried on throughout lockdown. The idea that the entire private sector has suffered is a myth.

The next few years are going to be hard.... I'm not looking forward to it, I don't think anyone who isn't mega rich is (I'm thinking Jeff Bezos rich).

I don't think its going to help if the public sector starts being treated as being a special case. Everyone is going to suffer unfortunately and there a should be no exemptions if we are going to have any hope of helping the most vulnerable survivee.

The argument that is always used is that public workers are nurses and teachers and such like. Well they aren't all, an awful lot are paper pushers. For context I am a foster carer, a valuable and worthwhile job as I think anyone would agree. I am classed as self employed, as are all foster carers and adult care workers, so we don't need to be paid a pension, holiday pay, sick pay or overtime. I have been a foster carer for 17 years and have realistically not had a single pay rise in all that time.

Public sector workers are not automatically front line workers and front line workers and not necessarily covered by public sector benefits.

The next few years are going to be hard enough and I don't see how an 'us and them' mentality is going to help.

As a nurse of 30 years I'm quite happy to forego any pay rise during these testing times.
But it riles me that I have to do this and my teen DC have their education screwed, mostly to protect the likes of my wealthy PIL into their thirtieth year of retirement with their triple locked pension.
When will this be addressed? Shouldn't we all be making sacrifices?

I'm public sector. We don't need a payrise. We have been privileged to be in secure jobs, with furlough not possible, so none of us have lost a penny in income this year.

That is bullshit.

I know plenty of public sector workers (I am one so these are my colleagues) who have had to unpaid leave due to being unable to do their jobs due caring responsibilities, who have had to take statutory sick pay due to shielding (not all public sector workers get good sick pay) and who are at risk of redundancy in the coming year due public sector cuts.

It's absolute nonsense to say that the public sector contributes nothing to the economy. What contributes to "the economy" is people carrying out valuable activities. Whether the goods/services they provide are paid for from consumers to firms to workers, or from consumers to government to workers is irrelevant for their contribution to "the economy". There just happen to be good economic reasons (read a basic economics textbook) why some goods and services are better provided by the public sector than privately. Private army anyone? Or police force? Or legal system? Or all roads? Just because these things are provided via taxation doesn't mean they don't contribute to the economy. Would the economy instantly shrink or grow because company/sector was taken into or out of public ownership? No of course not. You could have an entirely public economy if you wanted (that's communism). It's still an economy as long as it produces goods and services that people want!!

I wouldn’t claim to know a great deal about economics, but isn’t a lot of GDP growth due to whether or not we have a trade deficit i.e. the private sector increasing the goods and services provided to other countries. In Communist countries there are public sector products exported to foreign countries, but I don’t think that is the case for the U.K.? Maybe BBC selling tv shows abroad?

Who do you think pays the wages of the private sector?? All those poor hard working public sector workers who pay money to private companies. And yes I know private sector workers pay money to companies too. But that doesn't count because it is just recycling money around the private sector. The private sector paying itself. It doesn't actually grow the economy!

People buying products grows the economy because they can decide not to buy them and then the economy shrinks. Is that not how it works?

I wouldn’t claim to know a great deal about economics, but isn’t a lot of GDP growth due to whether or not we have a trade deficit i.e. the private sector increasing the goods and services provided to other countries. In Communist countries there are public sector products exported to foreign countries, but I don’t think that is the case for the U.K.? Maybe BBC selling tv shows abroad?

You can grow GDP with or without a trade deficit/surplus. GDP basically equals Consumption + Investment + Government spending + Exports - Imports. Yes, government spending is in there! It wouldn't be very efficient for an economy to grow without trade, but it's perfectly possible. Yes I'm sure the private sector exports more than the public sector, but that is just to do with the type of goods that it makes economic sense to provide through public funding.

I knew that the public sector was part of GDP, but I thought most change to GDP was due to foreign trade. Have I got that wrong?

I normally RTFT but I got to “teachers not working for six months” and stopped. No point talking to ignorant people.