Do we all have an indisputable right to inflationary or higher annual pay raises? And if we don't get them...

[AtheneNoctua]

is striking a just response?

I'm of course thinking of Thursday's teachers' strike. But, really they are not the only ones to go on stirke because their pay rises are not in line with inflation.

So what do you think?
Do you always get an inflationary pay rise?
What would you do if you didn't?

I'm undecided on whether or not I think the teachers' strike is an appropriate response to their pay rises. I do appreciate they don't make a lot of money. But, then they knew that when they decided to become teachers.

Discuss please...

I'm afraid I don't know if most of them are getting in.

My dh works hard so he always meets his targets - he's dreading preparing for threshold next year as he doens't have time to gather all the evidence (too busy working) but he will get round to it in the next couple of years.

I work for the NHS. I'm in senior management, and I think I get paid fairly well for what is a demanding but satisfying job. I get an spine point increae and a cost of living increase (often pretty small) every year. I also get great benefits, and I do think these are overlooked, especially when I see some of the debates about maternity benefits, flexible working etc. I also hear a lot of these "comparable" professions arguments. It's interesting that you never hear anyone comparing themselves with anyone lower paid. It's always lawyers or people in the city in my experience. Never people who do the really rubbishly paid jobs, or even the average. I have a lot of friends from uni who went into schemes for lawyers, city bankers etc, and what they told me is that most people don't even make it through the training let alone to the high levels of pay that are regularly bandied around. I also wonder why, given that these jobs have always been well paid they didn't chose to go for them in the first place. The benefits of the public sector are wider than the pay in my experience. Flexible working (this may be less in teaching) equal opportunities, pensions and job security shoudl all be factored in. And yes holidays too. Oh, and can you really directly compare a police office and a teacher? Levels of violence may be increasing against many front line workers, but it can't really be similar can it? I have three ex-teachers in my family (and some current teachers amoungst my friends) btw and appreciate good teachers and the commitment they make, but striking isn't exactly a way to make friends and influence people is it? For many people a teacher's salary is aspirational.

flowery the scale goes from M1-M6, yearly increments based on performance targets, then through 'threshold' as laurie said where it is UPS1-3 which is 2 yearly increments based on target so if you meet your targets each year it takes 11 (? maths is not my subject!) years to get to the top which is around £32k I think

Laurie - I say 'most of them' making a very loose assumption that most of them do achieve their performance targets, again it would be interesting to know what percentage of teachers (or other public sector workers) don't achieve the level of performance required to move up a scale point in a year. Not suggesting you would know or find this out for me btw!

I do think that most people watching GMTV or whatever and hearing about 2.5% will assume that that's it though, regardless of how well you perform.

ooh thanks dingdong, this is all very informative!

I think you can compare a police officer with a teacher. It has nothing whatsoever to do with the levels of violence but instead the competencies required to do your job.

The violence argument is daft because the people who suffer the most in the public sector by a loooooooooong way are nurses and health care staff. I sat in on a class last week that said more than 2000 incidences of violence and aggression against nurses alone in one trust (2 hospitals) last year.

I don't think you can compare with lawyers, accountants as they are not generally in the public sector (and when they are they are lower paid than private)

Hence why I'm solely comparing police officers and teachers.

What they are hoping to do over time is to identify a range of competencies and put everyone in the public sector on that scale - will also get rid of pay disparities and differences between the sexes.

thing is though, once you're at the top of mainscale, so your average classroom teacher, who wants to be stuck on £32k for another 20 years with no inflationary increase?

The minimum paid to any teacher in my local (ruralish) primary school is 30K - they have all been there for a while, the ones I've spoken to say they love it, the kids are marvellous and improve each year!

The average salary in these parts is 22k with 30% of households earning under 12k - so teaching CAN BE a GOOD career path in rural areas.

I actually agree that the pay is not bad, depending on where you live/teach but I do think that an inflationary increase is a reasonable expectation

You are very sensible Malory

My SIL is a teacher and spends six weeks lying in her garden sending me gloating emails

absolutely right mp - it's all relative. If we moved to somewhere lovely like Derbyshire we could afford to buy a nice house like his grandad did (as a minor civil servant) in the southeast 50 years ago (which recently sold for £750k) - bog standard 30's semi in Surrey.

nooka, in many ways I agree with you but in some I don't. the trouble I always have with these discussions is the conflation of two things: whether a particular sector deserve this or that pay; and whether they should/are allowed to/are supported in their strike action.

People only support strike action it seems, if they perceive the working group as deserving. People also make this judgement based on how much it affects them: for example they say 'teachers (nurses/firefighters/binmen etc) shouldn't be allowed to strike because it affects me'.

The question is though - if a group DO feel they have a legitimate case for a payrise - what else is there for them to do? Negotiating at national level has often broken down at this point. There is a legal right to take action, they can exercise this if they wish. People in the private sector could do the same, it's just that many fewer of them are unionised.

On the debate flowery is raising - which is very interesting - many of the people at the top of public sector payscales get no annual scale point, and no other alternative to increase their salaries (unlike many private sector jobs): no overtime, no bonus, no performance related pay (mostly), and salaries are driven by political and economic factors determined centrally, not by the market. There are now some incentives but your average teacher does not have the ability to change jobs for a better salary at the top of the scale, or to negotiate a performance increase or bonus. The scale compensates for this I think.

I'm not sure of the full range of benefits in the public sector are that much better than in the private sector. Final\salary pension worth a lot but of course then final salary matters! mat leave, holidays etc not much different imho...

nooka, in many ways I agree with you but in some I don't. the trouble I always have with these discussions is the conflation of two things: whether a particular sector deserve this or that pay; and whether they should/are allowed to/are supported in their strike action.

People only support strike action it seems, if they perceive the working group as deserving. People also make this judgement based on how much it affects them: for example they say 'teachers (nurses/firefighters/binmen etc) shouldn't be allowed to strike because it affects me'.

The question is though - if a group DO feel they have a legitimate case for a payrise - what else is there for them to do? Negotiating at national level has often broken down at this point. There is a legal right to take action, they can exercise this if they wish. People in the private sector could do the same, it's just that many fewer of them are unionised.

On the debate flowery is raising - which is very interesting - many of the people at the top of public sector payscales get no annual scale point, and no other alternative to increase their salaries (unlike many private sector jobs): no overtime, no bonus, no performance related pay (mostly), and salaries are driven by political and economic factors determined centrally, not by the market. There are now some incentives but your average teacher does not have the ability to change jobs for a better salary at the top of the scale, or to negotiate a performance increase or bonus. The scale compensates for this I think.

I'm not sure of the full range of benefits in the public sector are that much better than in the private sector. Final\salary pension worth a lot but of course then final salary matters! mat leave, holidays etc not much different imho...

I agree with nooka - I'm not sure that comparing a teacher with a police inspector is a valid one at all. You couldn't even compare them to a PC who works longer hours, has 20-25 days holiday and faces abuse, violence etc that an average teacher does not.

Malory - that is what I hear from my teacher friends.

I'm not arguing that teachers don't deserve more pay or have the right to strike - I just think they go a bit OTT.

sorry it all went one handed with baby on knee!

I think you can compare a police officer with a teacher. It has nothing whatsoever to do with the levels of violence but instead the competencies required to do your job.

The violence argument is daft because the people who suffer the most in the public sector by a loooooooooong way are nurses and health care staff. I sat in on a class last week that said more than 2000 incidences of violence and aggression against nurses alone in one trust (2 hospitals) last year.

I don't think you can compare with lawyers, accountants as they are not generally in the public sector (and when they are they are lower paid than private)

Hence why I'm solely comparing police officers and teachers.

What they are hoping to do over time is to identify a range of competencies and put everyone in the public sector on that scale - will also get rid of pay disparities and differences between the sexes.

The point about people who have reached the top of their scale is interesting. If you were doing a job in the private sector and had reached the top of the scale and the increases (if any) were below inflation, you'd presumably either try for a promotion, take on more responsibility and negotiate an appropriate raise, look for a similar job with a higher-paying company, or lump it and hope for slightly better increases in the future.
I do know that teachers can do extra stuff to get more points or whatever (ignorance glaring yet again) but obviously scope for doing that in the private sector would be better.

There's a whole debate about salary structures, you get very restrictive, prescribed ones like the ones we're talking about here, and very very loose ones with no structure whatsoever, competely random, and all sorts of variations in between. They all have their good and bad points - openness, clarity, transparency, fairness, sense of security are all pluses with very structured systems but they do have their negative points as well, lack of flexibility being a huge one obviously.

Nurses pay goes up at a below inflation rate, whilst everything else like petrol, water, gas etc goes up massively.
The government do this because they know nurses will not strike, its against out mantra to 'care for patients' who would do it if we werent there.

You cant compare teachers to nurses, they get less abuse, better working hours and more holidays.

dh got more for his christmas bonus than nurses got in their last payrise ...its a disgrace

I know mosschops, I'm a student nurse. I am shocked at the salary, had no idea how bad it was

I definitely don't think you can compare teachers and nurses (was only responding to the point about violence, if it was all on danger to the person then nurses would get the most money) and I also don't think nurses should have to put up with violence.

After the measly bursury they give us the wages seem massive, maybe thats the point. I think police officers get about 17k to train.
Nurses are treated like dirt by the government, dont get me started!!

Laurie, I think you can compare police officers with teachers but in your original example you compared police inspectors with teachers. IME police inspectors will have additional responsibilities that a bog standard PC will not. Far better to compare a NQT with a PC, and I think the teacher will be better off.

Public sector pay is completely outdated. I'm in the public sector and every year I will get an increment (around £1,500) on top of the "cost of living" increase which has been somewhere between 2.5% and 3.2% every year. This means I can usually expect a decent pay rise regardless of how I perform, each year until I reach the top of the scale. Traditionally the scale has been quite long so it can take years to get to the top.

Frankly until pay is linked to performance public sector workers will continue to have this sense of entitlement to pay rises.

Are teachers more deserving than any other public sector worker? Probably not. Trouble is, it will take a brave government to tackle the issue of public sector pay.

Considering that teachers are constantly moaning about the National Curriculum, Ofsted, targets, league tables, disruption in the classroom, etc etc etc ... why are they striking about pay rather than striking about conditions?

Nah llareggub, I compared my dh and his bruv - my dh has management responsibilities (head of department, leads yr 7 and 8, has 14 staff) equivalent in competencies to a police inspector.

The competencies required to do the jobs are exactly the same, the bloody sheet is even the same.

That's the point, when they are (if) made equivalent across all of the public sector (would require a tax increase) then it will be more transparent.

Actually I think the lack of transparency is shocking - the public really don't know much about what we're all paying for

(llareggub I was about to do a thread saying where are you please come here and give your thoughts!)