not look good for public sector workers

[Alex_L]

You hit the flaw in your argument in your own post, we don't pay for council services, we have money taken from us for council services. You don't give money to the government, the government takes it from you. As such we have the right to demand the money is spent correctly and fairly, something that doesn't happen at the moment.

You've also forgot to mention the fact that public sector pensions are massively more costly than private ones, if they were being run like any other business, this would have changed by now, but when you don't have to justify your spending, and can force people to pay, efficiency always goes out of the window.

my response to the OP is that 335,000 is not enough to reduce the massive economic drag of our non-productive public sector.

Yes, of course we have no choice but to pay taxes, but short of holding a revolution and adopting an every man for himself approach, I don't see how you'll ever overcome people complaining about the government wasting money and being inefficient. There are obvious flaws in the way our government works, but short of tearing up the entire system of government we live within and starting again, I don't see how you go about fixing all the flaws that exist in the current system.

The UK is not perfect, but there are plenty of other places that would be worse to live in.

 

[Dolph]

Yes, of course we have no choice but to pay taxes, but short of holding a revolution and adopting an every man for himself approach, I don't see how you'll ever overcome people complaining about the government wasting money and being inefficient. There are obvious flaws in the way our government works, but short of tearing up the entire system of government we live within and starting again, I don't see how you go about fixing all the flaws that exist in the current system.

The UK is not perfect, but there are plenty of other places that would be worse to live in.

Well, the most obvious way to improve efficiency is to reduce government spending and involvement. We should be questioning everything the government does and asking the simple question of 'do they have to do it?', or is there an alternative (for instance, ensuring access to education or healthcare, rather than directly providing education or healthcare) that will move the actual provision of service away from the inefficient state monopoly structure and into a (generally) much more efficient competative enviroment.

It's not about no taxation, or no government, or anything like that, it's a simple case of if the government doesn't need to do something, then it should not be doing it.

 

[Gothic Draconia]

Demonstrate your productivity in your role to the wider economy, and I'll happily pay you your worth.

It isn't just about worth to the economy, it's often about putting food in the mouth of the vulnerable people.. Does that have a worth?

 

[Raumarik]

I work in IT for the NHS.

Management is where the problem is any everyone knows it.

Too many of them, and most of them are bloody idiots !

Although around here the way they are cutting jobs is by "natural wastage" so when someone leaves their job nobody is hired to replace them. Which basicaly means ... loads of Chiefs and no Indians

Work in IT for the NHS too I disagree, we have the opposite problem. Our managers in IT are all ex-techies and frankly all very, very good at managing. Our managers each have at least 25 staff under them, with no "in-betweener".

Our problem is the lack of good staff at lower levels, there's too many band 6's who frankly know sod all about I.T. or do next to nothing all day. The NHS (and when I was in the council) simply couldn't do anything about getting rid of the deadwood - the unions and HR have a stranglehold over them. Our band 5s are so de-motivated as they're having to pick up work from people being paid far more than them and the band 6s who are doing a good job just get serious narked off about it. It's the "good" 6s that are wanting rid of the deadwood the most though, as they think the 5s should be promoted.

We have one guy that's barely been at work for the past 3 years, but as he's taking up a post, they can't fill it.

335,000 jobs isn't much in the public sector though and you can bet your backside most of them will be people who's faces didn't fit, rather than those who deserve to go.

Edit: I share an office with 30 or so non-IT workers and I'll be completely honest with you, I know what they're meant to do but you could lose 90% of them and nobody would notice other than the remaining 10% who saw their workload increase by about 2%. Most of them do nothing but generate unnecessary work for themselves to justify their post.

 

[izzy eckerslike]

Fine, pay me the going rate for private sector workers doing my job. Bet you'd moan about paying that aswell.

O.K lay it on the line -what is your job

It depends whether 'the going rate' is justified, Far too many jobs are grossly overpaid,
A self employed gas fitter expects £400 - £600 for a days work claiming it's justified because he has to pay fees take some exams that are legally required which are mostly to do with gas safety. Apart from that it's general plumbing work. This of course means that people are afraid to call one out because they still charge you even if they can't fix it.

Here in Worc's the council blokes that come & empty my dustbins have an £18000+ basic wage ( payrise pending ) with the driver getting £22,400, no skill required as' on the job training provided' was in the advert a few months back.

There's usually a few 'new posts' for some obscure job on offer that someone dreamed up that the council managed for 50 years without but suddenly they need one ( plus a new manager to advise the new applicant of course )

 

[Dolph]

It isn't just about worth to the economy, it's often about putting food in the mouth of the vulnerable people.. Does that have a worth?

Of course it has a worth, whether the worth justifies the pay given (or whether the service could be provided better by a non-governmental organisation) are a different matter though.

 

[Raumarik]

Demonstrate your productivity in your role to the wider economy, and I'll happily pay you your worth.

Ex- private worker, ex- council worker and now an NHS employee. complete agree with you Dolph. They need to sort out the pensions scheme, remember even employees of the council and NHS are paying into that pot too through their own taxes.

"I pay your wages" is true of public sector workers paying into the private sector too - the difference is that you get the money now, rather than at a later date. We all pay for each others wages and pensions in one way or another via the economy.

I agree with your point though, the current state of public sector pensions can't be justified by anyone who's even vaguely reasonable - rules out most union members then

 

[Raumarik]

Here in Worc's the council blokes that come & empty my dustbins have an £18000+ basic wage ( payrise pending ) with the driver getting £22,400, no skill required as' on the job training provided' was in the advert a few months back.

Why don't you go and do the job? I hate people picking on cleaners and trash collectors whenever there's an example to be made regarding skills/pay.

Fact is it's not a job many people would want to do so they have to pay higher than you'd "expect" to get people to do it. You've picked a bloody awful example.

I wouldn't bloody do it for £18K a year! Kudos to those that do they probably work a damn sight harder than most of the keyboard warriors on OCUK

 

[Gothic Draconia]

Of course it has a worth, whether the worth justifies the pay given (or whether the service could be provided better by a non-governmental organisation) are a different matter though.

I agree entirely. However, most people would agree that public sector wages when compared to the private sector are lower but this is balanced by other benefits (ofc pensions mainly). It's a swings and roundabouts, nationalisation and privatisation kind of deal. IMO

 

[izzy eckerslike]

Google 'council sick leave ' to get an eye opener on wastage, some councils allow 18 days sick leave which of course comes in handy for extra holidays. some are on full pay extended sick leave for months on end , usually stress related apparently.

Should I grass this bloke up : a teacher friend of the missus been on sick leave for nearly 18 months because of 'stress' he's now drawing his full salary whilst running a sideline business taking people trekking in India, been twice this year already & 2 more booked for Sept & Nov ,had the cheek to ask if I wanted to go on one

 

[No1newts]

Well, the most obvious way to improve efficiency is to reduce government spending and involvement. We should be questioning everything the government does and asking the simple question of 'do they have to do it?', or is there an alternative (for instance, ensuring access to education or healthcare, rather than directly providing education or healthcare) that will move the actual provision of service away from the inefficient state monopoly structure and into a (generally) much more efficient competative enviroment.

It's not about no taxation, or no government, or anything like that, it's a simple case of if the government doesn't need to do something, then it should not be doing it.

The man is right.

We pay so much money to a government which fritters it away. Whereas if services are moved away companies, by force of competition, are made to provide continually better services at continually better rates or risk losing the contract of service that they have.

Whilst that system is far from perfect as well it stops a bloated service building up which can justify providing poor quality service at vastly inflated prices because they ARE the service, there is no other way about it. They can effectively do what they want and charge what they want within reason.


AN Exmaple;


If people were offered the choice of choosing their services i.e. NHS or private, you choose private you pay less tax as you no longer pay toward funding the NHS, then there would be a large shift away from NHS. People would pay the money for better service, the NHS would then have the onus on themselves to provide a better service or risk losing their funding.

You could guarantee NHS services would improve pretty damn sharpish with things such as efficency, cost effectiveness, good service and something which makes me squirm when I walk into a hospital these days, cleanliness becoming paramount rather than being disregarded as something unimportant where funding and custom is guaranteed.

 

[Gothic Draconia]

Google 'council sick leave ' to get an eye opener on wastage, some councils allow 18 days sick leave which of course comes in handy for extra holidays. some are on full pay extended sick leave for months on end , usually stress related apparently.

Should I grass this bloke up : a teacher friend of the missus been on sick leave for nearly 18 months because of 'stress' he's now drawing his full salary whilst running a sideline business taking people trekking in India, been twice this year already & 2 more booked for Sept & Nov ,had the cheek to ask if I wanted to go on one

LOL, where i work, you can literally be dismissed after 8 days of sickness. So much for 1 rule fits all in the public sector.

 

[izzy eckerslike]

Why don't you go and do the job? I hate people picking on cleaners and trash collectors whenever there's an example to be made regarding skills/pay.

Fact is it's not a job many people would want to do so they have to pay higher than you'd "expect" to get people to do it. You've picked a bloody awful example.

I wouldn't bloody do it for £18K a year! Kudos to those that do they probably work a damn sight harder than most of the keyboard warriors on OCUK

What's so wrong with the job that you wouldn't do it? thousands of people would jump at the chance, your obviously on a higher wage already or you wouldn't say that, if you worked in retail for example on £7 an hour or even less ( £6.50 in our local Boots) the job would be very tempting indeed & with wheelly bins it's relatively light work these days as there's no lifting & tipping as there used to be.

 

[PlacidCasual]

The Mantra that average public sector pay is lower than the private is simply no longer true. Ten minutes spent of the Office of National Statistics website can show this. Practically all cleaners and kitchen staff are private sector employees paid a pittance where are the bleeding hearts for them? Sure university educated council office workers and teachers may not be on mega bucks but ( a few dreamers and idealists aside) I would imagine if they were any good they'd be working the private sector anyway.

Taxes disposed of by the state isolate the public from the true costs of bureaucracy, what passes for productivity in jobs motivated by political bargaining and what passes for productivity in jobs that deal in cold hard financial decisions couldn't be more different.
I work for a very large company where 100% of non union staff have recieved a 0% pay rise this year. One arm of the business employing thousands has to find £100m of savings or profit improvement this year and my own section has cut 10% from all revenue spending. You can bet your bottom dollar people are focussed more than in some insulated tax payer funded non-job where a million other people in the same boat will stamp their feet and threaten action if cuts are proposed.

 

[wordy]

O.K lay it on the line -what is your job

Ok I'm a Voice network specialist, between two of us we are managing a local councils Telepohny network consisting of 12 ISDX digital telephone exchanges, the wiring and over 4,000 extensions. We provide support and effect change requests which go from swapping an ext number to another point via commands on the DX to overseeing the telephony requirements for office/building moves of over 100 people. The exisitng voice network consists of plain old telephony, digital lines and over 400 VOIP phones.

There is also a project in the works to migrate this local authorities voice network from the exisitng system to a full VOIP solution provided by another company which we are involved with.

I make less that the national average, I'd be pretty confident I could do better than what I'm on now in the private sector, in fact my predessor left because he got a 10k payrise by doing exactly that. I'm happy in my role, I love working for the local authority and am happy that my role is supporting people who are poviding a service to the borough despite the crap we get from from the ungrateful ****ers who consistantly moan about how little work they think we do and what a cash cow we are on.

 

[Caseh]

You just know the job cut's will happen to the Porters, Domestic's, Support Workers in the NHS. (Used that as an example, as I'm a domestic ATM.)

 

[Raumarik]

What's so wrong with the job that you wouldn't do it? thousands of people would jump at the chance, your obviously on a higher wage already or you wouldn't say that, if you worked in retail for example on £7 an hour or even less ( £6.50 in our local Boots) the job would be very tempting indeed & with wheelly bins it's relatively light work these days as there's no lifting & tipping as there used to be.

I have worked in retail, I've also earned far less than £7/hour, I no longer do and no I wouldn't take the job on as I do earn more than that now. If I weren't earning more than that, then frankly I'd be doing that job! My uncle use to do it and loved it!

 

[Raumarik]

You just know the job cut's will happen to the Porters, Domestic's, Support Workers in the NHS. (Used that as an example, as I'm a domestic ATM.)

Guaranteed, it won't be people who have been there decades and who can't actually justify their post if they're pushed to do so. They're part of the furniture.. costs more to lay them off.

 

[Von Luck]

..

 

[Dolph]

Ok I'm a Voice network specialist, between two of us we are managing a local councils Telepohny network consisting of 12 ISDX digital telephone exchanges, the wiring and over 4,000 extensions. We provide support and effect change requests which go from swapping an ext number to another point via commands on the DX to overseeing the telephony requirements for office/building moves of over 100 people. The exisitng voice network consists of plain old telephony, digital lines and over 400 VOIP phones.

There is also a project in the works to migrate this local authorities voice network from the exisitng system to a full VOIP solution provided by another company which we are involved with.

I make less that the national average, I'd be pretty confident I could do better than what I'm on now in the private sector, in fact my predessor left because he got a 10k payrise by doing exactly that. I'm happy in my role, I love working for the local authority and am happy that my role is supporting people who are poviding a service to the borough despite the crap we get from from the ungrateful ****ers who consistantly moan about how little work they think we do and what a cash cow we are on.

Your productivity to the economy though depends on the productivity of those you service. Every unnecessary job in the council diminishes the value of your job as you can't provide a productivity increase to a non-productive role through technology.