Public sector faces pay cuts, says Alistair Darling

[mateykatie]

ALISTAIR DARLING, the chancellor, today warns public sector workers they need to follow the example of the private sector and accept wage cuts if they want to hang on to their jobs.

Signalling an assault on public sector pay and bonuses, starting with the highest-paid employees, Darling said it was time for a change of culture.

?What is being paid has sometimes lost the relationship it ought to have with what someone actually does. Once that happens, it?s not only unfair, it?s actually grossly inefficient,? he said in an interview with The Sunday Times.

He cited the example of private sector firms, two-thirds of which are planning wage freezes or cuts this year as an alternative to redundancies.

www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/politics/article6999958.ece

I wish Alistair Darling was PM instead of Brown. He seems to be one of the few remaining Labour politicians who is on rare occasions honest, instead of spouting the Brown/Balls "Labour investment versus Tory cuts" lies.

EssenceOfJack that was a better way to put it than i did!

Choufleur so far, our management has spent half a mill on consultants that told them to sack a quarter of the (lower wage end) workforce

yeah, funny how there's always enough money to pay the consultants an inflated price, isn't it?

I once had the consultants in I worked for a (private sector company). They did a big presentation teaching us to suck eggs and had the cheek to say 'have you ever thought about doing X', X being a department that had been shut down six months previously with resulting job losses!

I wouldn't have paid them myself, if they can't spend five minutes on the client's website checking out what the client actually does they don't deserve a penny.

I think the public sector management seem to believe that consultants are always better than their existing staff. A while back, we had to work with some consultants who were brought in for 'expertise and knowledge transfer'. They were then trained (at our expense) in the area they were supposed to be experts in, and paid loads more than us. How can anyone think that is good business sense? I know where i think the spending cuts should be...

It would make a really refreshing change if, just occasionally, public sector senior management could take some of the pain instead of the people they manage. I too have suffered hugely in the public sector from job evaluation exercises - it's always the same, the people that do the real work go down, the management with their oh so difficult jobs go up. It really pees me off. I'd really like to see them lead by example, just for once. If they all took, I dunno, a 5% pay cut, that would make quite a difference I reckon and be much much fairer. Pigs might fly though.

Consultants are almost universally crap.

Unfair stereotyping, of course, but most management consultants are spotty graduates fresh from university, who do 2 years BSing, pretending to know things about stuff they in fact know nothing about.

After 2 or 3 years they tend to go off to do an MBA, manage to pick up even more idiot buzzwords, and then usually wallow in a meaningless mid-management career.

It is different with real sector experts who have worked in one narrow area for decades. They are often worth their weight in gold. But they are the exception.

Of course, one reason why the public sector often makes use of consultants is because they have already cut or frozen the posts that used to do that work. Money for consultants comes out of a different budget.

As a public sector worker I am happy ( well not happy but would willingly do so) accept a pay cut. I am a teacher earning and think I am paid well. I would not expect public sectors at the bottom of the pay scale to have to take the hit though.

I'm in maternity and if I am handed a frank paycut I will leave. I realise that every below inflation pay rise amounts to the same, but I am almost certain I couldn't bear an actual pay cut. So insulting when you are flogging yourself trying to provide good safe care from a used fairy liquid bottle and some double sided sticky tape.

I hear Australia has a nice climate.......

I don't think any party is advocating a real terms pay cut across large swathes of the public sector (other than for management and high pay employees).

I think the Tories have said that there will be a 1 year pay freeze except for all those under £19000.

The Lib Dems have said they will limit pay rises to a maximum of £400 or so (not a percentage) for everyone in the public sector.

Labour say different things every day, and also depending on who you ask - Gordon Brown and Ed Balls say a totally different thing to Alistair Darling - but assuming the Chancellor is right, his position is set out in the Times article as quoted above.

I am working from memory here - can't be bothered to trawl through websites - so the figures, in particular, might be wrong. But I think that is the broad picture.

Sorry - cancel the 'real terms' in my post there.

Every party is advocating real terms pay cuts for large parts of the public sector.

In fact, I meant exactly the opposite of "real terms"! I've forgotten what the technical name for that is.

It isn't often I agree with a tory policy but I do that one, although I may raise the threshold to 25K. So it will only affect those with abover average incomes.

It would be interesting to see if any public sector workers agree with pay cuts. It is unfair to victimise one group of people. Why not an old fashioned income tax rise, then at least those who can pay would pay.

My husband is a well paid computer programmer and as a family we would be hit harder by a general tax rise.

People who have to live on low incomes would just get more tax credits, which would cancel out the affect the pay cut.

Reallytired: well I won't. The areas I work in depend on the good will of the work force to function. So for example, madatory updates the trust insist you have, updates in training to comply with their insurance etc are very often done in our own time. They ought to be done on work time.

Staff work over, through their one 30 min unpaid break in the 12 hour shift, miss the 'gifted' 15 tea break in the morning, stay late after shift ends....it goes on.

If that good will goes the experience of being cared for by health workers will only get worse.

A friend who is in the RoIreland Armed Forces has just taken a pay cut, and one of my Latvian friends who is working at the EU for Latvia has taken two pay cuts in the past year totalling 30%. She also says that Latvia has made many public sector workers redundant, and unemployment there is running at 20%.

The UK Armed Forces are hearing buzzes about redundancy with the minimum pay off and the Govt last year asked for a legal opinion from the EU on their position if they stopped paying public sector pensions.

It would hurt, (dh is public sector) but a pay cut has to be better than losing your job and may be temporary, unlike a rise in tax rates which would stay for ages.

Many private sector employees may be poorly paid in wage terms relative to their private sector cousins, but this is more than compensated for by than their wider package benefits. Pensions for example.

Apart from public sector pensions which are very good in some cases; what do the public sector in general get as benefits? When I was employed by a Local Authority in Local Government finance and then as a teacher, I didn't get much other than the pension, to which I contributed in both cases.

The public sector often get much better holiday provision, which I think of as a benefit.

I would much rather that the got rid of the dead wood in the public sector, than freeze or cut the pay of everyone - which will include those on very low pay who are doing vital jobs. DH had a temporary job at MAFF (as it was then) years ago, and he was at the culture of doing the least work in the most time. He was very unpopular, as he was showing up the job-for-lifers who spent more time having tea breaks.

Many posters seem to make the mistake of lumping all public sector workers together.

Some public sector workers get a very good holiday provision. The civil service has surperb holidays, pensions, maternity and sick benefits.

Local governant and nhs has similar holidays to the private sector, pension provision is pretty good, but the sick leave scheme and maternity is nowhere near as good as the civil service.

"Apart from public sector pensions which are very good in some cases; what do the public sector in general get as benefits? When I was employed by a Local Authority in Local Government finance and then as a teacher, I didn't get much other than the pension, to which I contributed in both cases."

It's not just any pension it's a very good pension, isn't it a final salary one which is getting incredibly rare in the private sector. And if there are shortfalls in the pension pot then then money will be made up by the tax payer.

Also as a rule you seem to get better job security in the public sector. Yes there are plenty of exceptions but, for example, it's incredibly hard to sack a teacher (though the Tories are making noises about making it easier).

See this final salary thing - I think this is a red herring to a lot of women.

The majority of senior midwives I know are desperate to reduce their hours. They would rather a pension that looked at their longer term pay tbh. Full time, 12hr shifts are no joke when you are 58, never mind 38.

I will probably never work full time again. Or so I hope. I will be at the top of my salry banding in one year, and so apart from the pay rises to come - I am pretty much going to be on the same wage until I retire. I would hope to drop hours, or at least nights etc in my latter years at work. So I don't have much love for the final salary scheme tbh.

We have our own theory that the final salary won't go for front line staff in our section of the public sector, as we so greatly need these experienced midiwives in post and working the maximum amount.

The best way of solving the pensions problem is to say that no-one will have their existing pension changed from final salary to defined contribution.

But final salary schemes should be closed to all new employees.

Yes, it creates two classes of perks within the workforce - but no-one would actually lose their existing pension provision.

I think that's what they've done with the Teachers Pension scheme...but I resigned before they changed it.

Poor quality teachers do not survive. Boy, don't you believe it there are vicious competancy procedures to get rid of bad teachers. Teaching is one of the stressful jobs going.

Its why I prefer to be a low paid IT technician.

If there were any jobs in my line in the private sector there is no way I'd be working in the public sector.

And previous posters are right, the difference between civil service perks and the rest of us is astronomical!