Up to 2,000 jobs going at Birmingham City Council

C_Mababejive

If they can loose 2000 jobs just like that then they must be top heavy anyway. Its about time some of these LAs learned to be as lean as many private sector employers. Living off the fat of council tax payers has to stop.

JasonLVC

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1242041/Council-pays-electrician-124-000-year-thanks-bonuses-bonanza.html

I know its a DM story but the article remains fairly accurate.

Also

http://www.birminghampost.net/news/newsaggregator//tm_headline=former-birmingham-city-council-boss-accused-of-fireproofing-bonuses%26method=full%26objectid=25192207%26siteid=65233-name_page.html

Whereby a single status pay deal seems to be not quite as 'single status' as workers were led to believe.

Also

http://www.birminghampost.net/news/politics-news/2009/09/14/birmingham-council-s-8k-pay-rise-for-binmen-likely-to-be-challenged-65233-24679555/

Where binmen suddenly got another £8k a year for no material changes.

and finally

http://www.birminghammail.net/news/top-stories/2009/11/12/bin-men-s-bonuses-revealed-at-tribunal-97319-25150853/

Nothing against binmen per se, but a worrying lack of 'value for money' I think. Birmingham is a Tory/Lib-Dem alliance.

wolvoman

Spartacus_Mills wrote: »

While public sector jobs jumped 13,000 over the latest quarter to a record of just over six million, private sector jobs fell sharply by 212,000 to 22.8m.
And while private sector workers on an average salary of £460 a week got an average pay rise of just £4 a week - before they pay a penny in tax or National Insurance - their public sector counterparts saw much bigger rises on already larger salaries. On their average salary of £522 a week, their generous pay rise is worth nearly £15 a week.

Seriously, how is this even possible?
Every public sector worker that comes on here goes on and on about how their department has been cut and they are losing x number of staff this year.
If this is so true, how the hell is the public sector increasing by 13,000 in just 3 months, IN A RECESSION?

The scum in power are just trying to buy votes.
I doubt many of those extra 13,000 will vote anything other than Labour - their 'paymasters'.

worldtraveller

wolvoman wrote: »

Seriously, how is this even possible?
Every public sector worker that comes on here goes on and on about how their department has been cut and they are losing x number of staff this year.
If this is so true, how the hell is the public sector increasing by 13,000 in just 3 months, IN A RECESSION?

The scum in power are just trying to buy votes.
I doubt many of those extra 13,000 will vote anything other than Labour - their 'paymasters'.

It's not new, of course! What do you think has "bought" much of Nu-Labour support for the past 12 years? It's in large part the huge growth in public sector jobs. Apart from cheap credit, what do you think has been one of the major reasons for the growth in property prices? The growth in the public sector, of course! The Government have been buying votes for year's! It's not new!

However, as a definite result, IMHO this will be one of the major reasons for the next fall in property prices in late 2010-2012, as the Government will have to slash public spending and public sector jobs.

Kohoutek

worldtraveller wrote: »

It's not new, of course! What do you think has "bought" much of Nu-Labour support for the past 12 years? It's in large part the huge growth in public sector jobs.

Margin in popular vote between Labour and Conservative, 2005 election: 789,524

New public sector jobs since Labour came to power: 900,000

macaque_2

Cleaver wrote: »

I like this utopian view. Pretty much every private company I've worked for has had dead wood not doing a lot and they haven't been sacked.

Quite right but in the private sector the dead wood stays dead. In the public sector, dead wood keeps on growing more dead branches.

mystic_trev

Speaking to a partner at a well-known estate agents out in the shires put the issue squarely into perspective; not a single first time buyer has been through their doors since last November.

Now estate agents often see a lull in all activity over Christmas, but no first time buyers for nearly three months is a first in the history of this company that has been trading since the 1950s.

As detrimental as this phenomenon is to the housing market, it is not completely unexpected considering the circumstances.
In the two years or so since residential values collapsed and the credit market disappeared, it has become virtually impossible to get a mortgage on any kind of manageable terms.

The interest rate may be 0.5 per cent but good luck finding a sensible mortgage without being able to put down at least 25 per cent of the property’s value in cash.

According to this estate agent, the problem is not just with first time buyers either – the biggest issue for them is the lack of second time buyers. For all those aspiring homeowners saving furiously to eventually be able to cut the apron strings, there are as many homeowners again who bought in the past five years and now have no equity in their properties to help them make the next step up the ladder.

http://www.birminghampost.net/birmingham-business/business-comment/more-business-comment/2010/02/11/alun-thorne-not-a-first-time-for-everybody-in-house-buying-65233-25815720/

shockingmoment

From a couple of years, but doesn't paint a good picture of Birmingham :
A council today refused to comment on reports that one of its workers is being paid an annual wage of £91,000 despite having been off sick for a year.
The Birmingham Post reported that leaked wage sheets show that Ian Smith still receives a basic salary of £71,000 and bonuses totalling £21,000 from Birmingham City Council even though he was absent with illness for most of 2005/6.


http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/news/article-23372847-council-worker-paid-91000-to-fix-the-lights.do

For fixing the lights.......

Our local council is no better btw.

Andy_L

wolvoman wrote: »

Seriously, how is this even possible?

2 main reasons:

Many bits of the public sector are in multi-year pay deals agreed when the economic climate was very different.

The average public sector worker is better qualified than the average private sector worker eg lots of highly paid Doctors but, as a result of privitisation, very few minimum wage workers to drag the average down

Old_Slaphead

Andy_L wrote: »

The average public sector worker is better qualified than the average private sector worker

Do you have any statistical evidence for that statement or is it just an empirical view?