Council Tax

darich

haylibo wrote: »

I think their assertions that they do very little are probably boasting because they know it winds you up.
Cobblers - it's an open secret what a cushy number council workers are on. They're protected way above the level afforded to members of the general workforce and they spend much of their time protecting budgets for their kit-kat breaks.

How little you know of council employees and their conditions.

My manager and all the managers above him regularly work 5 weeks per month in order to stay afloat with thier workload. They all work flexi time but when your balance is checked every 4 weeks, anything over a certain point is removed from your balance. No extra money. No holidays. No days off. No thanks.

The guys having 2 hour lunch breaks need to work longer in the evening or start earlier in the morning to work their required monthly hours.

Everyone knows the councils are cutting back - it's even worse internally. In my section over the past 2-3 years we've lost 6 highly qualified staff and only 2 have been brought into replace them. With all the cutbacks, or "efficiency savings" to use management speak mean that the remaining employees have to do the same work despite being short on manpower.

Anyone who tells you working in the council is easy and a cushy number is either lying or winding you up.

davidlizard

Sounds pretty much what many people in supposedly 9-5 office jobs have these days.

We are typically in work by 8:30 am, rarely leave before 6:30 pm, work through our lunch breaks, and usually end up taking a pile of work home to do in the evenings and weekends - all for no extra pay etc. And some of the more senior staff are there beyond 10pm fairly frequently. If we did not do these hours, contracts and customers would be lost, which will give our directors extra incentive to start looking at outsourcing more of our jobs to India. Our final salary pensions went ages ago, and if we get a 2% pay rise we will be lucky. This is typical for many employees in all sorts of jobs across the country.

Our council meanwhile have now grabbed the lower two floors of the multi-story car park for themselves and park for free - everyone else has to stump up £6.10 per day to park. As for council staff doing long hours - the allocated council spaces are nearly always deserted before 8am and after 5:30pm.

And to rub the taxpayers noses into it even more, the local rag reports that £62k of taxpayers money was spent installing a gymnasium into the council building for the employees to use, despite there being a fitness centre in the leisure complex a short walk away.

LilacPixie

Council tax is annoying to say the least. £1060 ish per year for a band A so no real option other than pay it for us. What does annoy me is they are oh so quick to take but very very veyr slow to give back. They over charged us £53 last year because we had a partial student discount yet they continued to take the full amount out and still they have not returned it despite numerous calls.