Public sector want inflation busting rises again

[Banker]

2 hours ago, HeliX said:

So an incredibly tiny proportion of them, then. Suggesting that all public sector workers should be happy to accept real terms pay cuts is not reasonable. There should be good raises, particularly in the lower paid.

And how are you proposing it’s financed ? Job cuts , higher taxes or services cut which will mean jobs going?

Public sector can’t keep expecting pay rises to be financed by the public 

[Jarndyce]

2 hours ago, Amadeus said:

They would be enough if we didn’t have 8000 government employees.

Calling @Roger Mexico: this is not your statement, of course - but might you have a link in your back pocket which demonstrates this?   Not necessarily disputing it, just wondering where the number came from.

Ta very much!

[finlo]

7 minutes ago, Jarndyce said:

Calling @Roger Mexico: this is not your statement, of course - but might you have a link in your back pocket which demonstrates this?   Not necessarily disputing it, just wondering where the number came from.

Ta very much!

I think that's actually on the low side.

[Jarndyce]

1 minute ago, finlo said:

I think that's actually on the low side.

Great!  Got a link?

[Roger Mexico]

2 minutes ago, Jarndyce said:

Calling @Roger Mexico: this is not your statement, of course - but might you have a link in your back pocket which demonstrates this?   Not necessarily disputing it, just wondering where the number came from.

Ta very much!

As it happens I was already looking at this (I really ought to do a separate topic sometime).  I don't have a number for government employees (not least because the HR people can't produce their annual reports), but the Census does give us separate figures for public employees, or at least how many there were at the end of May 2021.  It splits them by  "Occupation and Private/Public Sector Split (Level 1)".  I've added in a column showing the percentage of each occupational group that is public:

	Total	Public	Private	% Public
Managers, Directors and Senior Officials	5,327	477	4,850	9.0%
Professional Occupations	8,647	3,143	5,504	36.3%
Associate Professional Occupations	5,209	1,315	3,894	25.2%
Administrative and Secretarial Occupations	6,294	1,496	4,798	23.8%
Skilled Trades Occupations	5,290	449	4,841	8.5%
Caring, Leisure and Other Service Occupations	3,803	1,572	2,231	41.3%
Sales and Customer Service Occupations	2,711	108	2,603	4.0%
Process, Plant and Machine Operatives	1,892	453	1,439	23.9%
Elementary Occupations	4,364	921	3,443	21.1%
Total	43,537	9,934	33,603	22.8%

Public employees includes local authorities as well and also all the 'arms-length' stuff (except possibly the Steam Packet).

[Banker]

Perhaps we should cut civil service and cut welfare payments to fund government spending on wages like the Tories are promising? Would be popular with the public 

[Roger Mexico]

A few points to make:

• The overall percentage of 22.8% isn't particularly unusual.  According to the ILO the UK's is 22.5% and Ireland 21.9%.
• But it all very much depends what you include and how the economy operates.  For example in the previous Census someone doing ground handling at the Airport would have been included, now they are private (employed by Menzies) but effectively they are still paid for by money raised in the same way.
• The low percentage of all managers in the public sector may be due to managerial positions being more tightly defined there.  You would expect the professional category to be high - most teachers, doctors etc are in the public sector.
• You would similarly expect sales staff to be low for the public sector though there will be some customer service people there.

[Roger Ram]

One in four workers taking out more than they pay in, and that’s just wages and pension.

Insanity, no wonder the place is screwed.

Incidentally, that is more than Jersey which is a similar setup but with about 20,000 more residents.

https://www.bailiwickexpress.com/jsy/news/employment-statistics-public-sector/

[Banker]

12 minutes ago, Roger Ram said:

One in four workers taking out more than they pay in, and that’s just wages and pension.

Insanity, no wonder the place is screwed.

Incidentally, that is more than Jersey which is a similar setup but with about 20,000 more residents.

https://www.bailiwickexpress.com/jsy/news/employment-statistics-public-sector/

IOM has the highest proportion of public sector across islands, UK etc

https://jerseyeveningpost.com/news/2024/03/14/proportion-of-workforce-in-public-sector-similar-to-level-seen-in-1970s/

[Non-Believer]

My feeling is that Govt maintains high PS numbers (relatively) in order to maintain economic "critical mass" on the Island. It's part of a gamble with the reserves until the next finance sector or e-gaming sector arrives to be our saviour. An arrival that is as yet unannounced and has yet to happen

If we engaged in a swift cull of what are considered to be excess, superfluous numbers (and I do think they exist) and axed, say, 3000 quickly; the effect on the economy would be devastating. 3000 straight on the dole as the private sector couldn't absorb that number, benefits to be paid, a glut of housing on the market as some of the unemployed departed whence they came, which might lead to a property prices crash.

We are currently still trying to keep inflated the artificial bubble that we have been for so long and which so many regard as the norm, it is fighting natural economic gravity, so's to speak. How long we can continue to do it is the big question.

[Meoir Shee]

Public sector workers pay at least 30% of their own wages via income tax and NI.  That is before pension contributions.  They then spend the overwhelming majority of their wages, generating considerable amounts of VAT and other indirect taxes.  That money is then recirculated around the economy multiple times, generating additional economic activity and tax revenue for the government.  A worker earning £30k getting a 2% pay rise will not cost the government anywhere near £600 pa net.

Anyway, it draws attention away from the £100m white elephant in Liverpool.

[finlo]

7 minutes ago, Meoir Shee said:

Public sector workers pay at least 30% of their own wages via income tax and NI.  That is before pension contributions.  They then spend the overwhelming majority of their wages, generating considerable amounts of VAT and other indirect taxes.  

Do you think this only applies to the public sector?

[woolley]

10 hours ago, Ringy Rose said:

Everyone on here wanking on about “bloat and efficiency” never manage to actually explain which staff they’d cut and how they’d do that without affecting service delivery. Funny that.

OK. Tell us why the headcount has risen by more than 500 since March 2016 during what was supposed to be a time of belt-tightening. The first line of defence from the government bureaucracy is always "which service would you cut?" It's bullshit. As newly appointed CM or Treasury Minister, I wouldn't necessarily cut any service, but I would certainly demand an explanation as to what the hell is going on. Nobody is telling me that the constant expansion is to meet pressing public need for a static population. Regularly, jobs are advertised that are clearly pointless vanity projects, and mainly in the interest of empire building. There is very clearly no political or Treasury control, and the CS bosses do exactly as they like at the taxpayers' expense. It isn't good enough.

Every person who leaves or retires should have their job assessed by an independent time and motion study before leaving to see exactly what they do. Then a decision can be taken whether to replace the role with a presumption not to. If the role is necessary, then redeployment should be the first option rather than new recruitment. An aspiration for a 10% reduction in headcount and cost over the first 5 years would be a starting point. The public service should wake up and get behind an initiative like this, because when the money runs out, they are going to be the first to suffer with wholesale sackings and unpaid pensions.

I appreciate that some work very hard, too hard in fact, but there are those who don't, or who work in meaningless functions. I agree that the people we need should be supported and well remunerated. There are simply too damned many of them, and it has to be addressed.

[woolley]

5 hours ago, HeliX said:

It's not like she's wrong is it? Our tax rates, particularly the higher rates, are too low to support our current demographic to a decent level.

No they're not. We simply waste far too much.

[woolley]

4 hours ago, HeliX said:

So an incredibly tiny proportion of them, then. Suggesting that all public sector workers should be happy to accept real terms pay cuts is not reasonable. There should be good raises, particularly in the lower paid.

Agree, but with far fewer snouts in the trough.