[Closed] Look what our local council are doing, pay cuts

Pretty much what is happening across the board. Probably find deep down that the new contract also takes them out of the pension scheme.

Interesting use of wording though. What was "Affordable" now becomes "fair", mainly thanks to the fact that the pensions system in Scotland was self-funding (according to ATL), but this use of fair hides many unfairnesses.

But feel free to get laid into them. after all everyone deserves a little misery in these times of austerity.

did liam fox really get compensation for resigning his post?

wheres the austerity there?

Who is liam fox, some bloke who takes his freind to work, he got 17000 quid compo for loss of his job.

But how are they allowed to do it.

By employing very expensive lawyers (I suspect my old employers) who will have charged the council several hundred thousand pounds for what is complex and technical advice. Which is never a good use of taxpayer's money.

There's a very narrow loophole in the law that enables them to abuse the rights of employees in this way. So what if you're the chief exec on £250k pa, but rather galling for the significant number of council employees who are already struggling to make ends meet.

Presumably you'll be gloating at them, eh project?

The gov are changing the law to make it legal. Not a bad trick if you can get away with it, which they will. Just feed the Mail some "council work driving Ferrari" story and away it goes.

There's a very narrow loophole in the law ......

It's always been the case that employers can sack their workforce without any reason. The only legal requirement is that they are "fair" and sack everyone.

Presumably you'll be gloating at them, eh project?

I would never gloat at peeps loosing a wage, unless theyre overpaid to start with, eg an Mp, or camerooooooon.

Can they just sack people without any redundancy?

seems so

[url= http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-hampshire-14480727 ][/url]

southampton have already done something similar.

I hate to see people suffer employment wise but when ever I deal with a local authority person they are typically slow to respond, not very helpful, work short hours, take no ownership for what they are saying or doing and generally are pi$$ poor. Plenty of similiar in private sector but at least they don't get a full fat pension, shed loads of holiday, extra sick pay and a cushy job for life. All in all LA staff have had it coming to them for years. Sorry but its true.

h45, dont hide anything, let it all out.

TJ to the forum please.

All it would take is for the workforce to call their bluff and refuse to accept the change in contracts - the council could not sack all its employees it has a statutory duty to provide the service and it cannot do so without the staff.

.........a full fat pension, shed loads of holiday, extra sick pay and a cushy job for life. All in all LA staff have had it coming to them for years.

That's what the Bullingdon Boys like to hear ....... don't demand a better deal for private sector workers - demand a worse deal for public sector workers ! And ffs don't blame the bankers if life is getting a little difficult.

Suckers.

As I understand it dismissal and reengagement is only permissable if it applies to all employees. But if you have employees on minimum wage you cannot reduce their wage further. Therefore not everybody is being treated equally, does this therefore mean that it's not legal?

(I'm all for more unequal treatment by the way, I don't see any unfairness in halving the chief executives salary whilst not reducing that of someone who is earning 14 grand a year, but unfortunately dismissal and reengagement can't work like that)

I disagree hh. I've worked for a private and public consultant. I was paid around £8k a year more privately, got a car allowance and a small bonus around christmas. Currently work in a local authority consultancy, same type of work as we have to bid to win it, same hours as we are constrained by client budget, less pay, no car allowance, no bonus, I get 5 more days holiday and pension is slightly better at the moment. Once the construction industry picks up Ill probably return to private employment.

I have dealt with many private companies that I don't know how they survive, totally bad public relations. It totally depends on the company or person you deal with in my experience.

That's what the Bullingdon Boys like to hear ....... don't demand a better deal for private sector workers - demand a worse deal for public sector workers ! And ffs don't blame the bankers if life is getting a little difficult.

You are right, bankers did alot to get us into this $hitty position and may they rot in hell for it but the point here is that LA staff were overpaid for under delivering for years and it was only New Labour largesse (that was up there with bankers for deserving blame) that allowed this to continue for so long. And now its catching up with them.

How do you work out overpaid and underdelivering?

How do you work out overpaid and underdelivering?

Read it in the Daily Mail ?

Thats my guess. Like all employees council ones vary from dedicated professionals to bumbling amateurs.

Like all employees council ones vary from dedicated professionals to bumbling amateurs.

Although council employees are less likely to be amateurs and more likely to be better qualified than their private sector counterparts - daddy owning the company won't get you very far in the public sector.

you may be flattering them with "work out" TJ

How do you work out overpaid and underdelivering?

Easy. Paid say £25,000 when £20,000 would be enough (hence 'overpaid') and then to add insult to injury not even be very good at the job, (hence to 'under deliver').

iirc dont the large majority of council employees already earn under the national average wage?

Surely the council has to legally look at all options before moving to redundancy which includes establishing if anyone is prepared to take a pay cut or have their contractual conditions changed.

you have defined what the words mean not why they apply to all public sector workers ...see you were flattering TJ 😉
You need to explain/prove they are overpaid - not give me a hypothetical example- and now explain why they are not delivering.

So explain why a new entrant is overpaid and why teachers underperform - perhaps you can use exam results as proof of the later

Easy. Paid say £25,000 when £20,000 would be enough (hence 'overpaid') and then to add insult to injury not even be very good at the job, (hence to 'under deliver').

So tell me hh45, every time you deal with a local authority employee do you ask them for details of their wages and conditions, and then give them a "performance" mark, which you then compare with the wages & conditions of every private sector employee which you have dealings with and which you have similarly marked for performance?

What percentage of Britain's local authority employees do you think you have managed to process so far? And how do you find time to get on with your job and earn a living?

Likewise earnie presumably you research all private sector company employees you come in contact to check whether their parents own the company? ? 😀 ****ing love stw I do!

Likewise earnie presumably you research all private sector company employees you come in contact to check whether their parents own the company? ? **** love stw I do!

😀 Are you suggesting that some LA employees have a job only because 'daddy owns the company' ? Or are you suggesting that no one in the private sector has ever had a job because 'daddy owns the company' ? ......what [i]are[/i] you saying ?

And how does me saying "less likely" translate into me saying "all private sector company employees" eh? ......explain that one too please.

So just a thought, you don't get MPs employing members of there family as researchers? Or getting nice jobs in Brussels? etc.

Although council employees are less likely to be amateurs and more likely to be better qualified than their private sector counterparts - daddy owning the company won't get you very far in the public sector.

When I read that I presumed you were implying that private sector workers are "amateurs" and that they get where they do in a company because their "daddy" owns the company.

Now i realise you didnt mean anything by it, the daddy comment was just a bit of a troll :~)

Safe to say their are lazy chunts in both the public and private sectors. I think you should have to earn your rights on both sides rather than just expecting them.

😛

One thing that's being missed here is that public bodies can't go bust so there's no incentive to work hard. If a private firm is rubbish they go bust or really struggle. Also, I'm not forced to use the services of rubbish private firms - if I don't like what I get for my money, I go elsewhere.

With public bodies, I'm forced to pay for them, often upon pain of imprisonment, even if I don't want / or like what I get.

I've seen useless,lazy idiots on both sides - it's just that there's a lot more of them in the public sector.

And if it makes any difference, I hate New Labour, who built the economic house of cards, just as much as I hate the bankers who brought it all down on our heads.

it's just that there's a lot more of them in the public sector.

Really? Evidence? I have seen far more in private sector myself

why are some councils seem completely screwed with huge savings to be made and yet cheshire west only having to save £9m per year?

chunky paul - the way the cuts are being done it means greater cuts in area of greatest need.

As a teacher I think it is a great idea that the overpaid support staff are getting pay and conditions chopped. My life is going to be so much easier now I don't have to do any activities such as DoE/rugby club/school trips etc. Because without the support staff none of these things will run in my school,or if I think about it,either of the other two I have worked in. But as long as the council doen't look at WHY support staff get overtime/shift allowance they should sleep easy in their beds.

Funnily enough TJ I've never seen a formal report into competence levels in the different sectors. However, having had a mix of private and public clients, I can honestly say that working with public clients is generally like pulling teeth - no one takes reponsibility for anything, decisions are all by committee so are watered down, they're all out the door on the dot and they're more concerned with politics rather than results. There are some real stars but they're few and far between.

The private sector isn't perfect by any measure, but at least I'm not forced to pay for their services/products if I don't like them.

So you don't have any gas or electric? figures.

This BS is happening accross the board. My little part time, local authority job has just been 'vanished'. It's not too bad for me - I'm self employed and the two shifts a week just got me out of the house and away from the computer for eight hours a week.

However, there are / were loads of us on a PVH (permanent, variable hours) contract - some of us working up to 40 hours a week who have all suddenly had the carpet pulled out from under us. People with mortgages and kids.

Three years ago they did away with guaranteed hours contracts and we all found ourselves fighting for shifts on PVH contracts. We were suddenly employed on an as-and-when-required basis, with no onus on the City of Sunderland Council to give us any hours at all.

So last month, when the new boss was told to cut staffing hours, those of us without 'proper' contracts were the easy target and we were informed we no longer had jobs. We would be kept on the books, so no redundancies / payouts, and we might get called in once a month to cover sickness / holidays if we waited with our caps in our hands....

No fat pensions for us - in fact; no job at all. hh45 - you are dangerously mis-informed.

can they do it.. get to your local tesco where they do it every week to one group of employees or another.. i know i used to 'manage' the process

the key is 'your' not redundant your 'role' is, we want you, we need you but the best we can offer is this similar sounding job that in practice is much like your old job so much so you might struggle to find a difference except in your pay pension etc etc..

Given the company I work for makes some of it's money from private sector outsourcing I can certainly say there's an incredible amount of wastage out there in the private sector (bloated salaries, people employed but not actually doing anything productive, poorly negotiated supplier contracts) etc. Probably no better than the public sector in that regard - the different being though that wastage isn't funded by taxes. My admittedly very limited experience in the public sector is the front-line staff are pretty varied (some very dedicated, some it's just another job etc.) but the middle management are piss-poor.

Would anyone like to know the truth of what the letter said? It's sat in my kitchen as Mrs Tthew received it today. Luckily for us, she doesn't get the extra parts of the wage that are getting cut but some of these are pretty draconian. The worst one to my mind is no shift/overnight pay for care workers.

It seems to me that eventually councils will be staffed very low quality staff who can't get employments elsewhere as that's all the wages will attract.

Now i realise you didnt mean anything by it, the daddy comment was just a bit of a troll :~)

It's very clear what I meant ....... nepotism is, as I said, "less likely" to occur in a local council than in the private sector - I don't think many people would argue with that.

And I am surprised that I apparently need to elaborate, I'll give you an example anyway.......the site agent on the site I'm working on at the moment is the managing director's son. He left university 2 years ago he has no qualifications in construction (he did economics at university) not even a trade background, and no experience. He is in fact clueless.

He's a nice enough lad - impressively sharp, and I get on well with him, but he is understandably completely unable to make decisions which you would expect someone in his position to make. The job would run far better and more efficiently if someone with appropriate qualifications and experience was looking after it.

There is pretty much zero chance of a simular situation occurring in a local authority - the Borough Engineer can't decide that he will make his unqualified and inexperienced son manager of some department simply because he needs a job. If such a situation did occur, it would be a costly scandal which would attract the attention of the national media. HTH

.

One thing that's being missed here is that public bodies can't go bust so there's no incentive to work hard. If a private firm is rubbish they go bust or really struggle.

I'm amazed how some people keep hammering this myth that public sector simply equates to poor value for money and services, whilst private sector means good value for money and services.

Yes there are of course examples of competition in the private sector providing excellent value for money and service, for me one of the best examples is Tesco. But there is no evidence that a democratically accountable public body doesn't feel the need to provide value for money and a high level of service. The fact that the very survival of those who make executive decisions is dependant on satisfying their customers puts enormous pressure in them - they are constantly threaten by competition from political rivals. And their performance is assessed by their customers regularly - they can in effect go "bankrupt/bust" every four years.

There are plenty of examples of the public sector providing far better value for money than the private sector - Britain's "socialised" healthcare is an excellent example of this.

And as it so happens, this afternoon I was obliged to phone my local council due to refuse collection problems concerning a new recycling scheme (private contractor) it took just a few minutes for the council to deal with my call - that in itself was impressive considering they are having council wide problems with their new scheme, and the geezer at the other end quickly resolved the issues to my satisfaction.

Contrast that with when I recently lost internet connection for 4 weeks. In that situation despite a multitude of phone calls to everyone and his dog, including countless ones to Mumbai, what I received was an endless stream of lies and information, before [i]privately owned[/i] Orange and BT eventually got their act together and reconnected me ...... they couldn't have cared less, despite their constant "apologies".

[i][b]"If a private firm is rubbish they go bust or really struggle."[/b][/i]

Nonsense - there is no guarantee of that. There are plenty of private firms which rip-off their customers and provide crap services and still stay in business. Often making huge profits and not [i]"really struggling"[/i] at all.

And I'm not just talking about the big boys either - you only have watch Rogue Traders for the more extreme examples of small firms ripping off their customers.

Securing a 'sale' is often all that motivates a private firm, with no consideration at all to the long-term consequences for the customer. In the construction industry houses built to be sold on the open market is a good example of that, specially when compared to houses built for a local council. I could elaborate and waffle on, but I reckon that's enough for now.

[i]All it would take is for the workforce to call their bluff and refuse to accept the change in contracts[/i]

tbh Individual employees could do this too, especially the ones near pensionable age and/or who want out.

And £3.9m divided by 9000 employees averages out at over £4k each...

Not an inconsiderable amount.