http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2012/ ... -lower-pay

Are they having a [LIFTED] laugh? Can anyone say "strike"?

Why should a civil servant in Chatham get paid more than a civil servant doing the same work in Aberystwyth?

This is the same budget where they're going to sack off the 50% tax rate. Jesus, it's like they WANT there to be more riots.

Jon

He's not got the Blair standard of spin has he. He should have say wages in expensive parts of the country will go up faster than else where, then just had a really low pay rise for the other areas (ie below inflation).
While the 50p tax rate is pointless as high earners can fiddle things, often causing an actual drop in tax receipts. I think this will make them very unpopular.

The same reason a bar worker in London gets paid more than a bar worker in Doncaster. The cost of living........ At least that's how I think he sees it.
What it's actually doing is reenforcing a North/South divide.

The more I read the more incredulous it gets. The Treasury is actually suggesting the private sector could become "more competitive" a result of this move.

I.e. Instead of forcing private companies to raise their game by competing with public sector pay rates in outlying regions, let's reduce public sector wages to give the illusion of better private sector pay instead.

Unless living costs in the regions reduce to match the lower pay, millions of people are going to be worse off - and this is a real kick in the teeth given the numerous pay freezes & denial of bonuses for junior civil servants.

There is, of course, also the possibility that with reduced public money available in the regions - and reduced spending power - as a result of this move, there will be less money available to spend in the private sector and thus private sector activity in the regions will reduce, not increase.

The only thing that's going to increase as a result of this is the number of JSA claimants, perhaps they should regionalise JSA too.

PS. I look forward to the House of Commons voting in a similar policy for MPs...

On any criteria, apart from 'keeping George's mates happy', it's insane.The south (particularly the south east) is massively struggling to cope with the population it's got - housing shortages, hosepipe bans, massive congestion etc etc etc. Large areas of the north are underpopulated and deprived and could do with an uplift, both in terms of working population and standards of living. What is George's solution? Make it even less attractive to live in the north, and even more attractive to live in the south east.

I mean, if you'll excuse my language, WHAT THE [LIFTED]?

Jon

Why should anybody get paid more for working in Chatham than in Aberystwyth? Because house prices, council tax, food etc. are generally more expensive there.

I lived just outside of Southampton and had a 3 bedroom house which cost me 400 a month, then I moved to Woking and I had a small flat, about a third the size and it cost me over 900 a month. If I hadn't received a higher rating for working in Woking, I wouldn't have been able to afford the flat. How is that any different for government employees?

It's a basic common sense, I don't know what you're complaining about. If you give one worker more money it means you've taken it from somebody else. Money don't grow on trees you know, somebody has to earn it and give it HMRC before public sector gets to spend it...

Now this need sorting out:

That's just not true. There is a very simple rationale.

The initial premise is that the UK has a problem in that several regions have developed an unhealthy economic dependence on the state. In some areas the only good jobs seem to be working directly for the government, and in others the only stable employment seems to be working for government contractors.

The secondary premise is that the public sector and the private compete with each other for talented employees.
Another is that dynamic businesses cannot grow in conditions where they are starved of talent. It makes more sense for a small business to stay small than to try and expand using only substandard labour.

That leads many tories (and some liberals) to conclude that it is unhealthy for us as a nation to give the state sector the ability to outbid the private sector in these regions, as it encourages the best talent to actively prefer the subsidised jobs rather than take a chance on becoming the subsidiser of other jobs.

The problem they wish to combat in this matter has nothing to do with house prices or population density in London. It is about weening other regions off of this dependence so they can become dynamic economic actors in their own right (which would lead to them exporting fewer of their talented people here anyway).

If you want to argue effectively against this, then do so honestly. Stop resorting to ad hominem attacks on the author of the project, and deal with the rationale behind its design. There are plenty of problems in the logic (certainly as I have presented it) for you to exploit if you can keep on track. For instance I have pointed out that it doesn't take into account the fact that regions also compete with London for the talent, and this does not address that factor.

There's a 'rationale' but that doesn't make it 'rational'.


And working for the private sector is somehow by definition more worthy or applaudable than working for the public sector? Why?


And the obvious solution in this case is 'pay public employees less' rather than 'pay private sector employees more''? Whatever happened to 'to get the best you have to pay a bit extra'? If it applies to investment bankers, why doesn't it apply to nurses or schoolteachers?


If you don't want substandard labour, PAY MORE TO GET BETTER WORKERS. How come market forces apply to the people in the low ends jobs, but not for them?


With all due respect, cobblers. You're buying into the myth that jobs in the public sector are somehow by definition easier than the equivalent job in the private sector. This is simply not a generalisation you can make. Do you think a doctor in an NHS hospital has a better time of it than a doctor in a BUPA one? Do you think a teacher in an for-fees school has a harder working day than one in an inner city comprehensive? How about evaluating what we pay people by the job they do and the quality of work they provide, rather than on hare-brained notions like because they work in a poor area it's OK to pay them less?


Lowering wages does not reduce dependance on the state, it merely shifts it from direct dependance - 'The state pays my wages' - to indirect dependance - 'I get paid less I now claim tax credits/housing benefit, and I can't afford medical insurance/private education so I have to use NHS hospitals/state schools'. It's a matter of opinion I know, but I'd rather the state paid it's employees enough that they could deal with their own problems than it paid the minimum it can get away with and picked up the pieces afterwards. Actually, doesn't that sound like sound Conservative dogma?
The rationale actually seem to be that if you reduce the public sector, this will somehow magically cause the private sector to flourish in the places you do so. I can see absolutely no logic which, in the real world, would bring this to fruition. And it's been the line this administration has been spouting from day one and it simply hasn't come to pass, nor does to show any real signs of doing so in the future.

What will happen is that as public sector wages fall, private sector wages will fall further. If private sector wages are already lower than public sector, why should whatever conditions caused that to apply still not apply after the public sector wages have fallen? The result is government expenditure will fall (this is a good thing, in general) but masses of people will be poorer (this is a bad thing, in general) and migration towards the south east will increase (this is a very bad thing, in general). Overall this policy will do much more harm than good.


It addresses no factor at all other than reducing one headline item in the government accounts (total wages of public sector employees). It's utterly nonsensical at almost any level.

Jon

I think you are right to question whether the proposed action would magically cause private industry to flourish in depressed areas. Certainly simply paying less competitive wages to public employees is not sufficient to achieve that, so without complementary actions to promote new enterprise the policy is just mean penny-pinching.

But Koli and the treasury seem to agree that inflexible wages in the public sector distort regional economies, building a dependence on state sector employment. I don't see you arguing against that on any empirical basis, are you conceding then that they have at least that much of a point?

Your complaint appears to be a qualitative judgment of the value of public sector jobs. Most of it is fairly irrelevant, given that you are arguing against a straw man, having assumed that your opposition are committed to arguing against it. I don't see how you get there, you just said "cobblers" and made the accusation without explanation. So until you do that I have no opinion on the matter. I will point out that private sector employers benefit from the services that the public sector provides, and the public sector depends on the taxes that the rest of us pay, so I see no immediate value in that pissing contest, and we should not assume that all of our opponents automatically hate one sector or the other.

I would have thought we could all agree that a sensible balance between the sectors is necessary as efficient operation in both cases benefits everyone. So if we have an opportunity to increase that efficiency we should be up to the task of investigating the possibility without hysterical reactions, just as we should consider what we are really trying to achieve, and whether a policy is actually capable of reaching that goal before we commit ourselves to it.

I know you didn't mean it to sound that way, but public sector workers also pay tax.

As you were.

I did mean it exactly that way. If I had my pay cut to the tune of whatever taxes I pay and then got paid the remainder tax free it would effect the state's bottom line income. If everybody in the private sector did it, there would be no state. If a teacher or nurse had that arrangement it wouldn't make a blind bit of difference, so their income taxes are entirely irrelevant.

Wow.

OK, Im out of this thread. It left the ground some time ago, but it's just reached orbit.

Jon

Public money drives the economy just as much as the private sector does. Public revenue doesn't vanish into thin air - it gets spent in the private sector. The private sector in the regions relies on the public money just as much as the people who earn it directly, and by reducing their wages you're reducing the amount of capital that can be spent, and thus private sector activity will decrease, not increase.

Furthermore by reducing the pay of civil servants by as much as 20% in these areas you're effectively dooming the area into poverty forever. The private sector does not need to raise its game and pay decent wages if the government is quite happy to hammer down on public pay instead. Everyone will be doomed to float around on £15k. The pay (and wealth) gap between London, the South East and the rest of England and Wales will only grow further.

Without serious government investment in the regions this measure, amongst other "austerity" measures, all but consigns the regions to backwater status.