The Mail v public sector pay
Posted by antonvowl
March 26th, 2009
Many Mail readers work in the public sector, and are diligent tax-paying citizens – decent professionals doing good for the community and earning an honest crust.
What would those Mail readers think, then, when after years of below-inflation pay rises, they are vilified for finally getting something that at first glance appears to be a good deal? When the salaries for their profession are crudely exaggerated? Is there any reason why the Mail wants to target the public sector – or pay rises in general?
It might be a complete coincidence, of course, but Wednesday’s story, headlined “Public sector pay goes up as private workers suffer”, came out on the same day that the Mail announced a pay freeze for all its staff , despite the Associated Newspapers division having cleared £73million profit in 2008.
And then the pesky public sector, which doesn’t make any profit at all, is allowed to give its staff pay rises!
The Mail makes it clear which side you’re supposed to take with this story:
A series of inflation busting pay rises for millions of public sector workers was given the green light yesterday – at a time when private firms are freezing wages and cutting jobs.
Private firms like the Mail. You can almost sense the seething bitterness coming off the keyboard when that was typed.
There’s another reason why this story got wheeled out when it did. It was neatly timed to coincide with an expected negative RPI inflation figure – you’ll note that RPI is all of a sudden being used as the measure of inflation by the media, now that it’s lower than the CPI figure - although as it turned out, that didn’t quite happen. It would have been a better story, though, wouldn’t it? “INFLATION’S GOING DOWN BUT PUBLIC SECTOR PAY IS GOING UP!”. Sadly not, for the Mail, but they can still claim second prize.
The implication, by the way, in that first paragraph, is that it’s only the private sector which is cutting jobs. Is it?
There appear to be more people employed by the NHS, though that figure is of course a total number of employees, and may represent more part-time staff being taken on, with bank or agency workers being cut back, so it’s not the whole picture. There are reshuffles in the public sector going on across the country, with Sheffield Council, for example, technically making all its staff redundant and making sure it’s not all gravy for those who remain.
Under the pay and grading review, although some staff would receive a pay rise, others in low-paid positions such as teaching assistants would be forced to take pay cuts of up to 25 per cent.
So that’s up to 25 per cent pay cut for some teaching staff. Right, I’m sure the Mail will mention this information when it looks at the big picture. It won’t, you say?
It’s not hard to find evidence of the public sector struggling through this recession. You can find stories about teachers being under threat of redundancy and quite recently too but then that’s only if you’re looking for it (or want to see it), isn’t it? And such matters do tend to detract if you want to creative a narrative of a lumbering, bloated public sector bleeding tax payers dry at a time when the private sector is being forced to make cutbacks.
Back to the Mail:
In a sign that Labour is unwilling to take on the unions, the Government has agreed to honour increases of more than 2 per cent a year until 2011.
How does the Mail know it’s a sign Labour is unwilling to take on the unions? This isn’t journalism; this is just someone’s opinion. Which is fine in an opinion column. But it’s not attributed to anyone and just presented as fact. There could be any number of reasons why the Government (rebranded here as “Labour” for the purposes of implying a shadowy leftist pact between unions and politicians) might think public sector workers should get more money – for example, they could think that workers deserve it after years of below-inflation pay settlements. No…? No.
Mail reporter Michael Lea could very easily have done some basic research, looked through his own archive and seen evidence of this. He could have looked, for example, at last year’s police pay settlement which the Mail described thus:
Yesterday police leaders accepted an offer which will see pay for 140,000 officers in England and Wales rise by an average 2.6 per cent per year between now and 2010.
The rise is well below the latest inflation figure of 5.2 per cent. But Police Federation chairman Paul McKeever said officers were ‘content’ with the deal which he said took account of pressures on Government spending.
The Mail even appeared to be sympathetic towards police officers last year, describing stories of how some officers had to take up second jobs in order to pay the bills.
Back in April last year, the Mail covered a story about how nurses and midwives were being offered below-inflation pay rises:
Back in April last year, the Mail covered a story about how nurses and midwives were being offered below-inflation pay rises:
The package unveiled by ministers yesterday offers nurses and other healthcare staff a 2.75 per cent increase this year, followed by smaller increases in 2009 and 2010.
Ministers hoped it would head off the threat of industrial action in the NHS following widespread anger last year over below-inflation pay rises.
You’ll notice how public-sector pay rises come about, according to the Mail, because of the spectral unions lurking in the shadows threatening strike action, and not because, you know, people might actually deserve to keep up with the cost of living (or not, as was clear). But ‘widespread anger at below-inflation pay rises’? You could be forgiven for thinking this had never happened from reading this week’s Mail article:
The three-year deals, which caused outrage yesterday among business leaders, were struck well before the recession took hold and there are mounting calls for them to be ripped up as a result of the economic meltdown.
A couple of points here. What relevance is a ‘business leader’ to public sector pay? I don’t mind if the Mail interview a teacher, a nurse or a police officer every time private sector pay rises go flying through the roof; but I have a feeling they don’t. (It would be nice, even, to have an ordinary Mail journalist comment about Paul Dacre’s £1.4million salary.) Also, as the Mail itself said at the time, those deals were struck at a time when they were considerably disadvantageous to the workers, who suffered. Did the Mail ask business leaders what they thought of the pay deals then? No. And who, exactly, is making the ‘calls’ for these deals to be ‘ripped up’? We’re never told. But apparently there are ‘calls’. I guess we’ll just have to take the Mail’s word for it, then.
John Philpott, chief economist at the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development, said: ‘The public sector is at present an entirely recession-free zone.
Apart from those people being made redundant in the public sector, John, yes, but do go on.
‘Cash-strapped private businesses are asking staff to make sacrifices to save jobs. The Government should put a clamp on public sector pay rises.’
Cash-strapped’ private businesses like Associated Newspapers (£73million profit last year), lest we forget.
Public sector pay rose by 3.7 per cent in the year to January 2009. Private sector pay fell by 1.1 per cent in the same period.
But… last year private sector pay rose by a lot more than public sector pay. It would be nonsensical to take these figures in isolation (unless you’ve got an agenda to promote, of course). Last year the Income Data Services noted:
The median pay settlement for the whole economy in the three months to the end of June 2008 is 3.5 per cent. The private sector services median is in line with the whole economy at 3.5 per cent and is some way ahead of the public sector, where the median is 2.7 per cent. The whole economy median is being held at 3.5 per cent by lower deals in the public and voluntary sectors. The latest figures for the whole economy are based on 197 settlements covering over 3.5 million employees.
Details which the Mail didn’t find space for – and which would, of course, have once again made the narrative a little more complex than the Mail might have liked.
There’s also a table, which will set alarm bells ringing with you if you’re a nurse, teacher or police officer. It’s objectively entitled THE RISING WAGES:
NURSE 1997 £21,042 NOW £31,225 2009-10 £31,974
POLICE CONSTABLE 1997 £19,261 NOW £28,405 2009-10 £29,144
TEACHER 1997 £21,313 NOW £35,121 2008-9 £35,929
It’s also handily illustrated with a picture of an attractive blonde lady to enable you to understand what a nurse might be, but that’s beside the point. Do these figures really stack up? Cunningly, the Mail makes no claims as to where these figures have come from or what they represent. Are they average salaries? Median salaries? Or what? Do the figures for ‘nurse’ include nursing assistants, or figures for teachers include teaching assistants? Given that there’s no explanation for them, there’s no way of knowing – except they do seem perplexingly high.
You can see nursing bands here and the actual pay here along with add-ons for working in London, for example, which aren’t extra goodies but just a way of being able to afford to live – so that skews the figures upwards a little. You can see that the highest-paid nursing staff earn £64,118 while the lowest paid earn £12,922. How, then, do you get to £31,225? First, you exclude anyone under Band 5 (all the low earners, essentially, while keeping in the £60k+ employees), then you add on unsocial hours payments (which incidentally are set to decrease over the coming years), overtime and so on. You also don’t regard part-time employees as being part-time, so if they take home £10,000 a year and work 19 hours, you consider them to be earning £20,000. The figures are here and show a 1.6 per cent pay rise for nurses last year, when inflation was 5 per cent.
The Mail, though, keeps failing to mention last year’s good times for the private sector – and the years preceding it. And it becomes clear what it wants. It wants people to suffer:
The Mail, though, keeps failing to mention last year’s good times for the private sector – and the years preceding it. And it becomes clear what it wants. It wants people to suffer:
But British Chambers of Commerce chief David Frost said: ‘Across the country I am hearing of more and more businesses left with no choice but to freeze and cut wages.
‘It is unacceptable that the public sector should not share any of this pain.’
Yes, how dare public sector workers keep jobs and not take pay cuts. They should suffer. For some reason which isn’t very well explained. But they should. They didn’t share the good times, but they must share the bad. Because…? Just because, actually. And that’s the top and bottom of it.
You have to wonder what public sector workers who loyally read the Mail every day should think of all this. Are they pleased with being told they must ’share the pain’, having shared none of the pleasure?
You also have to wonder, by the way, what Mail hacks think about not getting a pay rise when Paul Dacre raked in £1.4million last year. But judging by this evidence, do they deserve one?
Categories: Politics | Tags: agendas, public sector pay
As an ex-public sector worker who has watched a skills drain to the private sector and seen endless poor pay rises, I hope that public sector workers get the reward they deserve.
Until May 2008, I worked for 5 years in the public sector. During that time pay rises were consistently 1.5 – 2% BELOW inflation. Not only that, but your annual incxrement within the pay band (e.g. 1.2%) is added to your pay rise (1.5%) to give a total increase of 2.7%, which is the figure usually quoted in the news. This means that the most experienced workers actually gain a total salary increase of 1.5% per year (at HSE it was 3/4%). Additionally, I know of no public service that isn’t on a 3 year pay deal e.g. 6.5% over 3 years. The Civil Service Pension that new employees (less than 5 years) sign up for is also vastly different to the “fat cat final salary” pensions alluded to by the media.
Several members of my family work for the NHS and I think it’s disgusting how little they get payed for doing jobs that are much more important and difficult than most private sector jobs. But, obviously I’m wrong and the same people who are scare mongering about super-bugs and hospital cleanliness are right, the problem is caused by the public sector workers being slowed down by the huge stacks of money they are carrying.
Brilliant article Anton. I work for an LA and anybody who thinks Councils are immune to the econmic climate are mistaken. In fact it has been as an excuse here to remove ‘priviliges’ such car user allowance (you know so people can actually do their job without dipping into their own pay), shed jobs and glass celing many posts. The private sector do not care about the comparatively poor pay when the climate is in times of boom.
Can I just show my appreciation for this excellent post, I linked the site from its inception.
It is vital there are alternative voices seeking to highlight the hypocrisy of the media – particularly the Daily Mail.
M
I really enjoyed reading this article Anton. It’s a pity that most people will whine about public sector pay in the way that The Mail wants them to, rather than obtain something closer to the truth from this site.
Quite where they get the figure of £31,225 for a nurse’s salary is beyond me. My girlfriend is a full-time, Band 6 nurse [aka "sister", aka "charge-nurse"] and earns around £24k. That includes “antisocial hours” pay, but doesn’t include any London weighting.
That’s a completely standard salary for that level of nursing, for what is actually a relatively senior position — beyond that, you manage a whole ward. Even the next grade up doesn’t earn £30k, as far as I know. Any nurse on £60k will be effectively managing the nursing services for an entire hospital, or even a Healthcare Trust.
Honestly, who reads a paper that believes that the best way to support data like this isn’t a source or explanation, but a picture of a hot blonde? As always, I don’t know whether to laugh or cry.
Brilliant article. The Mail always has an ideological opposition to the public sector, hence the lies and distortions that are always bandied around about it.
The figures for teachers is rubbish to. That is the very top payscale, which takes some years to reach. A teacher (3 years Uni degree, 1 year PGCE at MA level) starts on between 20,000 and 21,000. The figure they quote is silly.
I work in FE and college budgets are being cut each year, with the majority of staff hourly paid on on fractional contracts. It is one of the toughest sectors to work in.
My own public sector employer (which will remain nameless, I like my anonymity) settled for a below inflation pay rise. The unions threatened strike action. My employer basically said “do your worst”. The unions backed down. How does that equate to the government not being willing to take on the unions?
This is an excellent article. Thank you.
The Mail’s attitude to the public sector is, like many things about the mail, completely incoherent.
They are (largely) in favour of ‘hard-working front line staff’, eg. police, nurses, firemen – anyone with blue lights on their car – , warier about teachers, doctors, senior police and social workers (degree qualified staff) and the rest of the public sector are apparently faceless whitehall pen-pushers or pampered QANGOcrats doing non-jobs in the gaps between six months of sick pay (what? where?), diversity training and gloating over a magical money tree pension where they, er, make contributions from their salary into a central fund which is invested.
Basically the mail wants a public sector made of grateful indentured servants working entirely unsupported and not being too greedy.
I too work in the public sector (local government) and while the pay and pay rises are a pittance, the workload has increased without any increase in staff levels. Over the last few years people who have left my office have not been replaced. So jobs take longer to do and the public blame you.
The Mail then tips shit on you for “drinking tea” all day and their readers and the loons on usenet *believe* this idiotic assertion.
As an aside, many years ago I dealt with a work experience pupil whose father was a Tory councillor/bigwig on one of the local authorities around Manchester. He was obsessed with right wing politics and the disdain we got from him was unbelievable. So much so I caught him attempting to introduce a virus into our networks.
I remain convinced to this day that he hated the public sector as a result of brainwashing from his old man.
31k is roughly the average salary (at least around here, I’m not sure of the national average)… I don’t see a problem with nurses getting that at all, so can’t see what the mail is whining about, even on their figures. OTOH of all the nurses/medical people I’ve met not one of them is on near that. It’s a bit of a thankless job, really.
Fantastic article, you’ve certainly done your research, and a number of excellent comments. However, I’d just like to draw the attention of all readers to the group of public sector workers that seem to have been forgotten, i can sort of understand that, there are after all, only about 180,000 of us, and a great number of those are unavailable to comment at the moment, on account of their being overseas, not on holiday or business trips, but fighting in ‘conflicts’ thousands of miles away.
We do not have a three-year pay deal.
Our new pay-scales (if, indeed, they do change) come into effect in five days time, and we still don’t know what they are.
Our new rent and food charges come into effect in five days time, and we still don’t know what they are.
Yesterday there was a full day’s debate in the House Of Commons about Defence, the question of when our pay rise/freeze/cut was asked, and the reply was given: ’soon’.
You would think that the government would show us at least a modicum of respect in announcing the pay details in a timely fashion, but evidently the 100s of service personnel who have given their lives in these ‘conflicts’, and the vast number that have been left with debilitating injuries, are just figures on a piece of paper stored away in the PM’s filing cabinet, probably underneath the Armed Forces Pay Review Body 2009 Report, which was given to the government on 29th January.
Brilliant article – fab web site. So glad to see a voice of opposition to the Mail and what they publish which is all a bit frightening.
I find it crazy that the Mail on the one hand go for the ‘hard working taxpayer’ rhetoric and then on the other propose that jobs be cut, people given slave wages and poor working conditions. They seem to think its great that the private sector do that and the public sector should follow suit (although I fail to see the evidence for is such good conditions in the public sector and bad ones in the private).
I think the Mail just don’t like people really
100% accurate & reasonable as per, kudos.
I should have added that Local Government has recently undergone a nationwide pay evaluation exercise and many council staff have had their pay cut. Some by substantial amounts.
I have worked in the public sector and am due to start again working for a local authority in the next month. What I can say is that the salaries being paid are excessive, particularly in a recession and it is right that the public sector should lead by example after all our salaries and pay rises come from those faced with pay freezes. I would be prepared to take a 2 year pay freeze – no questions asked, and without threatening to strike.
What you would find is that the unions would drag their members out on strike if a pay freeze was suggested, despite the fact that their outrageous wage demands mean year on year cuts to services so that councils can balance the books.
I might add that public sector pay averages have risen in the last couple of years because all low-paid work has been contracted out to private firms and so has vanished off the bottom of the scales. The official figures are not helpful.
Well written article.
I work for a L.A and have done for the last 5 years. What the mail forgets about the public sector is:-
A. No bonuses
B. No share saves
C. Every April as budgets are set redundancy is a risk- this happens without fail. Collegues leave and their workload is passed onto others who already have a full time job to deliver. Services suffer.
D. We do not get free pensions, we pay into them just like everyone else.
E We dont get tea breaks, lunch hours (what is one of those?) or overtime. Services in my area are delivered evenings and weekends-we have to work this as toil time – although there is never any staff cover to get this time back. Tot up my hours and hourly rate and I think I know who will come out the winner-and its not me!
[...] truth, of course, is totally different. Mailwatch dissects the poisonous rhetoric here better than I could. It points to the fact that public sector workers – who are overwhelmingly among the lower-paid [...]
Mr Boombastic above is a clear illustration of why sites like this are needed to combat the Daily Mail’s misrepresentation of the facts – even when you spell out, in detail, why the Daily Mail groupthink is wrong, people will still tell you they believe it!
We all know that the public sector live off the dwindling private sector. Why are people bursting at the seams to get a job there?
I could not have put the comment any better ‘They didn’t share the good times, but they must share the bad. Because…?’
I am employed in the public sector and have been for the last 11 years. Before all the comments of ‘It was your choice to join’ start, Yes it was my choice.
I have a lot of sympathy with people you have lost their jobs in the public or private sector. This is not meant as a crass comment but when times are good like they were a few years ago, I did not see many people jumping on the bandwagon to get me a payrise. Now that I have a below inflation pay rise in the harsh times, I am now informed that I am looking at a pay freeze…..! Well ok no problems, times are hard and I can understand certain decesions behind it. But when the good times role, will I be remembered with an above inflation pay rise like alot of private sector staff…? Dont think so myself, then again I could always become an MP or a banker.
Top article.I work in the Civil Service. 20,000 plus jobs gone from my dept (HMRC) over last few years and more to come. I’ve worked there 21 years and am on the outrageous salary of £19030 with 3 years of 1% pay rises ahead after being shafted for thelast couple of years when inflation was high. Max of the grade below me is £15000, and we’re the grades that do the work. For info to top it off we have now had a new computer system installed which was one of the biggest corporate IT projects done in this country to date and it is diastrous. You have been warned.