so, we are all shafted then. public sector workers in poor areas to get pay freeze

[ThatVikRinA22]

here

this is a great idea. NOT.

as a fairly new police officer, i was horrified to read Windsors 2nd review, basically, as a 40 year old woman, i would not have got in to the police service under these new recommendations. The police will lose all their protected rights but still not have the legal right to strike.I am still wading through it - this job is far far tougher than i thought possible, and at the end of most shifts i look back and think "i was in real danger there...." Reading it, it looks like it is stacked against older officers and women, and if you are injured (even while on duty) and on 'light duties' for more than 12 months, they can get rid of you.
Thats before they make the fitness test harder for older officers and increase the retirement age/pensionable age to 60, (but i know i wont be rolling around on the floor with people at 60, or running a fitness test - they will have rid of me long before tha,t i suspect) as it is we have a 2 year pay freeze with then only a 1% increase for the following 2 years, and they want to reduce the starting wage by £4500 while asking that you have a degree to join....it is ludicrous.....this is all while numbers have dropped and police budgets lessoned by at least 20%, in reality i can see since i joined that our numbers are less and it makes the job dangerous - i have been in really precarious situations where i needed back up and there has been none (im thinking of one particular night shift where there was myself and my female colleague being the only available car left in our district when we got called to a burglary in progress in a remote scrap yard with no back up available)....anyway enough of me....

because now, our dear PM has decided that teachers and nurses in poorer areas should have a pay freeze because they live in a poor area and obviously dont need as much to live on for that reason, while teachers in more affluent areas should be on more money.

i wish i could say i was incredulous. sadly im not.

I agree with Noddy - if anything, the reverse needs to happen.

i am a public sector professional working in an essential key worker type job, married to someone who works for one of the emergency services.

we left London 3 years ago in order to be able to live in an appropriate sized property for our family. we moved 200 miles north to a cheaper area. we now have the wild luxury of paying a large mortgage for a dilapidated 2.5 bed terrace house in a very unfashionable part of town.

while property prices are insane in London and parts of the south-east, only the London-centric still believe that property is "affordable" in the rest of country. many people in this "cheaper" city cannot get on to the property ladder at al, nor can they afford to rent a family sized house.

London has struggled to retain its key workers for many years, with consequences for service provision. will we now see cities all over the country facing the same problem?

We may well see a fluid job situation where there is a clear division between the mobile and childless who can pick and choose more easily and don't need reasonable adjustments about holidays and shiftwork to fit in dependents too.
So the dynamics of actually getting a job may change.

This is a fantastic idea, and one which Labour will not be able to mount any opposition to whatsoever, given that one of their only policies so far is to regionalise benefit caps. I am proud to say that I saw the possibility for this months ago, and it now seems to be coming to fruition:

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/politics/1394085-Labour-concedes-abject-defeat-on-regional-benefits-public-sector-pay

You're self-delusional LFN ( but that isn't news just in, is it? Iam sure you have been told of this before). Attacks on national pay-scales have been on the Tory agenda for years and years. You've just added ' misplaced grandiose ego' to your other unpleasant traits. With respect.

Of course the debate about individual vs regional vs national pay bargaining isn't new. The point is that it is Labour that have made it politically feasible for the coalition to end this anachronism.

In some sectors (teaching) there is already a london weighting to address the issue of affordability. This is a stealth pay cut. Oh well, maybe DP and I will one day earn over 150K and get a nice tax cut.

I wonder where the principles of Agenda for Change come in then, as a major point of the pay reform for the NHS was "Equal pay for equal jobs".

Hmmm, comparable private sector job in my field is £15,000 above my current salary. I'm going to be rich, rich I tell you

How will this work if you live in an expensive area of The North say, Harrogate or those mansiony parts of Cheshire?

Also, what are the using as a comparable job in the private sector? Eg job centre staff, compare to recruitment consultants? Doctors though must be loving it, a private pay rate for them...

if not read all the replies as just off out - but i just want to point out that i am fitness tested repeatedly throughout probation - i am not unfit - i run 3 or 4 times a week, but my upper body strength isnt great and for me to maintain it i have to hit the gym hard, and that again is done in my own time and costs me £48 a month....

im not against fitness testing throughout service but i think this is going to get older bobbies out of a job - particularly women - i aim to go into a more 'arm stroking' roll - either work in child abuse/protection, domestic violence or rape - i am good at thses rolls - while i am on front line test me - fine - but when i leave front line to do more a position that involves talking to people more than fighting with them - then why? i am not going to be able to run the bleep test at 60 - thats the new proposed age for police getting a pension /retiring - all this is going to do is push older women out of the job, and i believe i would be an asset in these rolls - but i know i wont pass the bleep test as the age of 60!

gonna read all replies later....

No wonder they passed legislation for rubber bullets if this doesn't add to the tension god knows what will

I though all police officers were paid the same, with increments by time served. So you could move to a post requiring less physical fitness idc; an as you cannot be made redundant, they would have to fin something for you, or give you a medical pension. It's currently a much better deal than that on offer for many.

Wasn't the T&C last review in 1978? It probably is in need of updating.

The principle of differing regional pay scales has been around for decades (London weighting etc). Obviously, his administration has shown that it us administratively incompetent, so I think wariness is the right reaction for how they will do it. But the principle is OK and well established - so the equally hard-working nurse can eg afford similar housing wherever s/he works. And deals with the more expensive "pockets" within a region as those in receipt of London weighting already must do (eg looking to suburbs not Belgravia).

Well a lot of public sector workers where I live can't afford any housing so lets see them up the salaries here so that they can.

I live in an area which now has NHS as the biggest employer so add council staff to that and it could be a lot of money cut from the area. Unless of course we can still have that money & use it to increase staffing levels...

the other thing to factor into this is that the government want to move more civil servants out of London - and ultimately cut as many civil service posts as possible.
if they manage to pass these "regional" pay deals then they will be saving twice over as they will also be saving on the london weighting

of course you might want to ponder, quite apart from all the moral and logical arguments against this proposal which have been articulated so well already on this thread, how much it will cost to administer a regionalised salary scheme - because the government is so good in getting computer systems that actually work and get the sums right for a decent price

and i say that as a f*ed private sector worker - no pension, no pay rise in years.

also agree that if labour was in power things would not be any different.

I agree with this measure because in some areas of the UK it is clear that working for the public sector is a far better deal than the private sector and hence the private sector cannot compete and gets squeezed out.

I heard that in the Northwest of England they get a huge number of applications for teaching jobs because the cost of living is far lower. In other parts of the UK, especially London, they get far far fewer applicants because the cost of living is so high.

Clearly, rates of pay have to vary across the country to accomodate local costs of living. There has been a London Weighting for years in civil srvice pay so why not a pay differential in other parts of the Uk to take account of local economic conditions?

The unions hate it because it breaks national pay bargaining - which has been a nonsense for years. Rates of pay vary across the country for all private sector jobs so why not the public sector?

That said, I can tell you now that senior civil servants and public sector employees wil be unaffected by this and will stay on 'national payscale as they move around between jobs in different regions.

Now THAT is where the unfairness will happen. This will only affect lower paid workers - not senior managers.

Great, let's punish police officers, nurses and teachers for having the gall to live outside London and the Home Counties. No doubt in Labour-voting areas, the scum. How dare people who have trained for their jobs, have worked for qualifications, are doing exactly the same work as someone in London and do something actually useful to society expect a fair day's pay.

I think senior civil servants' pay is outside of the rest of the civil servants pay discussions Beta, you're right.

However why is the answer to the private sector poor pay deals to pay everyone less? Yes we're in an age of austerity but when that's over will the government amend pay upwards?

Oh, and let's make it even more unattractive for people to work outside the South East. That's very sensible, given the economy is already biased in favour of London and has been ever since Thatcher. And given the pressure on resources in the South East - housing, land, water, transport, everything. Yeah, we really want to carry on dragging everyone into one corner of the country.

My DH works in the public sector in London and we struggle like many other people, however, cutting ps workers wages in less affluent areas of britain is ridiculous, food, clothing, petrol, utilities is the same throughout the country, a teacher, nurse, police officer has the same qualifications as say one in london, so why should they penalised? We have London weighting as it is.

I just feel that adds to the north/south divide, you should not be penalised for where you live, and I agree with the points made a few posts above most areas have an economic divide, so how would it work? Will mps in less affluent areas be subject to this too?

I'm thick about politics and economics but isn't there already higher pay for jobs in london and the SE because stuff costs more, like housing/property, food, everything basically?

I know when I go into london about once a year it's a fiver for a sandwich and a cuppa, it'd be more like 3 quid here and this is SE.

So surely your money goes less far in London? I mean clearly any sort of pay freeze for PS workers is ridiculous and horrible, because they ALL need to be paid a bloody lot more, but I don't quite get it.

Sorry, just if someone could either explain in really simple terms, or give me a clout round the ears and I'll sleep for the rest of the thread. Up to you!

Things do cost more in London, we are really struggling like so many others, but your right salaries would have to be a damn sight higher to lure people to move To live here. But, I still think its totally unfair to cut peoples wages cos they live in a certain area.

So Jane coming in dribs and drabs here , I guess the government would argue that as we have London weighting that covers the expense, hahahahaha.

Aghh sorry Jane, no so Jane