h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Personally, it doesn't concern me - as a lawyer, I can work in both, more cash and perks in the private sector, more job security and regular hours in the public sector...

But if you want some FCO bod to specialise in the tribal politics of Afghanistan, for example, you probably can't expect him to make that investment on a 6 month contract.

As for the minimum wage or near to minimum wage issue, it's probably close. Lowest rung soldiers, civil service clerks and secretaries, hospital cleaners, bottom rung council workers etc, etc - all on low, low wages.

sprout

"1. Do you concede the idea that you can be doing the same job this year as you did last year, only now it's of less worth to society than it used to be? Do you then concede that you shouldn't be paid as much as before for doing the job?"

This is not an accurate analogy. Very few people in the private sector have wages that are directly proportional to their own personal performance. It's also not set up as a pay cut for poor performance, but a guaranteed basic plus a bonus. That bonus is sometimes related to individual targets (e.g. in sales jobs) but more often it's related to the performance of the wider company - i.e if there's more profits, there are bigger bonuses.

What would happen if it was proposed that the public sector move to a bonus system based upon performance, or some measure of added public value? "Bloated civil servants demand BONUSES just for doing their jobs". I suppose moving to a bonus system is something that could be (and has been, in some sectors) been considered, but it's difficult and expensive to administer, and it's not clear where the extra money would come from. In a private company, it comes from extra profits. Where would it come from in the public sector? The taxpayer. Would there be uproar? Yes.

"2. Do you think that if the paying body for your public sector job ceased to exist, you'd be able to command at least as good a salary by selling your skills in the private sector marketplace?"

"Any public sector employee who can't honestly and confidently answer yes to this one has IMO no right to be complaining. If you concede that you couldn't command the same pay, isn't that tantamount to an admission that your job is subsidised by taxpayers over and above what it's really worth?"

As sprout has already said, this isn't really a very sensible question to ask for a great many public sector jobs because in many cases there aren't equivalents. This question also ignores the notion of career paths and experience - I doubt I could just walk into a job in the private sector tomorrow paying the same salary that I'm on now (I could get it, I think, but it would take time) because my experience and skills aren't directly relevant to large chunks of the private sector. A better question to ask is whether I would be earning as much if I'd taken different decisions earlier in my career and gone down a different route.

Of course, a large number of public sector staff could very straightforwardly get more money in the private sector - medical staff, a certain number of teachers, 'gamekeeper' civil servants can turn 'poachers' for the private sector (planning officers, tax inspectors), and so on and so forth.

This "public sector staff would never 'survive' in the private sector" stuff that gets trotted out is very misleading. Generalists who have transferable skills can (and do) transfer over - specialists would find it much harder. But exactly the same is true of private sector staff - I can reel off a whole list of private sector professions that would not equip people with the experience and skills to do public sector work, who would not 'survive', but it wouldn't prove very much.

"My vote would be for everyone to have a public sector work entitlement of ten years at a good wage. After that, you work privately or else drop to minimum wage."

Why? What good arguments can there possibly be for incurring that level of training/recruitment costs and losing that many experienced and qualified staff?

BTW, anyone who thinks that the public sector means a job for life these days is very much mistaken.

I think pinniped's post is quite revealing. To automatically assume that the private sector creates wealth where the public sector doesn't is just nuts. Does this mean that govt employed cleaners don't create wealth but contractors do? Is a clean hospital less valuable because a manager somewhere decides that cleaners will accept a real wage cut? Well, no: wages reflect the power of the respective workers and management as well as the supply and demand for labour.

Another assumption is that the marketplace allows for *all* costs and benefits. Of course it doesn't. Oil companies genuinely *do* create wealth. They take a resource underground, extract it, refine it and turn it into something that's so useful society couldn't work without it. But there are £billions of subsidies which boost their profits, and best estimates of the costs of climate change are in the region of $2-33 trillion. It's very possible that, without the subsidies and including all relevant costs, that oil doesn't create any wealth at all (anyone who works out the exact figures could probably win a Nobel prize).

And what wealth is created by a school which gives 1,000 kids enough education to go and get 1,000 jobs? Again, this is pretty difficult to measure, but that doesn't mean that there's no effect.

I'm a bit reluctant to weigh in on the economic stuff, because I just don't know enough. But I do have one example of how an entire category of competitive free enterprise can generate no wealth whatsoever: advertising departments.

It's like armies: it'd be better for everyone if no-one had any, but we still have to have one, otherwise we'll get crushed by someone else who does.

But the net result of advertising? A lot of irritation and toilet breaks.

Wanna know the net result of no advertising - bankruptcy.

Hi All

Lots of passion, which is good and admirable, only it's as if you all think this is personal. Would you accept the suggestion that parts of the public sector are overpaid and underperforming, I wonder? Or maybe there's some kind of inclusivity through a shared persecution complex here?

The ten-year plan dismissed on the grounds of re-training costs: I don't buy this. I can't think of a job that's worth more than the minimum wage that doesn't entail total retraining (or else natural redundancy) within ten years anyway. Remember why the ten-year rule was suggested, to balance the books. We can either pay public sector workers less, or employ fewer. This is an equitable way to employ fewer, isn't it?

You can't ignore the economics. Wealth creation is real. Contributing to a balance of payments is real. We can't just have an arbitrary level of service, no matter how well meaning. We have to pay for it. The fact that the basic economics of this seem so widely ignored and misunderstood in this thread is rather persuading me of how detached from reality the public sector mindset is.

The no-private-sector-equivalent idea misses the point. The private sector basis of public service delivery is that employment of everyone by the state is replaced by a government contract placed on private sector management, who then direct the same staff to deliver the same service.

It shouldn't really work, because the management has to drive down costs just to pay for itself, before it can go beyond that and actually add value. It would need a costly and bloated system to be improved by such a recourse.

Governments of all colours are tempted to do it, though. Doesn't this suggest that they all recognise how costly and bloated (and frankly unmanageable) parts of the public sector are?

>Governments of all colours are tempted to do it, though. Doesn't this suggest that they all recognise how costly and bloated (and frankly unmanageable) parts of the public sector are?<

No. It means that they have been hooked by the Neo-liberal agenda and Keynsian politico-economic theory.

In all the time that I have been politically aware and able to vote the average tax burden in the UK has not changed significantly no matter what proportion of public services are truly public. What has changed is that we no longer have a coal industry, ship-building industry, steel industry etc. We have pretty poor public transport unless one is lucky enough to live in a large conurbation where there is a plethora of competing bus and rail companies operating in a dysfunctional market. Only the weakest in the public service labour force have been outsourced to the private sector (think laundry, domestics, unqualified carers and so forth).

New Labour is in the process of privatising health services in England (thank goodness for devolved assemblies) and local councils are being squeezed harder each year in order to control public spending.

Low pay and wage restraint are a fact of life in both public and private sectors and as workers we should celebrate the successes of our colleagues who gain a reasonable pay settlement as in the end it will benefit us all. People who are happy with their income spend money which drives the economy.



t.

"Lots of passion, which is good and admirable, only it's as if you all think this is personal."

That's because it is. You've made some very sweeping derogatory remarks about public sector staff, and you shouldn't really be surprised when people respond.

"Would you accept the suggestion that parts of the public sector are overpaid and underperforming, I wonder?"

Yes, absolutely I would. Same for the private sector too. But would you in turn accept that parts of the public sector are underpaid and performing excellently?

I'd add a slight caveat to the notion of "underpaid" and "overpaid" - when I use those terms here I mean with reference to current norms, not to what people would be paid in a fair society -e.g. I think my salary is fair with reference to current norms, but that I'm overpaid compared to what I'd earn in what I'd consider a fair society.

"The ten-year plan dismissed on the grounds of re-training costs: I don't buy this. I can't think of a job that's worth more than the minimum wage that doesn't entail total retraining (or else natural redundancy) within ten years anyway."

If you're in a job, in post, you undertake continuing professional development to keep up with changes. You gain experience over time. It might be true that a town planner in 1990 would be unable to do the job of a town planner in 2000 if transplanted "life on Mars" style. But leave that town planner from 1990 to do her job, to learn, to keep up with developments, and she'll still be able to do the job in 2000. It's not as if ten years pass and people learn nothing, somehow frozen in time, isolated from experience or developments. Skilled staff do not become obsolete in the way that computers do - I would have thought this would have been obvious.

I can list a huge number of public sector jobs which are very unlikely to become 'naturally redundant' within ten years, and for which CPD and experience is comfortably sufficient for them to continue in post. Would you like me to, or is the point well made enough all ready?

"You can't ignore the economics. Wealth creation is real. Contributing to a balance of payments is real. We can't just have an arbitrary level of service, no matter how well meaning. We have to pay for it. The fact that the basic economics of this seem so widely ignored and misunderstood in this thread is rather persuading me of how detached from reality the public sector mindset is."

Let me turn this back and say that your comments demonstrate how little you understand the public sector and its contribution to well being and to the economy. Many people have already demonstrated how the public sector creates wealth and protects, and given a number of examples. We have a choice on how much we spend on public services - we could spend more than we do now by raising taxes, or spend less. Either way, it's a choice, not some kind of economic inevitability. There's a temptation to confuse "can't afford" with "don't want to pay". As I said before, when thinking about public services we need to ask "how can we afford x", but also ask "how can we afford not to have x."

"The no-private-sector-equivalent idea misses the point. The private sector basis of public service delivery is that employment of everyone by the state is replaced by a government contract placed on private sector management, who then direct the same staff to deliver the same service."

No, this is a different point to the one you made before. It's certainly true that governments are trying this, but it's hard to think of examples where it has been a success by any measure and a great number where's it's been a failure. Local authorities have contracted out a variety of functions - payroll/HR, housing benefit payments, leisure centre management - often with disastrous results for higher costs.

I have worked in both private and public sectors i.e Oil Companies and Civil Service; in old industries and new i.e. Shipbuilding and IT. Without the public sector, society as we know it would not operate. NHS, education, security, tax collection and distribution the list is long. And don't dismiss the administration of these essential services. Who pays the doctors? who issues the passports? who drafts the legislation?

Managing is more difficult within the public sector because the processes available to you as a manager are limited. You cannot award bonuses, certainly at lower levels as pay structures are rigid. There are no flexible benefit packages where you can chose either a BMW company car or BUPA care for your wife. Many of the tasks carried out are, by their nature, repetitive and boring but essential. Ther public expect the counter to be open between 8-30 and 5-30 even if somebody's child has been admitted to hospital. Some of these services are required by law.

Both sectors suffer from the cancer of Management Consultitis. A morbid disease with symptons such as drained budget, low effectiveness, disruption from needless change and low accountability.

If successive governments continue eroding the Civil Service and increasing the number of unaccountable special advisors we will see more ineffective knee jerk legislation. Running a country is a tricky business. We need well educated, job secure advisors to carry out the research and defend the unpopular but correct courses of action.

I read much criticism of the public sector and the knee jerk solution of privatisation but rarely do I see proposals to better manage it. I'm convinced that a well managed British Rail would have been a far better bet than the present mess.

"Both sectors suffer from the cancer of Management Consultitis."

Where can I make a nomination for the qoute of the day!

Good Post WA,

I agree with most of it. The problem is contained in your last reference to British Rail. Too many of our Public Services are NOT 'well managed'. A list has been quoted in this thread, but IT and Data Control is one, and the MOD another.

Obviously areas of the Private Sector are equally badly managed, but by an large this will affect profit, dividends, shareholders and staff. When it's the Public Sector being badly managed it affects ALL of us, and is pretty high on our radar!

Novo

Mornin Novo,

I've worked for MOD and what a lot of people do not realise is the scale and complexity of some of their projects. They see the cost and schedule overuns but do not see just how well managed something like the Trident programme was.

Some Government IT projects are disasters. But some are very successful. We don't hear about them. Techniques such as Gateway reviews and Prince have improved the sucess rate.

Thinking about it... aren't there far fewer employees in the public sector now that once there were?

Public sector employees may have included miners, power workers, hospital cleaners, school kitchen assistants in the 1970s
. If these jobs still exist, they are now "contracted out" to private service providers, that is, the workers concerned are employed by the companies that got the contracts, rather than directly paid from the public sector, or at least that's what is implied by the contracting out thingy in the first place...Is this the case? because if it is, then is the Trade Union leader may have a point?

Hi WA

I accept your comments, especially since ( unlike some posters) you have experienced work in both sectors.

However, it doesn't negate my critism of poor management practice in the Public Sector, where bad decisions, slack systemic practices have the potential to harm many.

The 'missing CD's 'being a case in point, and the two reports published yesterday on that case. Thank heaven the discs do not appear to have fallen into criminal hands!

Novo

That was my point. I rarely read of the need to improve Public Sector efficiency from within, by improving the skills of management or by investing in employee CPD. The only route to improvement is always by privatisation.

Mmmm, Ok , I get it WA.

Novo

>>You've made some very sweeping derogatory remarks about public sector staff, and you shouldn't really be surprised when people respond<<

No I haven't. You can try find some remarks that might be construed as derogatory if you like, but it looks like we're in cap-fitting territory here.

I think you probably owe me an answer as to how the public sector apparently deserves final salary pension schemes when the market-driven economy can no longer afford them.

If you feel instead that you'd rather tell me how little I know about public secor contribution to society, then I guess we'd better get straight that I have nothing but gratitude for low-paid people doing essential jobs. We need them and should look after them in tough economic conditions as much as in boom times. When the economy turns down, though, there's a tier above that has to flex, with its terms and conditions at least as sharply contained and/or its numbers at least as sharply cut as those of the private sector. We shouldn't be beguiled by this group's tendency to invoke the plight of the genuinely low-paid to justify job protection.

I'm not saying treat this middle tier worse (though more than a few might). I'm saying they have no right to be treated better.

I've often wondered where all the 800,000 public sector workers hired since Labour got in in 1997 went to, considering how we hear all the time of cutbacks in services & departments. This sheds a little light - http://business.scotsman.com/billjamieson/Bill-Jamieson-A-cure-for.4095134.jp

As the article points out, the staggering cost overuns and incompetence is well-documented, but it goes on to speculate as to the reasons why we are lumbered with the public sector we have.

"There was the £70bn spent on large scale IT-led change that resulted in administrative chaos and worsened service. Then there was the £320m on a "verification Framework" scrapped by the same Government. It's often the smaller examples that most exasperate us: the £400m spent on 'cost control' for the Olympic Games, and the £280,000 on a conference addressed by Blair and Brown last year on – of all things – value for money in public services."

Just out of interest, one in five workers in the UK are employed by the State. One in four in Scotland. 30% in Northern Ireland.

http://www.statistics.gov.uk/cci/nugget.asp?id=1292

Well, I find the supposition that people in the public sector can be easily replaced despite having acquired ten years worth of knowledge, skills, and experience to be insulting and ignorant.

On final salary pension schemes, "affordability" is relative, and in the private sector a great many schemes have hit problems because the *employers* took payment "holidays" in boom times. Again, "can't afford" versus "don't want to afford".

I've got reservations about final salary pension schemes because of some rather sharp practice that I'm aware of involving very large very late career pay raises for some public sector fatcats which looks suspiciously like pension boosting. There are issues around how we pay for pensions that go beyond any public sector/private sector debates with an ageing population. I have a final salary pension scheme at the moment, though I don't think for one minute that it'll be like that if I reach retirement age. However, it's part of my terms and conditions, and the employer's share of the payment towards that is part of my salary. If it's taken away, it's a pay cut.

However, I'm not sure in what sense I "owe you an answer" on this as this is the first time this question has come up, and because you don't seem to be engaging with anything that I'm saying.

"I have nothing but gratitude for low-paid people doing essential jobs. We need them and should look after them in tough economic conditions as much as in boom times. When the economy turns down, though, there's a tier above that has to flex, with its terms and conditions at least as sharply contained and/or its numbers at least as sharply cut as those of the private sector. We shouldn't be beguiled by this group's tendency to invoke the plight of the genuinely low-paid to justify job protection."

Now here I don't think we disagree substantially. But this is the group that gets hardest, time after time. But generally those groups that are heard pleading poverty aren't the ones that are really poor - what they're complaining about is unfairness.

I guess the case that is made by graduate level public sector staff - teachers, doctors, nurses, civil servants etc - is that they don't get the rewards in the boom times that groups get in the private sector. If it's true that the private sector are somewhat insulated against the worst effects of an economic downturn, it's also true to say that they won't share in the fruits of the economic booms.

If we were to move to the kind of situation you envisage, where public sector jobs/salaries/conditions can be slashed for economic reasons, would you also concede that these should be enhanced when times are good to keep pace? Otherwise you have a system where public sector pay just circles downwards and downwards with every passing economic cycle. And if that happens, the public sector won't be able to attract the quality of staff that is needed to provide the public with the quality of service it expects.

My problem with a cycle-related pay system is that I just can't see public sector pay going up in a sufficient manner in good times - it certainly didn't in the 1980s boom. I've been given a pay cut in career earnings in real terms as a result of changes to salary scales, and that was three years ago when times were allegedly good. As things stand, I accept that I am probably protected from aspects of the economic downturn, but it's also true that I won't see bonuses or pay rises during the good times. I think that's true for a lot of public sector staff.

Over the economic cycle, I think it's fair. Don't you?