How best to react to a slash in your wages..

Rotty said:
a 4 year pay freeze is little differnet to what many people in the private sector have had to put up with, your immediate boss probably had little or no say in this so no point making a big deal of it really

It's a 4 year freeze then a drop to whatever they think I should be ok. Potentially 8grand cut in real terms.

I won't make a big deal of it, I've known it was coming for a while and even turned down a job to stay here. Love my job, but I'm not sure how much I will if I know they value me a lot less than other places would. :)
 
Gilly said:
Exactly. Exactly the reason this is coming about. Councils have been milked for too long.

Milked?

I can earn £10,000 more if I move to a university and do the same job, happens that I like my job and the people I work with. My wages will only be cut because someone who's got far less experience and knowledge moved into a job on the minimum they can pay him in that post. It's hardly my fault that the guy doesn't know how to do his job.

I agree that there are people in this council along with every other council who are vastly over paid because they've simply been in the post. I know this as so many of the people I use to work with were like that. One was paid almost twice what the rest of us were paid because "he's been here the longest".

It doesn't make sense, the main problems councils have is that if they slash the wages too much they won't get workers into the jobs. They only just spend 3 years boosting I.T. wages as they couldn't recruit people for the post that would stay for more than a year!

They have to get the balance right, I doubt I'll be leaving even if I did get a pay cut - there's very few places that I'd rather work at! I actually enjoy my job and I'm grateful I have it as I've worked in some utter hell holes!! :D
 
cleanbluesky said:
Milked? Is the work done for councils of no value?

If councils are willing to pay the money, how can this be 'milking'?
Are cows not willing to give up milk? :confused:
 
cleanbluesky said:
Milked? Is the work done for councils of no value?

No, not at all, simply that the councils have been paying over the odds for work done.

If councils are willing to pay the money, how can this be 'milking'?

Pay structures that take no practical measurement of performance into account introduced in the 70's on threat of strike action perhaps... The threat of strike action every time they've tried to change them to something more realistic?
 
cleanbluesky said:
Say "this is going to hurt me more than it hurts you" and unzip your fly as you walk towards him

Hahaha excellent.

My suggestion would be to ask to talk to him before he does, then tell him how depressed you are lately, how your struggling with your mortgage, you think your wife is having an affair, you eldest needs money for university, and your youngest has just been diagnosed with a rare brain disorder, and you may need time off in the next year as you need to take her to the states for specialist treatment. Your not sure how much more you can take.
 
Dolph said:
No, not at all, simply that the councils have been paying over the odds for work done.

According to whom - their wages are still subject to market forces.

Pay structures that take no practical measurement of performance into account introduced in the 70's on threat of strike action perhaps... The threat of strike action every time they've tried to change them to something more realistic?

'Performance' and productivity is taken into account although I would certainly agree that benchmarking is abstract.

Define 'realistic'... usually wages vary according to the worth of the employee and in a closed system whereby profit does not define performance, applying market principles becomes increasingly abstract and confusing...
 
All the single status/job evaluation stuff is going to do nothing meaningful for public sector pay and conditions really.

What it will do is iron out some of the inconsistency across individual councils - for example large authorities have lots of admin staff and between different service areas or directorates their pay can differ by several thousand pounds a year, often for no good reason.

Each job is scored against a set of evaluation criteria - there are several systems an authority can choose from. Once they have scored each job (not each person) they will align a payscale with the scores and everyone will find out their new salary and conditions. Most council's say the process will be cost-neutral so for anyone who gains other groups will lose.

The process is full of holes though - some places have used job titles which is fundamentally flawed - the Council I'm doing some contract work for has "System Administrators" in different areas doing completely different jobs and as such their pay ranges from about £15k - £35k. They wanted to evaluate these posts simulataneously, which was obviously never going to work. There is also no accounting for scarcity of skills or professional qualifications to a large extent, but authorities can set their own "market supplements" to adjust salary, but these are not pensionable so the staff ultimately lose out.

What the process won't do is get rid of the differences between very similar posts in different authorities. A guy I was working with has just moved to a neighbouring authority and picked up an £8k pay rise and a lease car for a pretty much identical job in a similar sized council.
 
Dolph said:
No, not at all, simply that the councils have been paying over the odds for work done.

and in turn we pay councils tto much for what they do


having said that, maybe if they incresed efficiency and reduced numbers by getting rid of the the idle and useless then maybe they wouldn't have to cut salaries of the decent workers thy have
 
cleanbluesky said:
According to whom - their wages are still subject to market forces.

'Performance' and productivity is taken into account although I would certainly agree that benchmarking is abstract.

Tenure is no indication of performance or productivity, likewise wages based on tenure are not reflective of the value of the employee.

Define 'realistic'... usually wages vary according to the worth of the employee and in a closed system whereby profit does not define performance, applying market principles becomes increasingly abstract and confusing...

As a (forced) customer of the council, I expect value for money.
 
Dolph said:
Tenure is no indication of performance or productivity, likewise wages based on tenure are not reflective of the value of the employee.

As a (forced) customer of the council, I expect value for money.

Let's be honest. This may offend some but...from my experience it is pretty impossible to lose your job at a council, public sector, etc.

You end up with people slowly climbing the pay scale who may not be any good at what they do, but they're just able to keep their job and automatically get a pay rise beccause of the set pay scales based upon time served.

In the private sector such a person doesn't get a pay increase.

It's the reason much of the private sector wont touch employees from the public sector.

However, there are of course some great people working in the public and i sometimes egg them to try and get a job in the private sector because they'd see a huge pay increase. However, they often are happy with the laid back atmospehere and job security.
 
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