War on thousands of local borough council 'non-jobs'

mostlycheerful

amcluesent wrote: »

Local authorities have taken on an extra 180,000 workers since 1997, with the total number not employed in traditional front-line roles now standing at almost 750,000, according to ministers.

The Coalition is highlighting the figures at a time when councils are threatening to cut basic services and increase charges because of cuts in central government funding.

Ministers want councils to cut middle-management waste instead.

Among the jobs that have been spawned by the boom in “non-jobs” were a “bouncy castle attendant” on a salary of £13,000 at Angus council in Scotland and a “cheerleading development officer” in Falkirk.

North East Lincolnshire council [is] advertising for a “future shape programme manager” on £70,189 per annum.

FACT - The gravy train goes on for the leisured classes, leeching off the productive sector!

Good, and about time too, time to cut off all that useless flab and corruption and numptyism, chuck'em all on the bonfire and good riddance to bad rubbish. Yes, the con artists and fraudsters and useless stupid idiotic morons have been getting away with abusing the gravy train for far too long, it's time for a bit of commonsense to prevail. Yes, a lot of council workers are a nuisance and a pain and are useless, wasteful and a waste and redundant and badly needing heavily culling. Let the axed descend forthwith. At last. It's been long overdue, it's been a long time coming but finally some of the vile bloated crass absurd rubbish is being put out in the bins where it belongs. Good.

kabayiri

Ok, so we know there are non-jobs in the public sector.

Truth be told, many of them have probably existed over the last decade.

If they are non-jobs now, they were non-jobs then.

Only 'then', the government of the day didn't really care about the issue. It's only now they are well and truly brassic that they start exposing all the poor spending using the press.

Government *should* aim for value for money all the time. That's what we pay them for. Maybe people in government are not 'non-jobs', but it seems at times they do 'half-a-job'. 'Average rate politicians' would describe most of them.

abaxas

kabayiri wrote: »

Ok, so we know there are non-jobs in the public sector.

Truth be told, many of them have probably existed over the last decade.

If they are non-jobs now, they were non-jobs then.

Only 'then', the government of the day didn't really care about the issue. It's only now they are well and truly brassic that they start exposing all the poor spending using the press.

Government *should* aim for value for money all the time. That's what we pay them for. Maybe people in government are not 'non-jobs', but it seems at times they do 'half-a-job'. 'Average rate politicians' would describe most of them.

Almost impossible to sack, and layoffs are ultra expensive.

Catch 22.

kabayiri

abaxas wrote: »

Almost impossible to sack, and layoffs are ultra expensive.

Catch 22.

Tell me about it.

My friend in LG was telling me about his accountant mate who worked for the Audit commission.

Salary = 80K, and he was hoping for a pay-off amounting to 2 years salary !!

Sheesh, you'd never seen anything like that in the vast majority of private sector jobs.

abaxas

kabayiri wrote: »

Tell me about it.

My friend in LG was telling me about his accountant mate who worked for the Audit commission.

Salary = 80K, and he was hoping for a pay-off amounting to 2 years salary !!

Sheesh, you'd never seen anything like that in the vast majority of private sector jobs.

It is a disgrace.

Everyone should get some redundancy and employers should be free to employ/not employ whoever they wish.

Why should people be discriminated on the basis of how long they have worked for.

asc99c

I did two jobs in the same local council at different times. Once handling Microfilming of documents brought in by benefits claimants. And another time handling digital scanning of documents brought in by benefits claimants. I never could understand why there were two departments. Why wasn't everything scanned (I never realised Microfilm was still actively used). Scanning / microfilming both took about the same amount of time. But the microfilm department had two full time staff to find the microfilm when needed. And there was a department which processed the microfilm, though I never saw it so no idea how many people were needed for that. Also there seemed to be a need to have dedicated managers for even the smallest teams (so the two guys who were finding the microfilms had a manager to keep them on track...)

In total, between the scanning/microfilm departments, there must have been 30 people. Everyone was busy except managers, but I reckon it could have been done with 12 if everything was scanned.

Similarly, my brother spent some time in a department where 6 people had almost nothing to do. Their work only took around 2 hours a day, and most of that was because they were duplicating what each other were doing and sticking religiously to their job descriptions. My brother was only brought in because no one's job description included double checking what the data entry guy was putting into a database. And that was his main task.

From my experience, they could easily make the necessary cuts without affecting services.

Spartacus_Mills

ninky wrote: »

and how many in the private sector (particularly above a certain level) do "working from home" days? or "blackberry fridays" as we called it at one particular company where the office was an exec free zone as the weekend approached.

In my last contract in the private sector I regularly used to work from home and guess what. I actually did work from home.

It was not a slackers charter as you imply.

Using webex facilities made it rather easy to attend conference calls and meetings.

ILW

Spartacus_Mills wrote: »

In my last contract in the private sector I regularly used to work from home and guess what. I actually did work from home.

It was not a slackers charter as you imply.

Using webex facilities made it rather easy to attend conference calls and meetings.

From my experience, that sums up most of public sector middle management - Conferences and meetings.
Was is all really necessary?

vivatifosi

amcluesent wrote: »

Among the jobs that have been spawned by the boom in “non-jobs” were a “bouncy castle attendant” on a salary of £13,000 at Angus council in Scotland and a “cheerleading development officer” in Falkirk.

Ah, that explains a lot. Someone came into the library where I was working yesterday and asked if I had a bouncy castle attendant. I thought that this was a rather strange question, particularly as I was working in a small library and there was no visible bouncy castle, though I should add, we don't have bouncy castles in big libraries either.

Spartacus_Mills

ILW wrote: »

From my experience, that sums up most of public sector middle management - Conferences and meetings.
Was is all really necessary?

When you get to the stage where you have a meeting about a meeting then you know the plot has well and truly been lost.