Osborne plans lower public sector salaries outside of the south

Going4TheDream

GrungeMeister wrote: »

There's surely going to come a point though where freezing the pay of low paid public sector employees, even reducing pay by forcing them to pay higher pension contributions until 2015 ... and continuing to increase benefits by inflation ... will bring us to a point where the lower grade civil servants on £15-16k per annum just might as well not bother going into work ?

Because once you factor in rent, council tax benefits etc, they wouldn't really be that much worse off by signing on as unemployed than by working ?

I think in reality that could be said about all low paid workers - public or private sector - many in the private sector do not even have a pension fund

Emy1501

Teachers seem to be example that they using on the radio. Questions for me are

1) any evidence teachers in the private sector get paid less than in the public sectors.
2) working conditions. Teaching 16 children from mainly privileged backgrounds I suspect is a lot easier than teaching 30 kids from a rough housing estate.
3) if wages for the public are reduced does the private sector then reduce pay even more.
4) would it not be better to get rid of non jobs in the public sector than demotivate those who doing a good job.

mardatha

So on the one hand Cameron's screaming that he doesnt want the UK to split, doesnt want Scotland to leave....and on the other hand he's splitting his own country England, in half. Ooh that makes sense eh?

Spartacus_Mills

A._Badger wrote: »

Is there a problem with this? It seems quite reasonable to me.

Quite, just like the rest of us in the Private Sector then.

pqrdef

And interestingly they're starting with non-devolved departments, so Scotland and Wales get clobbered too.

daviecol

GrungeMeister wrote: »

For all that Osborne seems brave enough to take on the public sector unions, the civil servants aren't likely to riot. But start cutting benefits and there's going to be a repetition of what went on in August last year. So for all they'll trim here and trim there, there just won't be any severe cuts to the social security budget.

Excuse me while I do some minor arithmetic, I'm in the private sector on £16,800 pa and I want to see where I stand for working full time compared to my Brother, he's unemployed right now.

£307 JSA (from April)
£375 Rent Paid
£81 Council Tax Paid
Total £763 pcm. Plus he might also qualify for non-repayable grants, interest free loans from the Social Fund, free prescriptions, subsidised council facilities etc.

Me ? Take home after tax etc of £1,123 pcm, from which I have to pay everything.

So the hard cash advantage I have over my Brother, for me working full time compared to his unemployment, is only £360 per month as it is.

I guess my question really is how far would that have to narrow before you'd call it a day and just give up working ?? I mean, it's not like they're introducing regional rates of social security benefits, or regional rates of income tax, VAT etc.

It's just wages.

I admire people who work for comparatively low wages.

The only way out of this mess I'm afraid is to slowly lower benefit rates to the point where people simply can't live on them.

I'm a hard b***rd, I think able bodied peoples benefits should reduce by 5% each 6 months so that by 10 years you get nothing.

That would be slow enough to give people a chance to find work, whilst quick enough to let people know they can't live off the system all their lives.

There is no 'ideal' solution, however the current system is too easy for the layabouts.

Yorkie1

I don't understand a) how they will find the comparators, and b) how broadly they will be based geographically. I know the detail isn't yet known so these questions are more rhetorical than anything.

The public sector has a range of grades. Do you calculate each grade for the public sector area against local comparators, or do you average out all the grades against the average of comparators? Do you do the comparisons for each grade, then work out the cheapest one and base everyone else on that? Each Department has separate pay schemes now, so how will those comparators work, if at all?

On the geographical side, for example, York has the most unaffordable private rents in Yorks & Humber according to Shelter, on a par with the SE - but the LHA is based on a much wider, rural area with much lower rents bringing down the cost with the result that people are priced out of the market. Half of my lower grade admin colleagues already have second jobs to make ends meet.

If similar principles are applied to the pay calculation, York has lower than average incomes because we are a predominantly tourist based economy these days. That will exacerbate the situation.

There is also the longer term impact on pensions, with those people in 'poorer' areas earning less so having lower pensions on retirement - trapping them in those 'poorer' areas.

Just some musings.

Graham_Devon

Emy1501 wrote: »

3) if wages for the public are reduced does the private sector then reduce pay even more.

This one is very interesting.

And this is where I think the problems will arise. I can't see private sector workforces keeping pay the same, while the public sector around them sees employee pay fall. The private sector will, I should imagine, re-align their pay also.

Why pay more when you don't have to? This has been going on for ages now and has been getting worse with the introduction of welfare credits which tops up incomes.

It would be naive to assume that the private sector in places like the North East will continue to pay the wages they are now while the public sector around them pulls incomes down.

Theres also the case that many out of the South East will live further from their workplaces, meaning higher costs of commuting each day. With the lack of available transport, this reduces options.

I was reading comments the other day on an article about petrol costs, and someone in London was suggesting the good old "use a bike, or get an oyster card like we have to". The lack of understanding outside of London is very obvious.

vivatifosi

Yorkie1 wrote: »

I don't understand a) how they will find the comparators, and b) how broadly they will be based geographically. I know the detail isn't yet known so these questions are more rhetorical than anything.

As you say, we don't know the answers yet. However the government does collate and publish a lot of data at a regional level, so one option would be to take a region such as the north west, look at the average salary for similar jobs in the region compared to the south and work back from that. If they do want to go into more detail, they could look at the wage bills of companies, or at the average salary by local area (ie work address or home address). My guess is that they will leave the harder to address jobs - ones where the public sector comparison is harder to find - to last where possible so that they can come up with a system to suit.

RUN_RABBIT_RUN

Thrugelmir wrote: »

Why should say a nurse get £30k for working in say Maidenhead (very expensive part of the country) and the same in Halifax.

You don't get the same level pay in private industry.

i agree with you but i think it will affect the mobility of labour - whats the incentive for a nurse in the south east to move up north when his/her salary will take a hit? Or a teacher? these are areas with known labour shortages and i think it will make it more difficult to recruit away from the south east

as i say though, i do agree with the principal of it and it'll (hopefully) bring the public sector wage bill down.

a mix of good and bad for me