We are all in this together, well not if you are in a union.

Pennywise

marklv wrote: »

If you want to recruit good staff you to have to pay market wages - a simple economic fact. Pay freezes will lead to the best people leaving

Leaving to where exactly. There's a recession. Firms are cutting back and making redundancies. Public sector staff won't be leaving as there's nowhere to go. EXACTLY the same as the private sector where people are not getting any pay rises, having their hours cut back, some even taking pay cuts - they too would love to leave and go elsewhere but can't because there is nowhere else. For the few who manage to leave for other employment, there'll be redundant private sector staff waiting to fill their shoes.

Really2

marklv wrote: »

I accept that some job losses would be necessary. I would rather see 'dead wood' turfed out than across the board pay freezes/cuts.

And how the left moves to the right.
Who decides who are "deadwood", would you stop the BSF program costing billions each year?

Funny how the private sector go the other way and band together.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/8063719.stm

But the problem is the union will strike at any job losses or cuts. So I take it you do not agree with the strike if there are job losses?

Pennywise

marklv wrote: »

Again, you make no sense and I reject your arguments with contempt. Why should I pay for the failures of the government and some idiotic bankers? And what is nonsense about 'unfair treatment'? Life is unfair from the start - is it fair that someone a few streets away was born into a rich family and will inherit £5M while I won't? Is it fair that some geezer down the road has won the lottery jackpot while I never even get three correct numbers? Life is unfair - and there is nothing you can do to change that. Communism tried to make things fairer and the result was a mess. And it's wrong to say that public sector workers benefitted from the boom years, as in this area you get no bonuses or special perks as in the private sector. An above inflation pay rise is the best you can hope for. So don't lecture people about fairness.

You really havn't a clue have you. The vast majority of private sector workers didn't get "bonuses or special perks" - never had and never will. You really must be deluded if you think that there are the mega bonuses etc for anyone other than the very tiny group in the London merchant banks and the top execs of private companies. The "normal" private sector worker gets nothing beyond his/her basic pay which is less than the average wage for public sector workers.

dopester

Really2 wrote: »

The highest public sector expense is PAYE?

The public sector expense is higher than the revenue streams coming in. It is debt accrued through public sector expense, it can not keep increasing without cuts.
Unless you are suggesting job cuts and wage increase? But that would then still cause strikes as per the article.

Let them strike. Either way the magic money is coming to an end, and there has to be consequences. The Conservatives want to bring in many more new low cost private schools anyway.

This drop in pay will be yet another factor that will contribute to widespread privatisation of government services. Able government employees will come to favour privatisation over the objection of their unions. They will have a clear interest in shrinking the public sector to eliminate services that could be performed by the market.

The smaller the public sector, the easier it would be to bring its pay back up to the market level. Several years of slump and pay cuts will make the public sector community less antagonistic to the one reform that would result in their being paid more.

State schools will largely be privatised. The fall in property prices will remove the financial advantage that contributed to support of state schools by many upper-middle-class families. They have tended to seek out areas of strong state schools and purchase properties in the areas served by such schools. Typically house prices rise to reflect the higher calibre of state schools in the areas where they do perform well. One could move into a community, buy a house, send children through the school, and sell out at a profit.

Such an approach is much less attractive when property prices are falling. Falling property prices make private schools more attractive, especially with falling fees.

With educational results steadily deteriorating, state schools are unlikely to survive the trauma of depression in their current, costly form. Class sizes in state schools which do survive will be increased. Many teachers and school administrators will get the axe.

Really2

dopester wrote: »

Let them strike. Either way the magic money is coming to an end, and there has to be consequences. The Conservatives want to bring in many more new low cost private schools anyway.

The Academies model overall does seem to be working well.
I think they are going to push most secondary's down that route.

TBH I would prefer schools to find external funding and have less centralised controls.

I think more private sector manages would then go to be business managers at schools.
The "business" end of a school should be run like a small business now, not still tied in to centralised contracts etc.

Former_Spice

The_White_Horse wrote: »

every public sector worker should get a 25% pay cut.

then, they should look into seeing who can have a bigger pay cut and sack a large proportion of them.

leeches.

how many public sector workers are having a meeting about having a meeting to discuss the outcome of a meeting following a meeting as we speak.

they will then follow up this with a meeting.

they will never actually get anything done or produce anything.

public sector workers need to realise one thing - they add nothing are just a cost (sometimes a necessary cost) to the money generating sector. their pay should not be comparable.

These idiot town hall cronies on 200k a year would never earn such a figure in the real world. they should be put down to 60k. If they think they will get more in the real world, let them.

hateful horrible "no can do" people with a massive chip on their shoulder and entitlement attitude.

When I suggested to a teacher friend of mine who was moaning about her low pay, that perhaps her salary should be linked to her pupils results, she mocked. When i said that that is how pay is determined in the real world, she soon shut up. Be paid according to results? Never. I don't blame them with all the failure around them - they would probably starve.

How many people would that push below minimum wage? How much of that would be offset be increased tax credits?

In many public sector jobs pay is already a balance between keeping costs to a minimum and being able to recruit and retain staff. We have a public sector customer contact centre here paying 15K, roughly equivalent to the private sectors pay. However, the private sectors ones all have the opportunity to make £5K+ sales commision on top of that. Even in a recession it is already very hard to fill the vacancies, knocking 25% off would make it close to impossible.

marklv

Former_Spice wrote: »

How many people would that push below minimum wage? How much of that would be offset be increased tax credits?

In many public sector jobs pay is already a balance between keeping costs to a minimum and being able to recruit and retain staff. We have a public sector customer contact centre here paying 15K, roughly equivalent to the private sectors pay. However, the private sectors ones all have the opportunity to make £5K+ sales commision on top of that. Even in a recession it is already very hard to fill the vacancies, knocking 25% off would make it close to impossible.

Don't waste your time arguing with this troll.

marklv

Pennywise wrote: »

You really havn't a clue have you. The vast majority of private sector workers didn't get "bonuses or special perks" - never had and never will. You really must be deluded if you think that there are the mega bonuses etc for anyone other than the very tiny group in the London merchant banks and the top execs of private companies. The "normal" private sector worker gets nothing beyond his/her basic pay which is less than the average wage for public sector workers.

Not true, because many companies do offer bonuses of up to 15% per annum - John Lewis regularly does and so do many other large employers. It's true that the small fry do not offer this, but I'm looking at the blue chips. The private sector wage is certainly not below the average public sector wage - if you compare job for job the private sector offers considerably more money. The only good thing in the public sector is the pension - and that's it! And now even the pensions are being eroded by the government caving in to the tabloid reading morons out there.

marklv

Really2 wrote: »

And how the left moves to the right.
Who decides who are "deadwood", would you stop the BSF program costing billions each year?

The 'dead wood' is decided by careful analysis of what is not essential in function and getting rid of it. There are plenty of small but expensive quangos that can be abolished. And the big quangos can be dissolved and absorbed into existing govenrment departments, with the useless bits stripped out. There is also a lot of excess admin work in local government and the NHS - it just needs to be studied in detail. Yes - it is expensive to make people redundant, but in the long term the savings are worthwhile, unless in a few years you then need to recruit lots of people all over again. That's why it needs careful thought.

Really2 wrote: »

Funny how the private sector go the other way and band together.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/8063719.stm

But the problem is the union will strike at any job losses or cuts. So I take it you do not agree with the strike if there are job losses?

It depends on where the job losses are. I would not strike if some useless quangos were abolished, no.

marklv

bendix wrote: »

I love how marklv gets so animated when people dare to suggest the public sector should undergo the same financial hardship that has been endured by the private sector. Is that because he is a recent joiner to the public sector perhaps?

As to his oft-repeated examples of public sector waste being down to hiring external consultants, could that be explained by the fact that the public sector - because it is fiscally responsible to noone - hires such crap staff that they need external consultants.

I look forward to the public sector being slashed severely. I'm sick of the whining b****rs who, frankly, haven't given a monkey's kiss to the fortunes of the private sector over the last two years.

All they have cared about is their 'im alright jack' mentality, a mentality that typifies marklv

Nonsense. The public sector does not hire 'crap' staff, far from it. Every year 15,000 of the best graduates compete for just 500 management trainee vacancies in the Civil Service, and the recruitment process ensures that the very brightest get these jobs. The Treasury and the Bank of England employ some extremely intelligent individuals, who have preferred working there out of interest, in preference to better paid jobs in the City. The reason that external consultants have been employed in such large numbers has been twofold: (1) the government has not wanted to compete with the private sector for experienced professionals, because it would then have to pay them properly, and (2) the government has always been afraid to invest in training staff for fear that they would leave for better paid private sector work once they recieved the full training. As for the public sector being fiscally responsible to noone, this is arrant nonsense, as the public accounts committee carefully scrutinises government expenditure in every area. The National Audit Office and Audit Commission also report back on areas of excess, waste and poor value for money.