The ONS published a lot of pay data this morning. The chart I found most interesting was this one:
Median pay growth has exceeded 5% for well over a year. Unless you are in the public sector, of course. Then this is apparently impossible to pay.
The deliberate choice being made by the government to prevent the payment of market-matching pay settlements in the public sector is only rational if you realise that their aim is twofold. One is to force people out of public sector employment because they can no longer afford to work in it. The second is to destroy those services. I cannot fund another explanation for such stupidity.
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Might it be that all relationships come somewhere on a continuum between the symbiotic and the parasitic?
Might it be that our government is particularly parasitic because it is significantly funded by those who aim to control essential public services for their own gain?
Might it be that the present government is of such a fixed mind set that they are unable to think in terms of governance for the benefit of the whole of our society rather than favoured groups?
Completely agree……. but to add a couple of very narrow statistical points…
First, just as with inflation, a fall from 8% to 6% does not mean the gap is narrowing – merely that it is widening less quickly.
Second, virtually all public service workers lie “below the line” so median private sector pay rises are “above the line” so the differential is bigger than it might appear (eg. 6% median might mean 3% public sector plus 7% private sector).
Third, to what extent is the drop in estimated median incomes driven by strikes?
Indeed
I thought about making the second point
MPs have paid themselves 28% more since 2010, I bet they are the only public service workers whose pay as exceeded inflation.
Ian
MPs salaries are set by the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority -since 2011. Last pay rise 2.9%. They don’t set their salaries any more.
But if you are Sunak, Hunt, Rees-Mogg or Zahawi, the pay is pocket money. These people are not in politics for the pay. Most of the money for their party comes from restricted sources which we can probably identify. They are the ones who gain most.
People like Caroline Lucas are in it for a cause.
Ian
So other public sector workers should have their pay set by independent review bodies, or be linked to the pay of MPs.
I think we need a re-set for public sector pay. We should meet their claims in full. It would restore what are essential services for most people.
A third ( at least) comes back in tax and the people will spend into the private sector. They pay taxes in turn on their earnings.
Purchasing power is being sucked out of the economy because of energy and food costs, and more expensive imports. That will drive us into recession which is costly. The general public’s spending is the income of the private sector. It needs an input of cash. It was done during the pandemic. We are are seeing so many is poverty , this is the worst situation for decades.
MP bashing is popular but irrelevant to solving the problems. Most are not in govt and 250 or so are in opposition .
This was in yesterday’s Guardian:
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2023/feb/13/full-time-part-time-work-no-longer-pays-uk-economy
Cameron said in 2011 that low wages was how the UK was going to compete in the global economy.
So all of this is by design. Nothing has changed.
In the public sector, labour costs will look cheap, making them look more attractive to increased privatisation – the government doing the dirty work for their funders and rapacious profiteers who will take over the services.
Now we are looking at increased water costs, internet access and telephony, plus the maximum of 5% added to my council tax bill for social care.
Any raise I got this April has been swallowed up. We are walking to stand still and just cannot keep up. And many are worse off than me.
not the only ones trying to undermine the health system
https://www.reuters.com/business/healthcare-pharmaceuticals/spain-health-workers-hold-huge-madrid-protest-over-state-health-system-2023-02-12/
“Social injustice is killing people on a grand scale.” – World Health Organisation, 28 August 2009
https://www.who.int/news/item/28-08-2009-inequities-are-killing-people-on-grand-scale-reports-who-s-commission
I frequently think that tory politicians (and this might not be exclusive to them) often think of the public sector as being a sort of caste system, with them of course being the highest caste, and they no doubt feel justified in how they treat all the lower castes, which is of course with contempt.
I had a conversation with the General Secretary of the public sector union of which I was a member while still working. I suggested to him that we needed a new way of setting civil service pay, because ministers of the crown were so set on reducing it – not just freezing it. His view was that we shouldn’t give up free collective bargaining. This I thought, was beside the point. Clearly tory politicians had abandoned bargaining altogether.