Will the govenment spending review be much less painful than we are led to believe?

treliac

No, reserve your seat in the bunker and bring all the beans you can carry

alex_curtis wrote: »

It's the 1980s all over again! The Tories will cut spending and taxes and when Labour get in next, they will spend & tax! Anyway, just to put everybody's mind at rest, governments are generally inept at cutting spending so I don't believe it will be that bad.

If not, how will the deficit get addressed?

michaels

I don't disagree with you but didn't think this thread was about the benefits side of govt spending.

Consider education as an example - over the past 10 years a lot of the extra expenditure has gone in to raising salaries ('catching up' as I am sure some would see it) - now when spending needs to be reduced it won't be done by going back to the relative salaries of 10 years ago but by reducing numbers at the existing salary - hence less will be provided than 10 years ago for the same money.

Also who will decide which functions are essential and which are desirable - it may well be that legislation (either from Labour or Brussels) means that councils can not legally not have a diversity officer whereas may be there is no legal requirement to empty bins to any particular schedule so what will give to meet a lower budget? Of course it will be fortnightly bin collections that become monthly...

ILW wrote: »

Or

If there are no diversity officers, on £30k salaries.

If there are no civil servants getting 3 years redundancy pay.

If there are no workshy families getting £100k per year housing benefits.

If it is decided not to pay extra benefits to alkies and druggies.

If we stop paying benefits to people earning £60k pa.

I would be perfectly happy with that

PS Please feel free to add to the list of unfair and wasteful spending that has been built up over the last decade.

Blacklight

Yes, no doubt they're talking up the extent of the cuts and they won't be anywhere near as bad

dori2o wrote: »

Those who have tried to get through to HMRC recently know how hard it is. Just imagine how much worse it will be with 25-40% less staff answering the phones.

Now this exactly illustrates the point of my original post. At no point has anyone ever said that there will be 25-40% job losses anywhere. Yet your assumption is that, in terms of workers employed, the public sector will be up to 40% smaller.

On October 20th when the details are published and the compulsory redundancy figures are far, far smaller I can see sentiment changing from one of doom/gloom/black swan/four horsemen/bunkers & beans back to optimism for the recovery.

Perfectly engineered.

Old_Slaphead

dori2o wrote: »

I'm on the 2nd grade and in my position in the private sector I would be earning above my current pay and also have commission and company benefits.

If you job was outside of the South East it's
a) Unlikely that there would be a private sector job available
b) If there was you'd get killed in the rush of applicants
c) Up until very recently you would have had much less job security
d) Unless you're talking about a specific job then generally the 'perks' in the private sector do not exist (outside of the south east ?)
e) You almost certainly wouldn't get a 30%+ employers pension contribution, the same holiday entitlement or such a generous redundancy package.

Really2

Yes, no doubt they're talking up the extent of the cuts and they won't be anywhere near as bad

michaels wrote: »

Consider education as an example - over the past 10 years a lot of the extra expenditure has gone in to raising salaries ('catching up' as I am sure some would see it) - now when spending needs to be reduced it won't be done by going back to the relative salaries of 10 years ago but by reducing numbers at the existing salary - hence less will be provided than 10 years ago for the same money.

Depends on how you look at education, statutory education (school educations) is ring fenced. They will see cuts in real terms (budgets frozen or small increases) but no actual cuts to budgets.
Could lead to losses if people demand wage increases though, but perhaps this is where the public sector could learn from the private sector, honda for example they actually voted to lower their pay to save jobs.
A freeze compared to what some have done seems a reasonable request.

Old_Slaphead

Procrastinator333 wrote: »

This probably doesn't feel like news to most, but I was actually quite surprised by this, I had thought that a lot of the government cuts would come about through natural attrition, not redundancy.

I asked why they didn't just wait for people to leave (new job, retirement etc) and in this department at least, there were so few moving on that this would never have worked. I have no idea if this is unique to this department or if it will be common amongst councils and other government agencies, but the brutality and speed with which the axe is falling was quite a surprise to me.

My local authority have asked for VR 'volunteers' over the next 6-24months. Because of that I suspect most people expecting to leave are now hanging on in the hope of a windfall. That means that shortterm 'natural wastage' will disappear. Job losses with therefore be shown in media as 'redundancies' or 'jobs slashed' rather than 'natural wastage' (which, in reality, is what they are)

ILW

Really2 wrote: »

Depends on how you look at education, statutory education (school educations) is ring fenced. They will see cuts in real terms (budgets frozen or small increases) but no actual cuts to budgets.
Could lead to losses if people demand wage increases though, but perhaps this is where the public sector could learn from the private sector, honda for example they actually voted to lower their pay to save jobs.
A freeze compared to what some have done seems a reasonable request.

It would be interesting to see what would happen if a proposal was put the the public sector unions of no job cuts but 20% across board pay cut. Wonder what they would opt for?

Thrugelmir

Blacklight wrote: »

On October 20th when the details are published and the compulsory redundancy figures are far, far smaller I can see sentiment changing from one of doom/gloom/black swan/four horsemen/bunkers & beans back to optimism for the recovery.

Perfectly engineered.

Taking Royal Berkshire Hospital Trust as an example. The plan is to cut 500 - 600 posts over the next 3 years.

NHS trusts aren't in a position to pay the cost of compulsory redundancy packages. So cutting posts will be gradual. Services will be cut back and staff redeployed.

michaels

A 20% real cut would be very hard for most to live with (see the pay day loans thread for example) but hiding it in a nominal wage freeze plus a bit of inflation should be more palatable.

However I think for the economy as a whole a 5% cut now might well 'turn the corner' for the public sector deficit.

I would also remove national pay structures so that in areas where pay was holding back the number or quality of recruitment this could be addressed, whilst simultaneously reducing govt sector wages in areas where they are actually above the local market rate.

ILW wrote: »

It would be interesting to see what would happen if a proposal was put the the public sector unions of no job cuts but 20% across board pay cut. Wonder what they would opt for?

ILW

michaels wrote: »

A 20% real cut would be very hard for most to live with (see the pay day loans thread for example) but hiding it in a nominal wage freeze plus a bit of inflation should be more palatable.

However I think for the economy as a whole a 5% cut now might well 'turn the corner' for the public sector deficit.

I would also remove national pay structures so that in areas where pay was holding back the number or quality of recruitment this could be addressed, whilst simultaneously reducing govt sector wages in areas where they are actually above the local market rate.

It may be easier to live with than getting laid off. I doubt if the public sector would even consider it though. It has been done succesfully in the private sector.