What should be done about Public Sector pay?

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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...

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

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

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.

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!

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..

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)?

No Mazie the living wage is the law. We have an apprentice to whom we have to pay the living wage .

No of course I'm not saying that private sector employers break the law. I'm saying equivalent private sector jobs tend to pay the basic lawful wage, whereas the public sector tend to pay a bit more than that.

I thought the private sector had to pay the living wage.
So how can the living wage be quite a bit better in the NE than most equivalent jobs in the private sector?

The living wage is the law.

Isn't it a 'Minimum wage' rather than a 'Living wage' (the two not necessarily being the same thing)

But here in the NE it's quite a bit better than most equivalent jobs in the Private sector.

So, are you saying, gillybob that in the NE the private sector employers are illegally underpaying their staff?

The government doesn't have money itself, it's private sector taxpayers money.

Where on earth do you get that strange idea from, primroses? Does the Treasury have a series of little pots into which they put: Private sector employees' tax receipts, Public sector employees' tax receipts, VAT receipts, Corporation tax receipts, Private sector NI receipts, Public sector NI receipts etc. and then dib out all the public sector payments from the Private sector pot?

Someone asked a while ago what you are studying for your Masters. Would you be willing to tell us?

The living wage is the law. I can't imagine any public sector workers are paid the basic living wage though. I know my sister (who is ion the lowest grade) is paid more than the living wage. Plus a contribution to her traveling expenses.

Not saying it is necessarily a living wage ( a wage you could live on) in some parts of the country. But here in the NE it's quite a bit better than most equivalent jobs in the Private sector.

I thought that the reason for the rise was the rise in interest ww .

There are enough doctors and nurses to go round but too many of them are going for agency work instead of permanent jobs. They get to pick their hours and get a vastly improved rate of pay which undoubtedly offsets and more the lack of pension provision. They should be ashamed of themselves.

There are enough doctors and nurses to go round but too many of them are going for agency work instead of permanent jobs. They get to pick their hours and get a vastly improved rate of pay which undoubtedly offsets and more the lack of pension provision. They should be ashamed of themselves.

I assume good teachers, nurses, police, etc are a necessity. The public sector touches everyone, surely those workers need to feed their families and must have at least a living wage?

My understanding is that salary is not the unique thread running through recruitment issues across the public sector. Teachers have different issues to firemen, for example.
A pay increase might help, but Labour costed this at £9 billion a year to lift the 1% cap. That's a lot of money to throw at 'might'.

So when there aren't enough teachers to ensure children are properly educated, or enough nurses to care for hospital patients or enough firefighters to cover emergencies.... I could go through the whole lot -police, ambulance etc. But you get the picture- these professions are losing staff and failing to recruit new people. What will happen? A pay increase might help.
Smileless2012 It isn't fraud to take advantage of a system. Your friend wasn't responsible for his own redundancy, or for the fact that the authority chose to outsource work. Blame the theory that says it is better to use agency workers rather than employ staff because you don't have to pay for holidays. NI etc.