Where will the cuts fall

Loughton_Monkey

Generali wrote: »

I think that many people in the public sector earn more than is necessary for them to be paid. I'd pay nurses more as there is a shortage of them, teachers in London too...

Some truth in that, but, rather, I think the public sector has far too many unecessary positions in the middle/high salary bands. So cut 100% of the salary and 'on' costs by getting rid of these jobs. Real 'doers' don't deserve cuts.

My grammar school back in the 60's had a single headmaster, the required amount of teachers at varying grades. Other than that, there was a "secretary" - who was a male, middle aged, on (I suspect) a decent salary. Towards the end of my time, they recruited a 'junior secretary' [basically a typist]. They were the only two non-teaching staff, excluding a single janitor, his wife (a cleaner) and school meals people.

I suspect a school of similar size would today have many more teachers (per pupil) and probably about 15 to 20 non teaching staff, not to mention 'teaching assistants'.

When you hear hundreds of occupations every week on TV quiz shows and the like, the words "co-ordinator", "administrator", "liaison officer" crop up with alarming regularity. Always followed by "...for XYZ council", or "... in a hospital". Never in a private company.

Parkinson's Law still operates to the full in public service.

stator

Loughton_Monkey wrote: »

I go along with this 100%, provided it starts for all people reaching 65 in, say, 2018 onwards. It would be very harsh to apply it to the boomer generation. Best to apply these cuts to the generations that had a much richer youth/middle age.

Oh I think the boomer generation are the perfect candidates. I would apply it to all current pensioners.

BobQ

lvader wrote: »

People never seem to see the positive side of cuts which is that it will help future generations with a lesser tax burden. I can't understand how people seem to think it's OK to leave such a massive debt to our kids.

Who thinks it is OK. We need to address the debt but there are different ways of doing it. Paying benefits to pensioners with high pensions is not good, allowing tax relief to subsidise people who get pensions of £50K or more, wasting money on expensive consultants to make a political point, privatising the NHS for the benefit of your "friends" etc is not reducing the debt either.

Picking on those who care for the disabled is so so Tory.

Graham_Devon

Loughton_Monkey wrote: »

Some truth in that, but, rather, I think the public sector has far too many unecessary positions in the middle/high salary bands. So cut 100% of the salary and 'on' costs by getting rid of these jobs. Real 'doers' don't deserve cuts.

My grammar school back in the 60's had a single headmaster, the required amount of teachers at varying grades. Other than that, there was a "secretary" - who was a male, middle aged, on (I suspect) a decent salary. Towards the end of my time, they recruited a 'junior secretary' [basically a typist]. They were the only two non-teaching staff, excluding a single janitor, his wife (a cleaner) and school meals people.

I suspect a school of similar size would today have many more teachers (per pupil) and probably about 15 to 20 non teaching staff, not to mention 'teaching assistants'.

When you hear hundreds of occupations every week on TV quiz shows and the like, the words "co-ordinator", "administrator", "liaison officer" crop up with alarming regularity. Always followed by "...for XYZ council", or "... in a hospital". Never in a private company.

Parkinson's Law still operates to the full in public service.

True, but you also hear of the abuse that used to go on covered up etc and the failings etc.

Not saying we need them, but we can't have Ofsted ratings, Health Campaigns, better school meals, Firefighters fitting smoke alarms in homes etc without the admin and therefore the labour required to run all of these things.

The need for all of these people and box tickers etc comes directly from the government piling on the pressure to make every government look better than the last.

Kids undergo two SATS type tests (it may be more, even) before they even leave Primary School now. You simply cannot run all these things without the people to run them....and that need comes directly from the government themselves. It's not the fault of the people workign within the public sector.

The long list of pensioner benefits which didn't even exist just 40 years ago need those very co-ordinators and administrators to run them. You'll then need the HR people to look after them. The H&S person employed to tick the boxes for the EU and so on....

missbiggles1

Slash the IHT threshold.

Loughton_Monkey

Graham_Devon wrote: »

.....The need for all of these people and box tickers etc comes directly from the government piling on the pressure to make every government look better than the last.

Kids undergo two SATS type tests (it may be more, even) before they even leave Primary School now. You simply cannot run all these things without the people to run them....and that need comes directly from the government themselves. It's not the fault of the people workign within the public sector.....

... and I thought that's what we were talking about. Government cuts. In no way do I blame the jobholders themselves. I know lots of people who are perfectly happy to coast along in a 'non job' and get a decent salary. But I'm sorry, it's a case of 'musical chairs' and when good management comes along and engineers you out of the job, that's tough luck, but you should have seen it coming.

One reason I could retire early was the big salaries/bonus I could command by cutting costs and increasing service. Typically, I could take a large financial operation with a few hundred staff. Over a 3 year period, with volumes of work up 50%, it was not unusual to cut headcount by 35%

The best one (in percentage terms) was a doddle. 24 staff in a small Insurance Company, with substantial backlogs, about to be flooded with business from a new sales force. The staff were cracking up, bleating for new staff in every 'department'. Over 18 months, headcount down 79% to 5. Volumes about double.

By far the best technique (and one all Public Sector should use) involves Key Performance Indicators. Put extremely simply, you get the manager to list every 'output' he does. Then you put down every cost he suffers (wages, expenses, purchases...). Then you get him (monthly) to allocate every penny of cost, to each output, divided by volume. Armed with this set of numbers, he is bonused to bring them down drastically.

Initially, the manager 'fiddles and lies'. But he can't lie about the totals, and because all outputs are covered, he can only 'fiddle' unit cost between the outputs.

Soon he comes grovelling with excuses like (well we get a lot of telephone calls.....), so you put in telephone monitoring equipment and add that to the outputs. He bleats that 'meetings' take up the time. Fine, then allocate some of the cost meetings (per hour). If 25% of cost is going on meetings, you know that's not 'right'.....

The manager (and staff) soon realise that there is no hiding place. They can't fiddle the totals. They themselves are exposing either that it's costing £500 to change a lightbulb, or it's costing £100 per inward telephone call.....

Once any fiddling has stopped and the whole thing settled down to be resonably accurate, it's so easy to let the excess staff go, and to take the 'real' costly outputs and automate/eliminate/simplify them.

I have left out the equally important indicators on 'Quality' but they can be handled just as well.

It's a culture shock initially, but it sure as hell works. I don't think any council, school, or government department would have the balls to do this properly. Many will claim they do but you will find in every case they fiddle big time because they will refuse to take total cost and total activity. This simply doesn't work.

BobQ

Generali wrote: »

I think that many people in the public sector earn more than is necessary for them to be paid. I'd pay nurses more as there is a shortage of them, teachers in London too.

Areas where there aren't shortages I'd definitely cut wages though or more accurately let inflation take care of the problem.

I agree that public sector pay does not follow a sensible regime. Often the centralised management of public sector workforces means that people doing very different kinds of jobs are paid the same even though they need different skills to do them. So you end up with generalised banding.

I do not subscribe to the view that every public sector job that is called administrator or coordinator or whatever (as Loughton said) is unnecessary and wasteful by definition. It is up to the well paid managers in these organisations to define what jobs and skills they want to employ.

A common problem I find that administrative roles tend to be rewarded at above market rates. Often they require few skills, are easily recruited because the salaries are good and take little time to get up to speed. But within the "Band" there are jobs that require significant training in marketable skills, paid much the same. Those posts have high turnover because the pay is not enough to retain them. Also some jobs are "easy" while others are stressful and the differences are not reflected in the pay.

The same is true at various levels in the public sector. Outsourcing means that proportionately they have a larger number of better qualified staff. But the public sector seems incapable of rewarding those skills it needs and has difficulty retaining relative to those it does not.

But it annoys me that solutions to deal with short term, unexpected problems, like bank nurses and supply teachers, which cost significantly more than employing direct staff, are being used to solve long term problems that should have been properly planned for.

Thrugelmir

Loughton_Monkey wrote: »

By far the best technique (and one all Public Sector should use) involves Key Performance Indicators. Put extremely simply, you get the manager to list every 'output' he does. Then you put down every cost he suffers (wages, expenses, purchases...). Then you get him (monthly) to allocate every penny of cost, to each output, divided by volume. Armed with this set of numbers, he is bonused to bring them down drastically.

Initially, the manager 'fiddles and lies'. But he can't lie about the totals, and because all outputs are covered, he can only 'fiddle' unit cost between the outputs.

Soon he comes grovelling with excuses like (well we get a lot of telephone calls.....), so you put in telephone monitoring equipment and add that to the outputs. He bleats that 'meetings' take up the time. Fine, then allocate some of the cost meetings (per hour). If 25% of cost is going on meetings, you know that's not 'right'.....

The manager (and staff) soon realise that there is no hiding place. They can't fiddle the totals. They themselves are exposing either that it's costing £500 to change a lightbulb, or it's costing £100 per inward telephone call.....

Once any fiddling has stopped and the whole thing settled down to be resonably accurate, it's so easy to let the excess staff go, and to take the 'real' costly outputs and automate/eliminate/simplify them.

I have left out the equally important indicators on 'Quality' but they can be handled just as well.

It's a culture shock initially, but it sure as hell works. I don't think any council, school, or government department would have the balls to do this properly. Many will claim they do but you will find in every case they fiddle big time because they will refuse to take total cost and total activity. This simply doesn't work.

Current policy to reduce headcount is to offer juicy carrots for voluntary exit. Staff have to justify why there role is no longer required. In essence they walk the plank. The remaining staff are then left to cope (similar to what you've said above). This causes a further shake out as exposes the inept etc and others move to new jobs. Then temps can be brought in to maintain the service level. I've recently seen a department reduced from a £7 million annual deficit to breakeven in 12 months using these tactics. Leaves the remaining staff battered and bruised. However the majority want to work so are happy to adapt to the new culture.

Graham_Devon

Seems some tory proposals have been leaked tonight detailing these very cuts.

Downing street has quickly come out and stated it's not policy. And that's very true - it isn't....yet. But George Osbourne and Iain Duncan Smith have spent rather a long time discussing these changes over the past 2 weeks.

So....

Carers allowance to be cut completely for anyone not on universal credit.

Disability allowance, personal independance payments and attendance allowance to be taxed. (easier to say they will tax them than cut these benefits I guess).

Council tax allowance to be removed from the majority and instead only those on universal credits will receive it.

Regional benefit caps. Those in London would get a highr cap. Maximum 23k. So those in other regions could see lower caps. (Can imagine wales getting slaughtered here).

Limiting child benefit to TWO children (and, it seems removing it from anyone currently receiving it for more than two children).

Industrial industries compensation scheme to be axed.

Contibutory element of ESA and JSA allowances to be scrapped, seeing 300,000 families lose £80 a week.

And all that only puts us halfway to the £12bn savings needed.

I would assume this leak is going to be pretty damaging to the election campaign.

BobQ

Loughton_Monkey wrote: »

... and I thought that's what we were talking about. Government cuts. In no way do I blame the jobholders themselves. I know lots of people who are perfectly happy to coast along in a 'non job' and get a decent salary. But I'm sorry, it's a case of 'musical chairs' and when good management comes along and engineers you out of the job, that's tough luck, but you should have seen it coming.

One reason I could retire early was the big salaries/bonus I could command by cutting costs and increasing service. Typically, I could take a large financial operation with a few hundred staff. Over a 3 year period, with volumes of work up 50%, it was not unusual to cut headcount by 35%

The best one (in percentage terms) was a doddle. 24 staff in a small Insurance Company, with substantial backlogs, about to be flooded with business from a new sales force. The staff were cracking up, bleating for new staff in every 'department'. Over 18 months, headcount down 79% to 5. Volumes about double.

By far the best technique (and one all Public Sector should use) involves Key Performance Indicators. Put extremely simply, you get the manager to list every 'output' he does. Then you put down every cost he suffers (wages, expenses, purchases...). Then you get him (monthly) to allocate every penny of cost, to each output, divided by volume. Armed with this set of numbers, he is bonused to bring them down drastically.

Initially, the manager 'fiddles and lies'. But he can't lie about the totals, and because all outputs are covered, he can only 'fiddle' unit cost between the outputs.

Soon he comes grovelling with excuses like (well we get a lot of telephone calls.....), so you put in telephone monitoring equipment and add that to the outputs. He bleats that 'meetings' take up the time. Fine, then allocate some of the cost meetings (per hour). If 25% of cost is going on meetings, you know that's not 'right'.....

The manager (and staff) soon realise that there is no hiding place. They can't fiddle the totals. They themselves are exposing either that it's costing £500 to change a lightbulb, or it's costing £100 per inward telephone call.....

Once any fiddling has stopped and the whole thing settled down to be resonably accurate, it's so easy to let the excess staff go, and to take the 'real' costly outputs and automate/eliminate/simplify them.

I have left out the equally important indicators on 'Quality' but they can be handled just as well.

It's a culture shock initially, but it sure as hell works. I don't think any council, school, or government department would have the balls to do this properly. Many will claim they do but you will find in every case they fiddle big time because they will refuse to take total cost and total activity. This simply doesn't work.

How many suicides, attempted suicides does this generally create?

Is the next stage to beat them with a stick?