What should be done about Public Sector pay?

Maisie, no, I don't think that's how it works at all!
Where do you think the 'pot' come from (apart from government borrowing, of course)?

If you don't think that's how it works why did you make such a daft statement?

Governments can create their own money. Where did £445 billion for quantitative easing come from? It wasn't borrowed, nor did it come from taxation..

This is going to get dull, I can feel it - commercial banks create money as debt. Governments don't create money.

I didn't say anything about all the little pots - that was your 'daft' statement!

gillybob I can assure you there's plenty of public sector workers on the living wage or as near a damn it - and many with no chance of progression because that was scrapped years ago. Dudley council has staff on £15014 a year - that £7.80 an hour. Councils in Scotland have whole pay bands that are topped up to the living wage (salaries between £12k and £14k pa) It's rife. I'm talking about the Civil Service and the Public Service. One thing that people don't always know is that although the grading systems are the same, the rate of pay for each grade varies "a lot". These days a job is often advertised at a certain salary or grade and apart from a 'cost of living' increase (currently capped at 1%), that's what the employee gets - end of. My DH works in the Department of Transport and the starting salary for the lowest grade is £4k a year more than the DWP (probably the lowest pay scale in the civil service). Please believe me when I say there's thousands, if not hundreds of thousands low paid public sector workers. As someone else said, it really is not a case of public sector = good and private sector = bad. Successive governments have tried to make the public sector like the private sector and to a large extent that has happened.

That's interesting Wilma It's not what I expected. I'll sleep on that.

I was confused about Minimum Wage and Living Wage.

It turns out that there's a National minimum wage, payable by law; a National Living wage, payable to over 25s but really just the National minimum wage renamed.

Then there is the Living Wage, which has nothing at all to do with the government or legal wage rates.

Start

The Living Wage shouldn’t be confused with the government’s National Living Wage – one difference being that it isn’t enforceable by law. Companies can voluntarily adopt it, but know that it means paying a higher sum of money to staff.

Here’s why. Promoted by the Living Wage Foundation and calculated annually by the Resolution Foundation, it’s a benchmark and recommendation of what it will take now – not years down the line – to improve living standards. TUC general secretary Frances O’Grady explained: “Unlike the government’s NLW, the real Living Wage is based on a review of the evidence on what is currently happening to people.”

The Living Wage rate currently stands at £8.45 an hour, with the London Living Wage separately calculated as being £9.75 per hour. And while the Living Wage Foundation welcomed the government’s NLW, it claimed the lowest level of pay currently estimated for a comfortable London life was already higher than what the NLW will be in 2020.

End

realbusiness.co.uk/current-affairs/2017/02/01/difference-between-national-living-wage-national-minimum-wage/

Just in case anyone else is interested

I didn't say anything about all the little pots - that was your 'daft' statement!

I know, Primroses. Your daft statement was the one about the government not having any money as it was all private sector's taxpayers money.

Think about it.

I do hope your Masters isn't in economics...

Maisie you are right. David Cameron's government renamed the legal Minimum Wage the National Living Wage. The Living Wage Foundation was already campaigning for a Living Wage and accused the government of hijacking the name. The Living Wage is higher than the National Living Wage and some companies have chosen to pay the Living Wage. I think Lidl was one of the first to announce this.

livingwage.org.uk/living-wage-programmes/accredited-employers

Just in case you only want to deal with those companies that pay the living wage - the proper one- to encourage the others to join in.
It shouldn't be voluntary.

dj I didn't know about that list - thanks.

primrose I will add that when someone is leaving a job (for what ever reason), if they're well thought of then they'll usually be helped by management, HR, etc. to get the most out of the system. Of course, there's always those who know the system inside out and use it to their advantage.

You're welcome, Wilma.
If you go on the map you can see where they are.
If you notice any discrepancies, you can let them know.
There was a bank in my village shown on the map, which had been closed two years ago.
It was removed after I informed them.

www.ifs.org.uk/uploads/publications/comms/r97.pdf

The IFS report on Public Sector Pay is full of useful information. Although it's from late 2014, salaries in both sectors have stagnated, so it's still more accurate than guesswork.

The minimum wage only applies to those under 25. The legal living wage applies to everyone else . As I have said many times before we only pay the living wage to one person (and older apprentice). The other employees are qualified engineers who are paid way more.

I am not arguing as to how much over the living wage those lowest band public sector workers get wilma it may be only £1 per hour more or even 20p I only said that in most cases (and in the case of my sister who is on the lowest band) she gets a bit more than the equivalent administrator (in our area) who is in the private sector. Employers can be cheeky and only employ someone younger than 25 so as not to have to pay the living wage. Okay they can't say that directly but they refer to them as a "trainee" or an "apprentice" to get round it which is rubbish.

Just to (roughly) quantify low pay in the public sector, 30% earn £10 hour or less, which is just under £20k a year. Only chosen as this is easy to see on the graph. In the private sector, 50% earn that. This is 1.5 million people in the public sector and 13.25 million in the private sector.

I am talking about my area primrose the North East of England where wages are typically way below average. There is no way an administrator would earn £10 an hour round here I can assure you.

We can't use averages as I can imagine how much difference there will be with say London and Tyneside .

The minimum wage ONLY applies to those under 25?
When I was 25 I had two children and we were buying our third home, having got on our bikes for better pay.

Age discrimination is illegal, except when this government says so.
24 year olds have the same needs as 26 year olds. I don't think a landlord will ask for lower rent from a 24 year old. They'll have to pay the same for food and council tax. This discrimination should be illegal.

1
© Institute for Fiscal Studies 2014
Executive Summary
Average Pay in Public and Private Sectors

In raw terms, pay levels are higher in the public sector than in the private
sector. However, after accounting for differences in education, age and where
workers live, the differences are much smaller. Among men, the average
public sector pay differential in 2013
–
14 was close to zero, while among
women it was around 8%.

From the IFS link.
So men in the public sector do not get paid more than men in the private sector. Women do.

It's all broken down by areas too. Lower paid in London and the South East, everywhere else there's a premium in working for the public sector. It's not poorly paid work.

It's also low-risk work, financially. No one has to borrow from the bank for machinery or decide whether to pay themselves or their staff if an order doesn't come in.

The difference is not between public sector or someone owning a business!
All the TAs in my county are having their pay cut this year. Hour for hour work they can earn less than the living wage now and many are expected to teach whole classes.
Every council in the country is and has been cutting numbers; every school is having to cut staff.

I noticed at PMQs that May said that there were 7800 more police signed up last year. What she didn't say was how many had left, although police numbers are down overall.

One of the worst paid and most put upon jobs is that of a Teaching Assistant. they earn on average £7.06 -£10.06. They are currently having their wages effectively cut by many authorities. Read about it here www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/annachristina-connelly/teaching-assistant_b_10611964.html
It is poorly paid Primrose65 and there is no chance of being paid any extra even when you stay late because someone's mum is late or you have to clear away paint/toys/mess.

Are teaching assistants allowed to teach a whole class? If that's happening regularly across a county and it's not an appropriate task, I'm surprised the NUT or other unions are not on the case. Mary Bousted was talking about teachers salaries on the Moral Maze link I posted, she implied there was no issue with salaries.

Read trisher's link. Teaching assistants are not teachers, but can be asked to teach a full class. I know some who do.
It's not just this county, it's all over the country.

Excellent link, trisher.
Unless people know teaching assistants, they do not really know what they do, or how they are being exploited.

The living wage is now set at £9.15 an hour in London and £7.85 an hour in the rest of the UK. By comparison, the national minimum wage is significantly lower. Since October 2014, the national minimum wage has been £6.50 an hour for adults aged 21 and over, and £5.13 for those aged 18 to 20.

For the umpteenth time we pay living wage to one person who is a 25 year old apprentice. He is not trained and does not earn any money for the company. We also have to pay his full training fees ( several thousands of pounds) plus full employers national insurance and pension etc.

It sounds as though the terms and conditions of the job have changed more in line with private sector working - some on zero hours contracts, part-time instead of full time etc.
Is that a fair working assumption?