Mick Pinel
THE Island’s manual workers want £1,000 more each in wages despite the declaration of a public-sector pay freeze for the next 12 months.
A claim has been submitted by the union representing the 1,500 States and parish manual workers which will cost taxpayers’ £1.5 million if it is successful.
The workers also want a one-hour cut in their working week to 37 hours to bring them into line with other public-sector employees.
And it seems that the manual workers will be the first of a number of employee groups to challenge the declaration from ministers and States Chief Executive Bill Ogley that there will be no increase in wages for public employees in the 12 months from the end of June.
The pay claim comes while States budgets are running at multi-million-pound deficits and are expected to do so for at least another two years. Many in the private sector face pay freezes and job insecurity this year.
States head of employee relations Mick Pinel confirmed that he had received the pay claim and would be responding in due course.
Article posted on 30th June, 2009 - 2.58pm
58 Article Comments
“The States manual workers want £1,000 more in wages” who doesn’t?
Tell them to wake up, they can have nothing like the rest of us.
Report abuse
All i hear every year is some form of states workers wanting pay rises. They will go on strike until something happens and the unions will kick up a big fuss as usual.
Why not use the 1,500,000 in extra wages to help all the umeployed and redundant people get back on their feet through training and assistance.
States workers are generally greedy and always want more, more, more.
I cant stand most of the descisions made by our government but it is right to put a pay freeze on the workers. After all the states workers should be glad that they have secure jobs which is priceless at the moment.
Report abuse
we all would like this but don’t they
understand that to ask for to much
means departments have to cut costs
so that people my lose their jobs just
to pay them and it might even be one of ones
asking think on
Report abuse
Its about time that they joined in with the real world. They are lucky enough to have a job. get on with it and stop moaning.
Report abuse
1) have the States Members themselves rec’d a payrise. lets not forget that the delay they put on their paytalks automatically gave then a pay rise.
2 Who has had a payrise this year not me.
3 how long will it take for Squeaky and his merry men/woman to cave in????? (Days or weeks)
Report abuse
So the states manual workers want a £1,000 pay rise?
Who is going to pay for it?? They should face the decision we had. If you want a pay rise fine – but the will be job cuts to pay for it.
Its time they realised that the world we live in today can’t afford such extravagence – and if they don’t like it they can join us in the private sector!!!!
Report abuse
Typical union bleating. If the situation was properly explained to manual workers I reckon the reasonable ones (i.e. most) would accept the pay freeze.
Report abuse
It is virtually certain that they will receive a pay rise.
I doubt they will get a £1000 but I would lay odds on them getting a useful £200 – £500 each.
Some States employees will get a ‘back door’ payrise by being given a few more scale points.
Report abuse
I have to ask how much will the managers in charge of these workers be getting? Does anyone think their wages will be frozen? As they earn a lot more it makes economic sense to freeze their wages doesn’t it?
Report abuse
Let me get this straight… they want more money to do less hours…?
RIGHT!
I wish I could throw those kinds of demands around. Most (like me) in the private sector agreed to a pay freeze to keep our job security as long as possible. If these people get given a pay rise and redundancies come as a result of this, I suggest that the ones insisting on pay rises go first!!!
Report abuse
Why not give them the pay rise. Then when the redundancies come then maybe the manual workforce will be reduced to levels that suit the workload.
I’m sure I’m not the only one who notices that every time you pass manual workers out on a job there are generally more men present than seems to be required – one working whilst the others look on waiting for their turn to do their particular bit. Can they not multi task – surely the man who digs could also sweep? Or is that against untion rules for job preservation?
Report abuse
Give them some of that “Loyalty Bonus Money” that the JT Boys are getting, keep them quiet for a while…
Report abuse
all those who think the manual workers should agree to take a pay freeze bear this in mind.in the last year rents have gone up food has gone up electricity and other fuels have all gone up,transport practicly everything has gone up even without the gst.
so in real terms they are actually paying 10/15% more in real terms than last year.
why don.t other working class people stand by them for once.not holding my breath as i think the working class are their own worse enemy.when push comes to shove they never stick together and the boss always win
Report abuse
Impose taxes on the finance industry to pay these workers. I am sure all the office buddies would moan like hell if the streets were not kept clean or the toilets didn’t flush
Report abuse
I had my comment ready, then I read ‘Bella’ No 13 who has said virtually what I wanted to say. May I add How many in the ‘finance’ sector’ receive an annual ‘bonus’ and How much do politicians award themselves every year ?
So many people in Jersey ‘look down’ at ‘working class’ and don’t need a trade union to speak up for them.
Report abuse
I for one would like to ask if the working hours go down to 37 hours a week does this mean more money in overtime? I also agree why when going past states workers on the street why are most of them standing around doing nothing apart from wasting time to make up there hours!
We all know that the states and parish workers have a cushy number going on! We are all having to pay the same money on fuel, food and other items. we have had a pay freeze too! so i think its a bit much to ask, maybe remove some of the workers to get the money back in there own department.
Also why can the states traffic wardens park on yellow lines to go and book people. Thats illegal!
Report abuse
Red Robbo.
Its called income tax and GST and without the “office buddies” these people would not have jobs in the first place never mind a pay rise!
Report abuse
Tricky:
Public sector workers, particularly those who undertake the less pleasant tasks, do not depend upon the presence of the finance industry for their respective jobs. Toilets will need servicing whether the office buddies are here or not.
We do not owe our living to those who inhabit offices. Thank you.
Report abuse
Amazing! The very people who voted in favour of this detest GST. Yet GST would have to no doubt go up if such idiotic spending was approved. I am glad this little group of States members are losing all the time because they evidently have no common sense and this year to date are proving to be a wasted vote.
Report abuse
Orange Robbo
Oh yes you do. The finance industry generates the only real source of income this island has now that it has destroyed the tourism and farming industries. No money in the states coffers equals no jobs for anyone including the public sector.
Report abuse
Give everybody £1000 and put tax up to cover. Then we will all be happy! Otherwise if states workers do get a rise than they should be subjected to the same working practices as those in the private sectors like unpaid overtime, ambitious targets, no job security and certainly remove the final salary guaranteed pension.
Report abuse
Bella #13
The lower paid manual workers already get paid about 20% more than their private sector counterparts. How can you justify increasing that gap further?
Report abuse
Those of you in the private sector; if you’re unhappy with your pay, join a union and complain through them. Otherwise stop having a go at folk trying to improve their lot. The types that bash measly rises for the low paid are the same that defend the tax dodgers as ‘within their rights’.
Report abuse
Tricky
Do you have any idea what happens to your poo after you’ve flushed, and what would happen if those dealing with it did not ?
We all work hard at our individual jobs, we all think were overworked and underpaid, but most of all we all need other to keep this community going.
(will all those who don’t agree please excuse my use of the royal we.
Report abuse
joker -pay the private sector more or match the same as the states employees,only downside to this would mean less obscene profits for the bosses.
Report abuse
Joker 22
Not in all areas otherwise why did someone I know have to take a pay cut moving from private to public sector?
Report abuse
How many people working in finance have had a rise or bonus this year? We are lucky to still have jobs and the banks are making the most of it by freezing pay and not replacing staff that leave….welcome to the real world in finance where they don’t pay us overtime any more and with less staff there is much more stress and hard work. Seeing States staff at work around the island I have never seen any signs of stress or haste in getting the job done!
Report abuse
Tricky, you have missed the point, intentionally or otherwise. While it is clear that you worship the finance industry, it is equally clear that the world would not end if it were not here!
More to the point, the toilets will still need servicing and the jobs will still be there. The payment of GST and Income tax by the finance sector does not disentitle the manual workers to a reasonable rise. £1,000 per year is peanuts compared to a large amount of “salary reviews” within the firms. It has been said elsewhere on this forum that we do not owe our living to the finance industry. I would endorse that sentiment.
Report abuse
28 Oh if only you were right. Would be nice to live in this dreamland where cash grew on trees and we did not need the finance industry to support the state workers and indeed everyone else in the Island. Sadly we long since sold our soul to the devil and we have to live with the consequences. In short if the finance industry has it tough so do the rest of us. I do not like it anymore than anyone else but that where we are at. Anyone who says otherwise has not looked at the figures closely enough!
Report abuse
Finance Worker if you think the public sector is an easy ride get a job there then. Why work in a harder area with no job security, no paid overtime and possibly less holidays and working to 65 when you can retire at 60 in the public sector on an indexed linked pension?
Report abuse
Any rise in Public sector pay will need to be funded by taxes – therefore in theory all tax payers are stakeholders in the Public Sector and have a right to know their money is being spent wisely..( another whole topic and debate ) so of course at a time when the Private sector is going through a tough time with redundancies, pay freezes ( dare i say pay decreases) there is concern that the public sector wishes a pay increase of this magnitude. Cost of living going up is the same regardless if you work in Private or Public sector….!!!
I imagine a £1000 pay rise on most of these salaries equates to about between 3-5% pay increase, which i think most people would gladly accept at the moment…
The real issue here is our Public Sector in Jersey is a total shambles, I acknowledge there are a lot of hard working people, but total lack of organisation, structure and accountability..
Thought…what would happen if the Public Sector was Privatised….I think you would see work force reduced dramatically…and prodictivity increased ten fold…
I am Currently working in Europe – watched in amzement as Public workmen totally ripped up and replaced a whole street in 1 day working from first light to late – had to think if this was back home, it would not be done so quickly…and in addition would need another 5 or 6 bodies to watch and comment on the progress while leaning on spades, shovels andmachinery with obligatory fag hanging out of mouth…
Now I know thats not a fair view…but it is one that most people share of the public sector manual workers , fairly or unfairly….!!
Report abuse
some of them would,nt lower themselves to take manual work,it would spoil their images of grandeur.how about working in st.saviors hospital starting at 7 in the morning (weekends included)and being spat at kicked and threatened to an inch of your life.not very appealing to some of you i guess in your comfortable jobs.i know been there done it for years,so no-one can tell me they don,t deserve a rise.they are more important and deserving than a lot of any other so called essential jobs.
Report abuse
Tricky – “In short if the finance industry has it tough so do the rest of us.”
Let us not forget though that it is the short-term greed of those who work in finance throughout the Western world that has caused these ‘tough’ times in the first place.
Adrian – “Why work in a harder area with no job security, no paid overtime and possibly less holidays and working to 65 when you can retire at 60 in the public sector on an indexed linked pension?”
Because most people that do want lots of money in their pay packet right now. It’s a trade-off. You pays your money, you makes your choice. The key word here being ‘choice’. The hare cannot complain when the tortoise ends up passing him to win the race.
Incidentally, 65 is very optimistic for retirement for anyone born after the 1950’s. The state retirement age will gradually increase until it is eventually 68 for those born in the 1980’s or after, and will most likely end up at 70 for those born in the 21st Century.
Report abuse
Quite right Marcel short term gain means long term loss it is just these short termers can’t see it until too late then they whinge how unfair ir is when they realise they got it wrong. As far as I am concerned if they make the wrong choice they can’t blame anyone else but themselves!
You are also right finance and doddy dealings has got us in this mess. However it isn’t the fat cats that will end up burnt is it?
I blame finance because it has given people the idea that you can short circuit the system and make loadsa money…until it catches up with you and bites you in the rear end that is.
I would like to see these suits do a hard days graft for minimum wage. They wouldn’t last a week. Too much like hard work, easier to sit in front of a monitor in an air conditioned office playing on the keyboard and surfing the net.
Just because people work out of sight in an office and can’t be seen by the public doesn’t mean they work hard does it?
As per normal there are two sides to every story. I am sure there are some hard workers in finance but there are also slackers as well.
Marcel as per retirement the government had better honour its promise to this generator or it will have big problems on its hands. Many I know will not be fobbed off with any excuses, as they are holding the government to their pledge of their OAP at 65. Anyway people don’t want an extra 5 years grief for nothing do they? Maybe if working practices were made easier instead of harder each passing year you might find some takers until then forget it.
No one I know wants to work a minute longer than absolutely necessary and 65 is seen as more than old enough. 60 is more acceptable, this is why many work in the public sector. 5 extra years of retirement is too precious a commodity to throw away.
Report abuse
never mind the manual workers, how many bosses have they in their relative departments.I know of one department that has four manual workers and four managers!!!
Report abuse
The manual workers are living in a dream world!!! There are a couple of people in here who seem to think they don’t owe their jobs to Jersey’s main source of income. No finance sector/private sector = less people which means less demand on services (drainage, roads, toilets, street cleaning and rubbish collection). They just don’t get that even if there is a strain on Islands infrastructure, if nobody can pay their taxes there will still be less public sector jobs. My cynical side is wondering whether the real reason why they want to cut their hours to 37 is that they then claim more overtime on top of their shift allowances. On the flip-side, they’re also telling us that they can do the same job in less time BUT they want to get paid more for doing it. Whichever way you look at it, the public sector manual workers are having a laugh.
Report abuse
blah
So you want people to work longer hours than everyone else, earn a pittance and not complain JUST SO YOU GET AN EASY LIFE?
I’m sorry, if people can’t accept that everyone has the right to negotiate pay then you’re all irrational children.
This grand probably amounts to 70 odd quid a month.
I think the fact that people see fit to criticise the poorly paid for daring to speak is damning.
Report abuse
I wonder if the demand for a £1000 rise encompasses the nurses, radiographers, occupational therapists, physio-therapist and all the other professional yet mediocrely paid people who do sometimes unpleasant but always essential work on our behalf?
I know an operating theatre nurse, who is compelled to work at least one night a week on “standby”. If he is called out he often has to walk down through the empty town, in the wee small hours of the morning in the driving rain. On completion of his task, up he trudges back to his bed – only to rise after a couple of hours for his regular day shift. No taxi for him and no mileage is paid.
There are dozens of other health care workers in similar situations. But no one speaks out for them.
Report abuse
Arnald,
If people want more money, they should change jobs. It’s not complex. They can retrain, start their own businesses etc.
But the Island is skint. I won’t get a pension until I am at least 70, and I don’t see why manual workers have a greater right to a pay rise now than I do to a decent pension in 30 odd years time.
And if you want to talk about an easy life, I once had a job with the old public services and can tell you it was the easiest, most overpaid job I ever had. No pressure, no performance targets, nobody ever fired as long as they turned up, finished by 2pm, overtime for weekends etc etc.
What you should ask is why should the working man fund an easy life for those who won’t take any steps to improve their own position?
Report abuse
mad foetus
So you would have the public sector resigning and going to work for private employers? Very responsible attitude that.
As for the island being skint, that’s purely because of bad management. The finance industry, as we are forever told, is doing good business. As this drives our economy, WHERE IS THE EVIDENCE OF PROGRESSION?
As the finance industry gets richer, public services and pay will be cut.
And then people wonder why it is called ‘parasitical’.
I have worked in the finance industry for more than ten years. Every year I have had 5% or more wage rises along with a summer and sometimes christmas bonus, not for achieving targets, just for turning up and doing my job (without any stress). I have seen no better working environment than any other institution, no better staff, no more intelligence, nothing to make the private sector stand out in any way at all to justify the distortion in standards of living it is creating.
Until there is full salary transparency to enable employers and employees to fairly argue their case for rises, then the public sector will always lose out because of the political cowardice that stops long term decisions being made appropriately.
It is ESPECIALLY necessary to invest in the public sector during downturns, the opposite will create far more pain when it needs to be built up again.
As for your pension, well, it’s a mugs game. The faster we take pensions out of the ‘investment’ practices the better.
Report abuse
I’m not saying everybody does this, but I do know a few people who worked for the public services, who would quite openly admit that they would rush through their jobs, go home for a nap and then roll in at the designated time their shifts officially ended. Afterall there was that old joke about “whats yellow and sleeps four”? I’d like to think that doesn’t happen anymore, but when I hear that they want to cut back their hours, it does make me wonder. If the public sector is so overstretched and overworked, why can they do the same job in less time? If I worked on a building site, supermarket or in an office for that matter, and I asked my manager for payrise and a cut in hours, I would be laughed off-site. It’s a complete and utter fallacy that the manual workers in the public sector are the lowest paid in the Island, because they’re not. I know of manual workers who comparibly earn more than those working in the civil service or their counterparts in the private sector. I agree that the cost of living has gone up, but everybody is feeling the pinch. Maybe, some of the Union members should go and talk to people who have been made redundant or their struggling counterparts in the private sector. Maybe then, they might actually stop making ridiculous demands. Saying that, I suspect the whole thing is a cynical move by the union who knows that they probably won’t get the £1000.00 payrise. So, to appease its members, the union will negotiate a cut in hours, so that its members will still technically get a pay increase, because they will do less for the same amount.
Report abuse
37 Arnald
Nobody is saying that the public sector manual workers should not negotiate its just that they may not like the outcome…..
Report abuse
‘As for the island being skint, that’s purely because of bad management. The finance industry, as we are forever told, is doing good business. As this drives our economy, WHERE IS THE EVIDENCE OF PROGRESSION?’
Er… I dunno… PERHAPS THE ARTICLE ON THIS WEBSITE STATING that the finance sector spends over 300 million pounds plus in the local economy every year.
I love the way this has been convinietly ignored by the ‘blame finance for everything brigade’. This money blatantly supports thousands of local (non finance) jobs in the island, but don’t tell the moaners that as it will upset their little campaign!
Report abuse
Seems some finance workers have difficulty separating the industry from the individual.
The industry may be important to Jersey (some will dispute that of course), but any finance worker (as an individual) is completely replaceable. As is pretty much every human being regardless of what job they do.
And the industry does not support everyone on the island, I pay plenty for my keep and I’m not in it, I know others who would say the same. We
So get down off your high horse and realise that even if you think the Industry supports everyone on the island, YOU personally do NOT!
Report abuse
I want to say that the manual workers should just be happy with what they have already but it will depend entirely on what the States members decide about their own pay!
The people at the top are there to lead and to set an example (by doing, not just saying). That is how it should be in the private and public sector… however, has anyone actually seen any evidence of such behaviour in any job they’ve had? Management, in all areas of life are often not worth the money their contracts are written on, and if anyone really wants to cut costs they should look first at what their so-called ‘Managers’ actually do, and work their way down to the lowest paid.
And public sector workers are just like workers in the private sector. BOTH have plenty of time-wasters who manage to avoid doing any real work, equally both have some really hardworkers who do not get anything like the credit (or pay) that they should.
Report abuse
Tom
Facile. I didn’t say that there is no positive knock on effect, I just doubt that the upward curve of social advancement would not be an embarrassment to the architects of the economy. If they ever believed that that was what they ought to be doing. There are enough threads to do with a perceived ‘drop in standards’ or public service cuts, or of allegations of corruption and malfeasance among the ruling elite to allow questions to be formed with how exactly things may be going wrong.
And it’s not ‘finance’s’ fault really, it is the fault of politicians that believe in a failed economic model, espoused by the global finance industry because it promises no end of marvels, mostly utterly unattainable, and whose plans have a tendency to fail spectacularly.
Anyhoo, perpetuation of third world misery aside, we need the finance industry, what we don’t need is this spin that there should be anyone grateful for anything while there is clearly injustice in how that £300M is being used within the economy. The poor are getting poorer, folks, that’s not progress, that’s regression. Jersey and Guernsey should be ashamed at their wanton abuse of governance.
There is a pernicious belief that because the private sector is getting screwed by the banking collapse, then the public sector should be treated with contempt. The problem is that the public sector, at the level we are talking about, has been driven to the bottom already. There is not much room for negotiation other than upwards. All politicians know this. It’s just cheap fodder to keep repeating the mantra.
As the tax burden shifts ever towards the public to support a mono culture that only exists as a result of sets of rules determined elsewhere, we really ought to be asking for a bit more help, no? Using the same logic that we should be grateful for a business actually doing its job, maybe we should cut tax altogether on all high earners, who could also say they spend a big number in the economy? It’s nonsense.
Would anyone blink if the average pay rise in the finance sector this year was more than a grand? Nobody cares about whose money is actually propping up the merry-go-round, not just our local subsidies in the form of zero tax but the global population having to foot the bill for the bad debt provisions, and how efficiently our investment is being used to benefit the most possible people, in proportion to the sector’s success. No, we would prefer to be snide about a few quid for the people that you completely ignore anyway most of the time.
It’s just discrimination.
Report abuse
Arnald,
You have lost the plot. for example:
“As the tax burden shifts ever towards the public to support a mono culturehere”
The fact is that the government gives minimal support to the finance industry. It gives a little over a million to JFL and some law drafting time, that is all.
The States spends more on paying farmers to deal with sileage than it does to support the finance industry. That is a fact.
Over 50% of the States income comes directly or indirectly from the finance industry – that is a fact. If someone gives me £300 and I give them £1 back, I believe they are subsidising me. You think it is the other way around. You are simply wrong.
I personally don’t see why we need States manual workers. And I worked as one for a summer. If the services were privatised I bet the jobs would be done quicker and cheaper and the staff would get paid more. Everyone would be a winner except those, like yourself, who believe that poor people should be kept in an environment where they cannot improve their own lot.
I say to them – go and work in the private sector where if you work hard you will be promoted and get paid better. You may even start your own business. Learn skills, move up the ladder.
But if you pay manual workers more, what started off as a safety net becomes a glass ceiling. And I don’t believe in patronising the low paid in the way you suggest.
Report abuse
mad foetus
Zero ten. Or has that one passed you by?
The rest of your post is drivel, I’m afraid. The finance industry, or any other industry does not ‘give’ anything. It is taxed. That should not be voluntary, but an essential levy to make society function better. The richer and more influential an industry is, then the better progress you would expect to see in social advancement.
How do you explain the regression if everything is better than fine?
Jersey and Guernsey will eventually go bust if they carry on like this. Guernsey was relying on 6% growth in the entire economy to balance the books by 2013. It will now need to introduce further regressive taxes just to maintain curernt public spending levels.
The worse thing about all of this is that if the finance industry is to reach new heights of wealth generating powers, it will have to continue perpetuating the flow of capital from poor to rich. Just so the few on the top can maintain this idle crowing about how wonderful they are.
If wealth isn’t redistributed more radically and soon, then social problems will continue to escalate.
That’s what you want is it?
Report abuse
Mad Foetus, I guess the problem is that these low-paid people are needed, every bit as much as you believe the finance industry is needed.
If we didn’t have binmen and street sweepers the finance industry (and the entire population for that matter) would soon up sticks and move elsewhere and Jersey would become a ghost island.
It’s great to assume everyone should ‘better themselves’, although it’s worth remembering that what you see as bettering themselves may not be everyone’s idea of bettering themselves. My Uncle was an engineer. He worked hard and did his job well, he turned down numerous promotion opportunities because for him work was a means to an end that he happened to enjoy. He didn’t want a bigger house or better car, he wanted a job that was enjoyable but not stressful and ensured he had plenty of time for his family.
The UK is obsessed with degrees, but it’s pointless to have everyone with degrees when there are so many essential jobs for which degrees are totally useless.
These types of jobs will always be lowpaid but they are ESSENTIAL! I would say that they are more essential than any finance industry job frankly. So you think that you subsidise them, okay, that’s your opinion, but they improve your quality of life… why can you only see one side of it?
Finance workers are not Gods, individually they are all just human beings that are totally replaceable (and probably very easily also), every worker on this island contributes and many of the jobs they do are more essential than any individual finance job.
Low pay does not make a person or their job of less worth than anyone else, often the reverse is true!
Report abuse
Mad foetus, I agree with your comments about the glass ceiling/safety net. The states of jersey recently did a survey and they found that the lowest grade of public sector manual worker is paid 30% higher than a similar sized job in the private sector. It was also found that overall, public sector jobs at the lowest grades are paid on average 25.61% higher than their private sector counterparts.
Report abuse
blah
That just proves that the private sector has no qualms exploiting people, not anything melodramatic within the public sector. Is that the default setting you are after?
It’s a bit like saying the poor deserve everything they get.
Civilised? This thinking is backward.
Report abuse
‘And the industry does not support everyone on the island, I pay plenty for my keep and I’m not in it, I know others who would say the same. We
‘So get down off your high horse and realise that even if you think the Industry supports everyone on the island, YOU personally do NOT!’
DID I ever say that? No, what I did say though is that there are a lot of non-finance related jobs highly dependant on the finance industry putting money into the local economy. This cannot be denied and I suspect if the finance industry went then so would a large number of other jobs and you would see the unemployment levels in the island accelerate very very quickly.
This has never been mentioned when people have a go at the finance industry. The grass would not neccessarily be greener without it.
Report abuse
‘If wealth isn’t redistributed more radically and soon, then social problems will continue to escalate.
‘That’s what you want is it?’
Sorry, but you sound like a spokesman for the chinese communist party. And look at the mess they left China in until economic reform intervened.
Report abuse
The public sector employees (some 7500 on an honest day’s count) are paid to maintain the Island’s general infrastructure, which is there to primarily support the businesses that actually CREATE and bring WEALTH INTO the Island, from which the greater amount of TAXES are paid to provide for this army of people and the public services they are expected to maintain.
Currently we have some 7500 people putting nearly half of our entire £650+ million budget into their pockets – No Civil Servant, Bailiff, AG, SG or Chief Officer of any department on this Island should be making more or anything near that of the UK Prime Minister, US President, Mayor of Los Angeles or the NY Police Commissioner, but alas, what we have for a community as small as ours is nothing less than a carefully contrived in-house arrangement that allows for the systematic misuse (theft) of our public wealth. A system that provides very little managerial bang for our over taxed buck!
If, as some would claim, they can make so much more out in the Private Sector, then let them go there and try, because, I’m sure if they could compete and succeed so well out there, that is where their natural power hungry greed and bureaucratic ineptitude would lead them.
Today, out of an able work force of just over 50 thousand, there are, if we are lucky, probably no more than between 12 to 14 thousand people who are actually creating the wealth that has so liberally supported the over-paid end of the public trough.
Our public sector is badly managed and has too many over paid chiefs and not enough grunts. Proper health care for example, starts at the bed-side and if that is what you want, then you pay the nurse. Rather than wasting our precious resources and materials on an unnecessary army of civil servant managers employed to regulate and tell the doctors how to treat their patients!
The entire Public Sector must be drastically paired down starting with the pay scales at top end of the public trough – especially those who control and recklessly spend the islands wealth that neither they nor their departments could ever even dream of creating.
To put it all in proportion, a recent advertisement for local private sector job read as follows:
“Wanted an experienced Trust Attorney who is able to speak Russian – Starting £80K per annum!”
Now who would want to take their noses out of the public trough for that kind of money when it is easier to cut the pay and benefits of all the grunts doing the actual shoveling down at the lower end?
Times have changed and now everyone in the Public Sector from top to bottom, is going to have to learn to work much harder, for far longer and for much less – so either board the Private Sector Boat or get used to it.
Report abuse
#50 could that be because in the private sector these manual workers’ pay is determined by pen pushers with a seriously overinflated sense of ego who genuinely believe that they are above these manual working colleagues of theirs? Of course the salaries of these pen pushers are determined by market forces, and are, therefore, seriously overinflated and bear no resemblance to the importance of the work the person does. It is time that those who are in the middle of the salary scale decided the salaries for low paid workers AND for bosses, they have a better understanding of just how vital each one is!
In the public sector there is an understanding (well to a degree anyway) of just how important the work done by manual workers is. Of course cleaners are still paid far too little and given too little training, despite having a job that can literally contribute to someone’s death (especially if they work for the NHS) but it is preferable to the private sector.
The public sector may pay more but only because the private sector has got it so seriously wrong.
I have had bosses who totally look down their nose at cleaners and delivery drivers, but one day without these workers causes much more of a problem than one day without the boss. And if you think the manual worker is more easy to replace then I guess you are probably a boss yourself.
It is time that people stopped judging their self-worth on what they do for a living, because it is completely irrelevant to the vast majority of human beings. Unfortunately some tend to live in a little world surrounded other such people and they fuel each others egos while completely oblivious to the fact that any intelligent and considerate human being really doesn’t care what their job title is, they’ll treat everyone the same regardless! You can spot the ones full of self-important, they’re the ones inclined to say such ridiculous things as ‘do you know who I am?’ or argue against the punishment handed out when they have quite clearly broken a law.
I long for the day the world is rid of such egotistical idiots because they tend to breed an even nastier bunch of people.
Report abuse
No, Tom (53)
It’s about addressing the problem of social disenfranchisement that breeds resentment towards the political and businesses classes.
If politicians and the finance industry want respect, they should be acting more with the wealth they generate and not sending most of it back to the parent companies, and wasting it on promoting foreign multinationals to suck more capital out of the real global economies into the smoke and mirrors that benefits only a tiny few.
Typical of the ignorant to use ‘chinese communism’ when confronted with the ideas of equality and cooperation within a society.
The good times will not last forever, the banks may be making hay with tax payers cash, running to the Crown Dependencies to ‘maximise profit’, but most people are struggling with credit, struggling with rising costs and struggling with the constant perception that they only exist to bail out the rich.
You may comfortable, indeed, that sort of statement can only come from vested interests, and is the more childish because of it, but when the finance cycle has lapsed and there is no one left to polish the offshore secrecy jurisdiction awards cabinet, it would be nice to think that the government has put the systems in place to maximise the effectiveness of the vast wealth lodged in the channel islands.
Or will they want to keep it in the hands of the few and keep this ridiculous plutocracy going?
Jersey Bull
There is a difference between the corruption amongst the echelons of power as you are suggesting, and the need for a small public sector.
You cannot point me anywhere to back up any claim that privatising public services will result in better and cheaper options for the public. It is a lie. A nasty one at that, because it plays on human greed. You only have to remember all the Thatcher assertions that have proven a disaster for the UK and a bigger drain on public funds.
You’re right saying that times have changed. Time to get away from the defunct ideologies of wealth adoration and to start living on a ‘just enough’ basis rather than desiring ’surplus’. Then everything would be trimmed down and we could focus on improvement and qquality rather than tatty politics for vested interests.
Report abuse
Tom, the grass may well be greener without it… you simply cannot know. Jersey has changed numerous times over its history so have many other places, life goes on just in a different fashion.
So of course finance workers would be greatly affected if the finance industry was replaced by another industry, many of them may have to go elsewhere for work and pay higher taxes, but life would go on.
People and places are far more adaptable than you give them credit for and thankfully more many money is not the be all and end all. For such people life really would go on, it would change but it would probably not be better or worse, just different.
Report abuse
Jersey Bull, 3 of my family work in the public sector and they worked damned hard and longer hours than they are paid for.
People need to stop pretending that the private and public sector are different on this issue because they really aren’t. There are lazy people everywhere, in every type of job and in every sector and they get away with it. Stop jumping on the public sector as if it is the only place where this happens because the majority will be normal, hard-working people who probably also work longer hours than they actually get paid for!
Report abuse