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

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/economics/8003324/Myth-of-the-underpaid-public-sector-worker.html

"The public sector has many more professional and highly skilled workers within it than the private sector. Averages simply do not tell us anything useful."

I wonder what the figures would be if you took all the doctors out..

It would be interesting to strip out any and all levels of management too. I'd like to see how figures compare for the average humble wage slave.


Geggs

Trust me on this, the public sector's humble wage slaves *do* get paid a pittance... I should know, I was one for nearly three years.

I think in one of the many similar threads Otto pointed out that this is not a fair comparison either.

There are lots of types of jobs that are unlikely to be done in the public sector, period. The way our public sector is constructed most unskilled, and entry level jobs are outsourced so that the only jobs done in the public sector are by definition going to be paid differently from those in the private sector.

FB

It's clearly a bogus comparison.

Anyone wanting to make honest comparisons would have compared people doing the same kinds of jobs in public and private employment, or at least, roughly comparable ones.

And even then, there'd need to be caution.
It'd be pretty dubious to compare some similar jobs in the public and private sector and conclude the public sector was 'overpaid' if the people involved are still on very low wages even in the public sector.

For example a cleaner working for the council may be being paid more than an outsourced cleaner working for minimum wage, but if the council cleaner is still on very poor wages, that wouldn't suggest they were really 'overpaid'.

Also, at the low end of the scale, you also have to factor in various benefits someone might be drawing - if a lower-paid private sector cleaner is getting more benefits and tax credits than a higher-earning public sector one, then effectively the taxpayer is helping to relatively subsidise the private worker.

Same old politically motivated nonsense comparing apples with oranges. Same old obviously biased reporting. Same old disregard for the truth. No mention of *why* the number of public sector staff has gone up.... could it be the banking crisis, perhaps? But no, let's not have context or facts...

Ferrettbadger has mentioned outsourcing. Pedro has mentioned doctors. Don't forget teachers. There are also loads and loads of teachers - the vast majority public sector workers, the vast majority (and possibly all of them) earning above the average national income

To repost something I posted last time this nonsense came up:

In the 4th quarter of 2009, about 6 million people were employed in the public sector (including nationalised bank staff).
http://www.statistics.gov.uk/CCI/nu...asp?ID=407&Pos=3&ColRank=2&Rank=224

As of January 2008, there were 441,200 teachers employed by the state.
(see http://www.dcsf.gov.uk/rsgateway/DB/SFR/s000813/index.shtml). In 2008 the median average salary for teachers in England and Wales was £33,500.
http://services.parliament.uk/hansa...0100316/writtenanswers/part011.html

The NHS employs over 750,000 "professionally qualified clinical staff"
http://www.nhsemployers.org/Aboutus...-news/Pages/NHSstaffcensus2009.aspx
This includes doctors, nurses, technicians, consultants, midwives, physios etc. I don't know if it includes GPs or not, but I suspect not, as a lot of them are technically self employed.

I don't know what the median salary for each of these professions is, but it's unlikely to be lower than the median average salary for the UK as a whole is £25,800 in 2009.

So.... of 6 million public sector staff, about 1.2 million are either qualified teachers or qualified healthcare professionals. So we probably shouldn't be surprised that median average public sector pay is higher.

Take out professional footballers and other entertainers with inflated incomes along with all forms of private sector service workers and the fact remains that the few who's work adds value and generates new wealth can not afford to pay for the many services that are provided and they are alleged to require.
Put simply. If you earn £15 an hour you can not afford to pay for a service costing £20 an hour and at the same time cough up for someone else's welfare and benefits.

Its outragious just how much of a salary some of these public sector workers get, just for doing utterly useless jobs like ensuring child wellfare and ensuring other workers pay their right tax, or treating the sick in hospital.
It'd be far better to sack the lot of them, pay them all dole money instead.

Hear Hear

While we're at it, what about those useless bums sitting around the firehall. If people are going to have homes and then set them on fire they should take care of their own damn fires. Personal responsibility I say and damn the socialists.

Yes well the co-alition may find out what happens when you sow the wind. Thatcher managed it in the eighties..just .

The area where I live has been transformed by investment in the public sector by Labour. But only yesterday there was a meeting at my local mental health office to discuss the swinging cuts on the way, (so much for ring fencing health. Well mental health doesn't count I suppose. Certainly under Thatcher the homeless and schizophrenics were piling up in the streets in London, much as other rubbish had been previously under Labour. But apparently people found it far more acceptable to have human litter piling up.

Yeah so more human litter piling up again I think, in all sorts of ways. But you'd expect nothing else under the Tories..they will always prioritise their own. But the Liberals will enable the Tories to push through the stuff to come, much will be done for ideological reasons, under the pretence of it being a purely objective decision because 'we don't want to end up like Greece'.

We should have a minority Tory government. Instead the Liberals are letting them in for 5 years.

I voted Liberal at the last election based on their manifesto.

I hope the total s get wiped out at the next election. The Tories just do what Tories always do.

But what the do Liberals do? or stand for? They've been out of power for nearly a century. So now they sell their souls...

Well 'em.

Suposedly Thatcher took on the Unions.
However she didn't finish what she started.
In fact do polititions ever finish what they start ?

So Ancient Brit you don't think there should be any Trade Unions at all? We'll just really on the inherant niceness and the "noblesse oblige" of the bosses and the ruling elite to make the work better?

FB

A P.A.Y.E worker and Unionist throughout my working life. Specific unions with specific clauses and objectives. In general with a no strike agreement. Always had the right to withdraw my labour as an individual. The mass unions today beggar belief.
At 82 my union membership is past protected and I still pay tax.
One of the few who has paid so much to so many.

Trade Guilds then? For relatively wealthy white men with skills?

Sod that, viva la revalucion!



FB

>>"the fact remains that the few who's work adds value and generates new wealth can not afford to pay for the many services that are provided and they are alleged to require."

You reckon that a teacher or a medic don't play their part in generating wealth?
That if they didn't do their job there wouldn't be any economic implications?

>>"Put simply. If you earn £15 an hour you can not afford to pay for a service costing £20 an hour and at the same time cough up for someone else's welfare and benefits."

Any chance of writing that in intelligible English?

Interestingly threads like this always remind me of something that I still can't quite get my head around... That for some people, a fairer society is a bad thing. Rather than somethng we should desire and struggle for.

I mean I know people think this way, and that they are from bad people just because they think this way, but whilst I understand that people think this way I can't get my head around it.

I am a Trade Unionist who has led my members on Strike Action (reluctantly) and would do so again if the cause dictated it. And proud. There is more to life than just the pursual of the maximum possible profit at all times, and I am happy to fight for those things.

FB

when things are booming its the public sector that are the lowpaid with private sector wagess going up and up

when its bust, its get the knives out for the public sector

they did their time while the others lived the high life, they paid their dues and now those who are falling want to take everyone with them

the private sector need to take a long good look

privateise a public body and they save money by reducing wages, boosting profits, you pay peanuts, you get monkeys

look at the failures in privatisation

NHS cleaners, used to be told by matron if the job was good enough and the hospitals were clean

now they are contracted out, minimum wage immigrants legal/illegal, very little english, bad rates of staff retention and they work to their contract/ job discription, so no one can ask/ tell them to do anything beyond the bare minimum....i'm not paid to do that!!etc. etc.

yet the private sector headhunts management from the public with large attractive salary packages

FB. You assume wrongly regarding my union connections. When I joined my first union I was a 'boy' of 16 and far from wealthy.
There are those among you with a lot of living to do if you are to join, let alone win, the human race.

PS - There was no Welfare State and the war still raged.