Unions provide yet more amusement during conference season
Dear trade unions,
No sooner had you heard Alistair Darling’s announcement about a one-year pay freeze for senior civil servants, members of the judiciary, senior NHS managers, GPs and chief executives of quangos then you were up in arms about it. Your collective reactions were, however, self-centred and short sighted. Furthermore, George Osborne’s announcement yesterday that the entire public sector will face a pay freeze in 2011 made you look rather foolish.
In response to Darling’s announcement, John Restell, chief executive of the NHS managers’ union, said: “We see this as pretty divisive gesture politics because of the small number of people involved. It does not add to a whole lot of money. They should stop picking off managers.” Paul Noon, the general secretary of Prospect, which represents a number of specialists within the civil service, said the announcement came with no warning and made a “mockery” of the proper negotiating machinery between unions and government. “We see this move as unfair and discriminatory. It does not apply to the rest of the economy and if the government wants to cap wages it should not be done selectively.” Mary Orton, from the Association of Local Authority Chief Executives, said members had already been warned that they faced a pay freeze next year. “We are very disappointed because we feel we should be given the same award as all local government staff. We feel there is a lot of hysteria at the moment about chief executive pay. If they compare us to other jobs in the public sector, such as further education, our pay is relatively lower. We do a difficult and demanding job.” First Division Association, a union which represents 18,000 senior civil servants, said freezing the salaries of the government’s highest earners would be a bad idea. “These are relatively modest salaries for the scale of the jobs that people undertake,” Jonathan Baume, their general secretary, said. “I recognize that it’s a lot more than most people in the economy earn, but these are very demanding, very challenging jobs. And to hold their pay completely — it’s no way to reward or motivate or encourage people.” The British Medical Association also expressed disappointment at the news. “This is not the time to demoralize doctors.”
Love it. Honestly, sometimes your comments really are priceless. I am delighted to say that, in light of George Osborne’s recommendation of a pay freeze for all public sector staff (bar serving members of the armed forces and those earning less than £18,000) in 2011, your complaints have been largely nullified. John Restell’s concern that Darling’s plans won’t save much money have been quashed by Osborne going even further while Paul Noon’s claims of discrimination have also been wiped out. In addition, concerns from the BMA and Jonathan Baume look ridiculous given that if Osborne didn’t go as far as he did then he’d have to sack lots of your beloved union members instead – so best not to start whinging about being demoralised, seeing as your members still have a job. Mary Orton and Jonathan Baume appear to be living on a different planet in any case, as they feel that their members do ‘difficult and demanding’ jobs while everyone in the private sector sits on their backside not achieving anything – hence their unions should be protected from pay freezes. I say again: your members should be grateful that – thanks to George Osborne stepping up to the plate – they might still have a job in a few years time.
Mary Orton’s comment deserves a special mention too. Her claim that there is “hysteria” around public sector pay shows how out of touch many high-earning government employees really are. Public sector salaries cost £158 billion last year - one quarter of all government spending – which is absolutely insane. If your members cannot understand how serious the debt crisis is or how bloated the public sector has become, you are clearly more self-absorbed than I realised. All we need know is for the Conservatives to win the election and sort out public sector pensions in their first Budget, because only then will we really start to get this country’s finances back on track.
Yours sincerely,
A.Tory
“We see this as pretty divisive gesture politics because of the small number of people involved.”
Really? The hysterical cries yesterday were warning that ‘4 million people will be affected!’
So which is it? Lots of people affected or not many? You can’t have your cake and eat it…
Dear LFAT. You are, of course, quite correct. I would lay odds that the union responses had been prepared weeks in advance and it was just a matter of chosing the best adjectives to fit the occasion. It must be hell for those GP’s struggling to get by on £100,000 pa when daily being faced by their patients seeking treatment for the stress caused by losing their jobs. It is truly amazing how organisations based around the concept of collective responsibility rapidly shift to protecting their own in hard times. Tory MP’s committment to
“we’re all in this together” will be severely tested the next time MP’s sit to discuss their own remuneration. Who voted for what will be an area of legitiment public interest, and I am sure that bloggers of all political colours and none will be heavily involved in publicising the results.
Georges plan is easily sold as spreading the shrinking resource of taxpayers’ money as thinly as possible to avoid as much pain as possible to a morbidly obese public sector. (Caring Conservatives, anyone?) After the first knee-jerk response, I am quite sure that Union leaders realise that violently objecting to the Tory plans in principle will be politically a self-inflicted injury. Furthermore. it’s an option they would have considered themselves.
On the subject of Public Service pensions. We should not be following the socialist policy of levelling down rather than Conservative aspiration of levelling up. Restore pension tax credits to the pensions industry and allow public bodies to set up final salary pension funds. Immediately the savings ratio will rocket, providing investment income to the Nation and underpinning the countries’ finances. In a generation there will be an enormous sum of protected funding available to British enterprise for all the good things Dyson was talking about, creating a wealthier group of retired people who will be less of a burden upon their descendants. A win-win situation?
What really makes me laugh is that they complain that it won’t save much money. The reverse of that argument is that they won’t lose much money either! and that’s wrong?
The words “but some animals are more equal than others” spring to mind. Unbelievable….
Julia, he was purely being self-centred and thinking about HIS members, not saving the entire British economy.
GOM, final salary pension schemes have left this country with a public sector pension deficit of over £1 trillion pounds – surely you don’t want this to get worse?
WT, makes me think of Silvio Berlusconi, who is currently trying to keep a law in place that prevents him from being prosecuted on the grounds that the law should regard him as “first above equals”. Great stuff!
Hmmm. With unemployment/out of work between 3 and 5 million by most estimates, these union fellas are about to find out just how easy it is to replace relatively unskilled workers…
Am i the only one thinking that a pay freeze in two years time is nowhere near enough.
Clearly the unions are spoiling for a fight with DC in the hope of crushing his reform plans while they are still nascent. Hopefully he has the smarts to find a way to take them on one at a time to avoid anything like a coordinated strike – the alternative of spreading the pain thinly may work but probably won’t make enough of a difference.
Sorry to come back to this, though, but it has to be MPs first on this otherwise there will be a very easy stick to beat them with…
I think I must have missed something. How can a pay freeze be much of a hardship if, as the chancellor tells us, the economy is in danger of deflating? Have we now accepted there’s going to be some serious inflation?
LFAT. I made the point that these pensions would come from a pension fund jointly paid into by employee and employer on restitution of the pension fund dividend scheme. That is not the same as the present unfunded system. It was a somewhat long post, so may be you’d ran out of patience by then. You will have noticed the pledge by the future govt. to replace that tax break when affordable? ( even Nick Robinson has stopped denying the inevitable!)