Germany?

was a teacher on TV last night saying that now her and her colleagues won’t be guaranteed a pay rise every year, they’ll be voting with their feet. Presumably they’ll be entering a particular sector of private working where people always get pay rises.

Does anyone know which sector she was talking about?

Yes; a work to rule, so no free lunchtime study support, no sports teams,Duke of Edinburgh, no Ski trips. Oh and there has been no increase for 3 years now so dunno where the automatic pay rise is.

At what point do they say enough is enough? If you act like a doormat then you’ll get walked over. Time to stand up for yourselves.

Yep 5% on income tax and pay rises for all 🙂
While your at it 5p on fuel, 10p on drink and £1 on fags

Rise up comrades! You have nothing to fear but Ed Milliband’s lukewarm support 😆

You’ll get that anyway from this Axis of Evil. But no services in compensation. Maybe those nice multinations, you know, the ones who pay little tax, might just actually put something back into the society that they extract so much from.

Oi thats my photo drop in Binners!

“If you say that to me at work you won’t get any respect it’s such a foolish comment”.

Drac, Hardly think showing respect to those that pay our wages is foolish. You can do something about your personal work situation if you are fed up.

Oops! Sorry! I’ll use this instead Mike

we need a superhero

I already have only one foot in the NHS (the other in a social enterprise trust ‘delivering cut price services for the NHS and not for profit’).

The service I work in is performing marvellously, in fact although profit and loss are rather abstract in a not-for-profit healthcare provder, in the last financial year my part of the service has made a theoretical ‘profit’ equal to 45% of the losses made by the rest of the organisation.

On this basis, and on the basis of the changes in tendering brought about by the health and social care act I fully expect to have our successes recognised/punished (delete as per your political leanings) get ‘cherry picked’ by serco/g4s/virgin at the next re-tendering and be a private sector employee within a couple of years.

…and yet in response to this you’ll still have teachers and nurses working through their breaks, coming in early, staying late etc etc for no additional pay.

Why?

Public sector myself and a couple of my employers tried similar things. The NHS one told us they would stop paying us for the duration of a 12 hour shift, they said that we would be paid for 11.5 hours only as the remaining 30mins was an unpaid break….thats fine we said, we wont be available for those 30mins….they asked us what we meant, it was explained to them that if we’re not being paid then its not work time and we can leave the premises, go into town and wash the car, go to the pub and have a swift half etc etc….they honestly expected us to work through the unpaid break, they even threatened to report us to our registering body for some kind of dereliction of duty nonsense….we contacted our professional register ourselves who agreed with us, if you’re not being paid then you’re not at work….its your time not theirs.
Needless to say panic ensued on their side as they realised ambulances would be off road and unavailable for 30mins each shift….a deal was made whereby we are now handsomely remunerated for going out on a call during our unpaid break….to the extent that the old method of paying us for 12 hrs and having us available for the full 12 hrs was actually cheaper!….this idiots only get away with it because employees let them, i’ve never seen my colleagues in nursing take this kind of stand.

Case in point, i have a private contract too and my immediate boss is a nurse, the shift is from 7am-7pm (and then 7pm-7am)….i arrive on premises at 7am when my contract states and when i start to get paid…nursey tells me i have to phone ahead at 0630 to take handover from the outgoing clinician.
I decide not to do this, it sounds ridiculous.
Nursey tells me again that i have to start phoning in at 0630 to take handover, i ask what the over time rate is?….she asks why i want to know that?….i say i will be claiming for the half hour overtime each shift that she wants me to ring in from 0630.
She tells me i cant do this and it is my professional responsibility to take handover from the outgoing clinician (a thinly veiled threat to report me i reckon)…i tell her i will have her and the firm in court so quickly they wont know what hit them….if the shift starts at 7am but they want me actually engaged on business for them from 0630 then it has to be paid….she backs down and things have returned to sanity.

Again people only behave this way because they think they can get away with it, i’ve lost count of the number of nurses i’ve heard moaning they havent had a break in hospital….its in your contract, work to your contract for gods sake!…it wouldnt take long with everybody doing this for the government to see just how much goodwill is needed from staff to keep services going as they are….sadly there are too many martyrs in public services and each government knows this.

My next step is to take voluntary redundancy and leave the country

Drac, Hardly think showing respect to those that pay our wages is foolish. You can do something about your personal work situation if you are fed up.

Come on then how do you exactly pay my wages? I’m not fed up I love my job, I enjoy what I do, my employer isn’t perfect but damn site better than many, my conditions are pretty good, I get good money Ok I could get more in a private sector but I don’t have a trade outside what I do, my job is as secure as is possible and I get a reasonable pension.

So anyway how do “Pay my wages”?

deviant – Member

if the shift starts at 7am but they want me actually engaged on business for them from 0630 then it has to be paid

I went through the exact same thing back when I worked in a bank branch. “Your working day is 9 to 5 but we need you there from 8.30 to 5.30” “OK that’s cool, is it toil or overtime?” “Oh no, it’s not work, it’s just getting ready for work!” “Well if it’s not work, then you won’t mind if I don’t do it” and so on. Got the gem “You don’t expect to be paid for your commute do you? This is really just part of your commute!” But as you say, so many people just accept it.

(and then my usual beef, the people who just accept shitty treatment always say “everyone does it” even when other people around them don’t, and “you need to do it to get ahead” even though they’re not getting ahead, and then the all-time favourite, “That’s not very fair on your colleagues” when you decline to do the charity work they do.)

My next step is to take voluntary redundancy and leave the country

CS dept where Mrs J works didn’t offer redundancies, they offered Voluntary Exit Scheme and you got a stupid lump sum to **** off. However it was only given to certain employees, the awkward unmanageable one’s who should have been dismissed on performance, but because the management are weak they used the VES to get rid of those who didn’t work, oh and management who took 6 figure lump sums to get out before the ship sank.

Her office has been relocated to Birmingahm (even though original work station has a lease running for another 10 years!!), employers are paying to transport costs in a lump sum to cover 3 years (to be taxed,reclaimed at origianl lump sum figure, reimbursed to be taxed a second time when they use public transport which will be less than the “loan amount”.

And they are now recruiting those positions that were released a couple of years ago.

With management like this were are well and truly screwed!!

julianwilson, “serco/g4s/virgin” You missed Stobbart’s from the list.

Drac, For a chap that’s happy you were doing a bit of complaining about what’s going on in your job, really glad to have that wrong. 🙂

“our” not “my”.

Drac, For a chap that’s happy you were doing a bit of complaining about what’s going on in your job, really glad to have that wrong.

Errr no I wasn’t.

We also have a spare PM you can have, she is British and everything

I reckon she’d be damned effective opposition in the (slightly) more dignified chambers of Westminster

Actually she looks quite attractive there.

She’s always had a bit of “this one time, at band camp” about her.

Good luck! Id rather send over Abbot to make Call me Dave look left wing!

Mrs Daz is currently planning an exit route that involves becoming a gardener. It’s tragic really, she has a job she loves and is damn good at it. But she works for an NHS trust which delivers drug misuse treatment services to a local authority, and the powers that be have decided that she is grossly overpaid, and that they’re better off hiring less qualified people to do her job for 45% less pay. The upshot is that if she wants to continue in her profession long term she’s going to have to swallow a 45% pay cut, and the end of her NHS pension benefits as she’ll be tuped over to a voluntary sector operation. 15 years of hard work, training, experience, and dedication down the drain. Still, that’s ‘efficiency’ for you!

dazh, great example.
Why are we paying people double what is required to do something? Would you pay someone 2x what the other guy charges for the same job?

Public sector should be a provider of services not a charity for those employed by it

Oh Christ!! I think he’s heard you……

Would you pay someone 2x what the other guy charges for the same job?

Yes, given that the dearer person knows what they’re doing and the other cheapo doesn’t as dazh says.

Perhaps because the people getting paid double are doing a 2x better job? You’ll probably question whether that is the case in this example, but the team Mrs Daz works for is a highly professional outfit which has come top regionally (and not far off nationally) in pretty much all the performance indicators. At the same time, the teams which have been farmed out to the voluntary sector using less qualified, and lower paid staff are struggling by the same measurements. So is that charity or getting better value?

Perhaps because the people getting paid double are doing a 2x better job? You’ll probably question whether that is the case in this example, but the team Mrs Daz works for is a highly professional outfit which has come top regionally (and not far off nationally) in pretty much all the performance indicators. At the same time, the teams which have been farmed out to the voluntary sector using less qualified, and lower paid staff are struggling by the same measurements. So is that charity or getting better value?

Ok so not to pick holes but..

Yes, given that the dearer person knows what they’re doing and the other cheapo doesn’t as dazh says.

Does not equal

they’re better off hiring less qualified people to do her job for 45% less pay.

Now Daz has offered some qualification is his wife (unbiased opinion) offering twice the service as the other people?

Judgements like this are not about individuals no matter how much they impact them. They are about the bigger picture, you cannot make decisions about people when you know them.

dazh, great example.
Why are we paying people double what is required to do something? Would you pay someone 2x what the other guy charges for the same job?

Because, whilst on paper, the ‘expensive’ person might look to be poor value compared to the cheaper prospect, in practice that’s rarely the case.

The race to the bottom rarely results in any winners.

Or perhaps there are times when we are paying the wrong person to do things – see the above comment on efficiency and the greatest waste being talent. Get the right people doing the right thing.

mikewsmith – Member

dazh, great example.
Why are we paying people double what is required to do something?

Because it’s often worth paying more for more qualified people. I’m sure we could hire some people on minimum wage to do a lot of our jobs but I think we’ll stick with the PhDs.

But what if we don’t need to? Why pay a Dr when a nurse can do the job? Is there something wrong with the idea of paying the right amount to get a job done? Just because we have previously paid for an uber expert do we always have to?

Like they’ve done at ATOS and the disability living allowance claims?

That’ll save money, won’t it? Simply remove the need for trained medical staff to do evaluations, in favour of untrained monkeys ticking boxes. What could possibly go wrong?

The only problem being that 40% of the decisions are being appealed, then upheld. Costing a fortune!

Love it that the folk who are currently living in the antipodean paradise are so keen to discuss public sector workers on the other side of the world 😆

Are you missing home? 😉

Thanks Pigface, only been gone a year and know all about how screwed up the PS is, see my first post it’s not about those doing but the whole organisation. I paid enough to fund the cess pit that middle management has become.

Now Daz has offered some qualification is his wife (unbiased opinion) offering twice the service as the other people?

That’s impossible to quantify. However in the area of drug treatment services, the price of poorer services is more deaths of drug users, more chaotic drug users, and fewer drug users accessing treatment. This ultimately ends up costing the state more in terms of NHS bills, crime, benefits, social care for children etc. Also the fast reducing number of qualified social workers and nurses in the profession are used to dealing with complex cases which span other areas (eg child protection & safeguarding, crime, public protection etc), which their less qualified colleagues are not. This amplifies the end cost to society as it’s the complex cases which see the largest reduction in quality of service. Like I said, it all comes down to value, and getting what you pay for.

That’s impossible to quantify. However in the area of drug treatment services, the price of poorer services is more ….

Actually what you are talking about is quantifiable, that is what you are talking about. I am not saying your wife does not do a good job but across the wider CS there needs to be assessments to make sure where needed the specialists are doing the right job, and in other cases the non specialists are doing the other jobs.

I am not 100% agreeing with current government policy but suggesting that a review of services and providers may be a good thing and might free up cash to put expensive resources where they will do most good rather than wherever they happen to be.

I don’t disagree with reviewing services and targeting spending where it’s most needed. That has happened in my wife’s profession and they are a much more efficient and successful operation now than they were 4 years ago. However, the budgets are still being cut and the NHS providers can’t compete with the voluntary providers who are under-cutting them by using less qualified and experienced staff (whilst claiming that service quality won’t be affected). The upshot is that an entire generation of highly skilled, qualified and dedicated people are now leaving or are being forced to leave the public sector. In terms of making an organisation more efficient, and maintaining/improving quality, that seems to be a very odd way of achieving it.

mikewsmith – Member

But what if we don’t need to?

“Need” is the wrong word. If a more qualified person doesn’t give an equivalent improvement in results, then maybe we shouldn’t have them in that job. Any reason to believe that’s the case here? (and please don’t say the cut suggests it is, that’s crazy talk)

*
There was a teacher on TV last night saying that now her and her colleagues won’t be guaranteed a pay rise every year, they’ll be voting with their feet. Presumably they’ll be entering a particular sector of private working where people always get pay rises.
Does anyone know which sector she was talking about?

private sector teaching, more pay, longer holidays and same pension!

work(ed) in the public sector- cancer research – we get no overtime ever and every contract says that we will have to work extra hours as required. The industry isnt doing very well at the moment, I was made redundant 6 mths ago and feedback im getting is that theres ever more candidates looking for fewer jobs the pay freeze is just a pay cut really , Ive got 3 interviews next week all for jobs equivalent to my old position but with 10-25% pay decrease

144. 0000 jobs lost from private sector would bring a huge outcry and additional funding for the prostrate sector……..I do mean that as well…….the farce of G4S in the Olympics saved the police force from privatisation.

The concept that public sector worker are lazy feckers and all private sector is wonderful is a simplistic failure of logic and common sense.

Worked for both and seen more waste in the private sector and ‘perks’ than in the public sector.

I agree most public sector workers are there for the communities they serve.

Losing 144, 000 jobs is a lot and will effect the economy, Osbourne made a political I wanna be like thatcher and challenge the unions is senseless and stupidity

significant savings to the budget can be made without killing the private sector or the public.