Those of you who bothered to read my previous blog about my conversation with a man outside City Hall ‘You’re Just A Bloke In A Suit With A Good Job’ will be pleased to know I have made progress.
My latest encounter did not involve any discussion about my sartorial style or employment it simply involved someone walking past me and stating loudly, and in my direction; “Tosser, your just a tosser”. Clearly a man who can look beyond dress and job title, he should be in recruitment.
The Governments plan to introduce regional pay is morally wrong and economically inept. They are trying to justify an attack on terms and conditions for thousands of public sector workers as making the system fairer, whereas their only intention is to save money.
What we pay people does not simply reflect the economic worth of the job but also the value that society puts on that particular profession. The implication of the Government proposals is that the value they place on a nurse, teacher or social worker in one part of the country is greater or lesser than in another. There is no regional difference in the value of the job to those that need the services provided and no logic to a policy that creates this false differential.
The National Health Service and other National Government bodies are just that, national, and their staff are employed on nationally agreed terms and conditions. This is not unique to Government, as the Tories portray, but is common across all national employers, outside the unique example of London. These national agreements allow staff to transfer for career progression and also for employers to ensure that the skilled staff they need can be deployed as needed, when needed. Regional pay will prevent this flexibility as staff will be less likely to be willing to move to areas where the pay is lower. The affect of this on the level of services provided to the public in those areas where pay is lower can only be surmised but logic dictates that recruitment to posts in some areas will become more difficult with a direct effect on the level and quality of service.
National services; health, education, benefits and pensions etc, should not be reliant on a postcode lottery that is dependent on the ability of that service to attract staff on lower wages than elsewhere in the country. As areas where wages and the cost of living are lower tend to have higher levels of need the Tory/Liberal proposals will create a spiral of decline; lower service provision is areas of greatest need, creating even greater need that cannot be met as professional staff look to work in regions with higher wages.
As well as the social consequences of regional pay policy there will also be major economic consequences.
The coalition government is looking to build on the efforts to decentralise the civil service started by the previous Labour Government. In the latter case this was part of a strategy to strengthen regions and also to try and boost local economies in areas worst hit by the slash and burn economic policies of Thatcher and Major, areas that did not benefit as much as others from the economic recovery. The coalition government has paid lip service to this policy, but it would now appear that their real motive for decentralisation is to enable them to reduce the terms and conditions of their employees.
Decentralisation should and could benefit local and regional economies because it will bring better paid jobs into areas where the economy is weak or depressed, increasing the spending power in the commercial and retail centres and stimulating investment in shops and leisure provision, thereby creating private sector employment and entrepreneurship. At a very local level we have adopted this policy in Bradford, bringing Council staff that had been based in the outskirts of the district to increase footfall and spending power in the commercial heart of the City. We are seeing some of the benefits of this policy now and it will grow in the months and years to come.
At a local or regional level this element of regeneration policy works effectively because of the spending power of these workers in comparison to those in the lower wages paid locally in the private sector. Levelling down the public sector wages, local authority, NHS or civil service, negates any benefit of national decentralisation of staff and weakens the existing local economic base.
Many northern cities rely on the spending power of public sector workers to support their local economies.The level of reliance on the public sector in some areas has been evidenced in numerous reports and the coalition government has highlighted this as a weakness in some cities and regions without coming up with a real policy to redress the balance. To reduce the available spending in a local economy by reducing wages to the local norm, instead of looking at ways of raising that local norm, is an example of voodoo economics that will result in further stagnation of regional economies that are already suffering disproportionately in the recession.
Investors look at the spending power in a local economy when considering alternative investments sites.The governments plans will simply result in economically depressed regions finding it even more difficult to attract inward investment as capital is attracted to those areas where wages are higher and profits more assured. Regional pay will simply cement the economic inequalities we see across the country and further hinder local regeneration efforts.
The North / South divide is already too wide – if these proposals are developed it will become a chasm
dgreen367 