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

I don't think we're too far apart Otto, though we apparently work on opposite sides of this dichotomy. And in fact talk of a dichotomy is wrong, because the public and private sectors shade into each other, as the last document linked makes clear.

There really do have to be cuts. I happen to believe that the start of the process is just a matter of equity, in pegging back parts of the public sector to the same (harsh?) realities that are already familiar and accepted in the private sector.

The stats already posted surely confirm that the public sector enjoys at least comparable pay, coupled with better job security, than does the private sector. I probably don't need to keep piling on more stats, but you know as well as I do that it's not difficult to show other imbalances in favour of the public sector, particularly in end-of-career terms including pensions and redundancy pay.

In order to borrow enough to fund the deficit, we need to sustain our balance of trade, so we definitely need private sector growth. How can we achieve that if public sector careers are more attractive to the new workforce?

To maintain international competitiveness, we need to improve education, and yet there's a strong suggestion that relatively soft targets like universities are being marked for cuts. There is little sign yet that higher-skilled jobs in general will be protected above lower-skilled ones, but can we afford not to take that approach?

On top of this, political forces may be conspiring to defend the size and employment terms of the public sector. How can we avoid major and destructive confrontation, while at the same time ensuring the changes needed to assure future economic competitiveness?

And a small point by comparison, but if we're all agreed that efficient tax collection is a priority, how come the biggest cuts in the civil service seem to be centred on HM Revenue and Customs?

So statistics do not show the public sector in a good light.

< But to return to the point. If we really want to do something about the deficit, an important part of the solution should be to pursue tax evaders and avoiders, and make sure that those most able to pay to support the civil society that allows them their riches do not escape from a fair contribution. >

Do the poor in this civil society look to those with riches to provide for them or do they look at those who are supposed to serve them and wish only to get the service they require. Do those with riches not want to help those in need but despair to see the money they have contributed used ineffectively and given away to undeserving causes.
Without doubt, given a fair tax system the system needs to be controlled but fairness withing the civil society is also essential. Should anyone made redundant by the public sector with an agreed redundancy package and pension be able to take another job in the public sector and should public sector workers have two pensions paid for by the tax payer.

"I happen to believe that the start of the process is just a matter of equity, in pegging back parts of the public sector to the same (harsh?) realities that are already familiar and accepted in the private sector."

My experience - and this is only my personal experience - is that the public sector is far from immune from the "harsh realities" elsewhere.

"The stats already posted surely confirm that the public sector enjoys at least comparable pay, coupled with better job security, than does the private sector."

I don't think the "public sector" versus "private sector" comparison is particularly meaningful at that level of abstraction, for all of the reasons that I've given. In particular, I don't think UNITE's figures support the view that the public sector are paid better based on like for like qualifications.

I also think it's worth looking at these things throughout the economic and even the political cycle. In a recession, it's probably fair to say that it is better to be in the public sector, but part of the job security is not some magical perk, but because the services delivered are simply more essential/important than the private sector. Outside of a recession, private sector pay and conditions seem to increase faster, not least through bonus payments - and that's not just for the fat cats. Does it equal out over the cycle? Dunno.

The political cycle is also worth considering. Many public sector roles - particularly nurses, teachers, higher education staff - were historically very underpaid in relation to private sector comparators. A Labour government has tried to redress this, which has led to above-inflation pay settlements which look big out of the context of historical poor pay.

"political forces may be conspiring to defend the size and employment terms of the public sector. How can we avoid major and destructive confrontation, while at the same time ensuring the changes needed to assure future economic competitiveness?"

Well, people will always fight their corner. I guess it depends what side of the political divide you're on - you talk of "conspiring" to defend the public sector, I'll talk of "a political agenda... to divert attention away from the real reasons why we're in a financial crisis". A political agenda which keeps the fat cats fat, and leaves everyone else to pick up the tab. Everyone defends their corner.

In terms of avoiding confrontation, the answer is (as it always is) to have serious and meaningful consultations, setting out the problem, and asking for solutions. In pretty much every major industrial dispute that's made the headlines (and absolutely every one in my sector), unions have always been ready to make compromises and make suggestions. They're prepared to accept change, and will negotiate the terms of it. It needs management who are prepared to listen and engage, and unions and staff representatives who are prepared to engage in return, and be constructive with their ideas.

"Do those with riches not want to help those in need but despair to see the money they have contributed used ineffectively and given away to undeserving causes."

Typically, no. That's just a fig leaf, an excuse, for not paying their share. It's not charity - those who benefit most should pay the most. It's simple, really.

"Should anyone made redundant by the public sector with an agreed redundancy package and pension be able to take another job in the public sector"

Yes, they should certainly keep the redundancy pay-off, unless they return to work for the same organisation, which is usually expressly forbidden in the agreement Otherwise there's no incentive to get another job. If I were made redundant with three months salary, and I would lose two months if I started a new job within a month, there would be no motivation for me to look for work.

"and should public sector workers have two pensions paid for by the tax payer."

No. But then again, they don't. Public sector pensions don't work like that at all.

My pension, for example, is a mixture of my personal contributions and employer contributions. It's paid into a specific investment portfolio scheme that is overseen by trustees. Employees and employers pay in, pensioners are paid, and the balance is invested. At the moment it is a final salary scheme (average of final three years), but no-one under the age of about 50 seriously believes that it will still be that way when they come to retire. If I move to another public sector job, I transfer my pension into the appropriate scheme. I don't get another pension.

FWIW

I would like to see a complete review of the Public Sector accompanied by a public debate about what exactly do we want the Public Sector to do. I personally think there are core functions - health education law & order and infrastructure. Everything else is jam. I think it's become bloated because that is the nature of bureacracy - managers at a certain level have to have assistants and deputies and secretarys and their deputies need secretarys and so on. We will need to make some hard choices and some services will go. It breaks my heart to say it but maybe the Totem Pole Artists and the Spatial Awareness Co-Ordinators might have to look for new employers.

Once we have settled on what we want the Public Sector to do, I'd be happy to see them exceedingly well paid. In fact, a lot higher than the Private Sector. The consequences of an inadequate on the board of ICI are bad for the shareholders. The consequences of inadequates and incompetents in the Public Sector impact upon all of society. For an example look to Singapore where heads of Public Sector departments are amongst the highest paid in society.

But with this higher respect regard and salary comes accountability. The number of Public Sector workers sacked for incompetence is tiny asa result of strong unions. I refuse to believe that hundreds of thousands of average people supposedly on poor wages and awful conditions are such paragaons of excellence that virtually none get fired.

To sum up - I want a slimmed down Public Sector that reflects the economic reality but which attracts the brightest and the best. not through the job for life culture and ridiculous pensions but through the distilling ability of the wage market.

"I would like to see a complete review of the Public Sector accompanied by a public debate about what exactly do we want the Public Sector to do"

That leads to the problem of the staggering cost and complexity of conducting such a review - and that's before any of the recommendations are even begun to be implemented.

@King Bomba

to paraphrase a great man - "We choose to reform the Public Sector in this decade and do the other things, not only because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win, and the others, too."

Yes it will be a painful exercise but one that I'm convinced is essential or this country will choke on its own tail.

The paradox is, however, that that in itself entails a massive influx of spending to the public sector.

When I retire (assuming I live that long) I WILL get two pensions. That's because the tories were in power when I was in the private sector. They created the financial situation where several 'mutual' companies elected to change their status because the Tory budget penalised them heavily. A lot of private pensions held in these companies were being switched out into other competitors plans causing the pension firms to panic about lost funds and lock everyone in with penalty clauses if you switched.

My own pension was caught up this way. The penalty clause remained for several years and although now lifted, when I joined the public sector, I could not transfer the old pension in without losing a substantial percentage to the lock-in clause. There was a fixed window for transferring which had passed before the lock-in clause expired.

So when I retire I will now get two pensions, one from the private sector and one from the public. Both of these will be smaller than if I had been able to transfer the old private pension without penalty, and even that would have been a lot larger if Gordon Brown hadn't been so greedy when he first became chancellor and dipped into my pension pot to buy everyone elses kids a new 'uniform of the month', which seems to be the thing with all the schools now they're a bit flush.

I have to say, btw, I don't believe it is necessary to cut public spending at all to get Britain out of the deficit, and question the 'urgent' timescale being imposed by the government and opposition, given that virtually every country in the world is in a similar position, and there seems to be more concern about what will be right for getting the party re-elected in the next but one election, rather than what's right for the country.

Are we now at a situation where public sector workers need more of the services that they themselves provide than they themselves can pay for.
They educate themselves, they treat themselves in hospital, they collect taxes from themselves, and generally care for themselves.
They now find that they don't have the resources to create enough wealth to provide things that others provide that are vital to the way of life to which they have become accustomed.
The nations day of greatness is over but it is not the end of the world and need not be the end of the British way of life. If we are to go forward a new format is required. All this bleating is only about our little corner of the world. For the sake of future generations we need to pull back into our shell, put our own house in order and start all over again. If we don't do it for ourselves then someone else will do it for us.
The problem is there is no one big enough to take on the challenge.

"The number of Public Sector workers sacked for incompetence is tiny asa result of strong unions. I refuse to believe that hundreds of thousands of average people supposedly on poor wages and awful conditions are such paragaons of excellence that virtually none get fired."

Again, this isn't my experience at all, and I suspect this is just one of these tabloid myths. I've seen a number of people sacked. Union representation cannot stop management from sacking someone if they've set their minds to it - all they can do is make them do it properly by following their own procedures and not breaking the law. I should know, because I've represented a friend (who wasn't in a union) who was eventually sacked. What I did manage to do, however, was prevent our employer from holding a kangaroo court and showed up a number of serious problems with their processes.

More fundamentally, I don't see why we should regard a high rate of sackings as a good thing. Leaving aside sackings for gross misconduct, every sacking for inability to do the job must be regarded as a serious organisational failure, not some kind of macho sign of the organisation's standards. If you sack someone because they're not up to the job, then you're as much to blame as the person you've sacked - you shouldn't have appointed/promoted them, and you've failed to train them up to the required level.

In a large organisation, if someone is promoted beyond their ability, I don't see any reason in principle why they shouldn't be redeployed to another role that they can do. At the end of the day, it saves money - only one recruitment process is required rather than two, and it saves a lot of management time.

If sackings are more common in the private sector, it's worth considering whether this is because it does recruitment less well, whether it does training less well, whether it's less patient, and whether it is more likely to play fast and loose with employment law.

What are these secretaries of which you speak? Technological changes and budget cuts have pretty well eradicated secretaries. Certainly the culture of one secretary for every manager is long gone.

In the organisation I work for there's roughly one member of support staff for every eight core business workers. Which means that the (highly trained and better paid) core business workers invariably spend a chunk of their working time carrying out administrative tasks (such as typing their letters and filing papers) that would once have been carried out more efficiently, and at less cost, by support staff. I don't personally think that's particularly efficient: my core business productivity would be higher with a greater level of administrative support.

Sackings: Yes, hm. When I worked for a small business, the view of the directors was that if they didn't like somebody (for example, a member of staff was ill, had children, or made a mistake) then they could just sack them. And that's what they did, fairly frequently. I suspect this was a particularly bad SME (they also refused to employ men with beards and women of childbearing age) but the point is, this attitude meant that there was a very high staff turnover (because if you weren't sacked, you wanted to get out as fast as possible and work somewhere rather more reasonable). And that hindered the business. If you want to get the most out of staff, treat them well.

I interview a lot of council staff in my job, usually because they have made a mistake (and mistakes are particularly prone to happen when people are overloaded and under-resourced). I *once* met an officer that I thought shouldn't be doing the job she was doing. All the others - difficult though it may be to believe - have been good at their job, care about it, and work hard to make things happen. I really don't think there are many candidates for public sector sackings, not at frontline level. And even at managerial level, officers are often having to deliver a service without enough staff to be able to do it. Failing to do this is not a sacking offence.

Mol

I think threads like this one are the best of hootoo because they help you see issues from a number of perspectives.

I can see where Otto comes from but also where AB comes from. For me, the deep issue goes beyond a simple public/private boundary. It’s about incentivising people to achieve their maximum. Can I try explain?

1. In the productive economy, there’s real competition and it’s global. Rising economies can make commodity products well and cheaply. Global companies, mainly (for now) in western ownership, encourage and accelerate a transfer of facilities and labour to the East, reducing costs and raising their profits.
2. The only answer in the West is continuous improvement. The design and manufacture of commodity products cannot be defended, except in sectors where transfer cost factors (mainly distribution) make imports inherently uncompetitive. New technology and the knowledge-based economy have to be purposefully encouraged.
3. The private sector of the productive economy thus gets ever more dynamic . (The private services sector is subject to broadly similar influences, but its continued economic vigour is questionable. Its most lucrative Western manifestation, in banking, has always been prone to short-termism and underinvestment in social projects. Now it has dealt itself a real “Emperor’s New Clothes” blow, and may never yield its former national economic benefits again).
4. The influence on employment is, if not exactly pernicious, at least decidedly double-edged. These competitiveness issues mean that the private sector always needs to achieve more with fewer staff, and indeed actively develops the means to replace people with machines and systems. The skill level of the residual workforce in the meantime is driven higher and higher.
5. We need this part of the economy. Unless we seriously believe in a future based on tourism and overseas students, then it’s our only source of a positive balance of trade, which is in turn the only guarantor of government borrowing at affordable interest rates.
6. Here’s the crunch. We cannot afford our bright young kids to eschew this high-risk career path in favour of cushier options. The problem is manifest at many levels. Craftsmen in our best manufacturing firms should on this model earn more than junior administrators in council offices. Teachers in state schools should be as energetic and optimistic, as young in heart and mind in fact, as their peers in the independent sector. The most promising students should be applying for engineering degrees in at least equal numbers to medicine. Are these things happening? I really doubt it.

The real problem with the public sector, for me, is that it fosters a job-for-life mentality. Here’s another useful link for you all: http://www.statistics.gov.uk/cci/article.asp?id=1801

It lends support to some of the public sector supporters’ theses but poses some questions too. The age and job tenure facts here in particular suggest that there may be a growing problem of staleness in the public sector workforce.

Let me get controversial with a specific example, the second one above. Otto’s points about sackings in the public sector are thoughtfully made, but IMO there are serious underlying problems here, particularly in state education. For better or worse, the private sector purges its economically-menopausal staff pretty ruthlessly (those parts that fail to do so go to the wall sooner or later), but many of us with kids know only too well that things are different in our schools. For decades in this country, we have tended to treat education as a second-class career for underachievers, with the result that our teaching base has an extreme spectrum of attitude and behaviour. Some teachers are really good, vigorous and bright and these are the ones who will surely inspire their charges. Others are extremely poor, not necessarily in ability (though this is arguably a problem too) but in mindset. A significant minority of teachers come across as beaten-down, self-pitying and dysfunctional.

Promoting and rewarding good teachers is an obvious need, but there’s a constraint on it, and it’s manifest in these good teachers’ less good peers. How are we going to solve the problem of poor teachers? I confess I don’t know how to pay for their retraining or (less desirably) their years of redundancy, but I’m rather sure we need to get them out of the classroom. Our future is surely built on the education and inspiration of youth. A weary and resentful expectation of a dead-end job for life in teaching is the precise opposite of what we need, but I continue to meet teachers who seem to see their lot in these terms. They drain my spirit when I talk to them, though I'm lucky enough to only get ten-minute bursts of it. I fear they are doing great harm to the children they meet every day. I’m of the opinion that any system that concretes their retention is disastrously wrong and has to be changed. (If your retort is tell me that they're already leaving teaching in their droves, btw, then forgive me but I'm going to whoop with delight).

I’m not a Tory, incidentally. In, this next election I will vote in a fifth decade, and so far I’ve voted Tory exactly once. That was the very first time, in 1979. I wasn’t delighted by the job Thatcher did on my behalf, and indeed she partly failed in her own project because she diminished the craft unions (who IMO broadly speaking foster and promote the value of skills) without seriously curtailing the power of the public sector ones (who broadly speaking protect lowest common denominators).

Nonetheless, 2010 looks to me more like 1979 than any time in the intervening 40 years, and it might be time for me to shade to blue again. I’m with AB on one point - we have a nation to save here. I don’t think and I dont expect that any of the parties will really point in my direction (possibly because the problem with universal suffrage is that you can't just appeal to the most useful people in society), but Labour seem like the polar opposite of my formula. I’m not at all impressed by that rather silly scare-mongering about a return to the 1980s. I’m a working class lad made-goodish at the end of the day, and I personally feel more empathy with Gene Hunt and his values than with anybody (Mandelson possibly excepted) in Brown’s cabinet!

Here's a problem with that: there aren't enough people who want to be teachers, and so teacher training colleges are forced to accept pretty much anyone who applies. So you can't just go around sacking bad teachers because there would be nobody left to replace them. So the question is why are so few people willing to be teachers? The answer is debatable, but to fix it will almost certainly cost MORE public money, not less - it will probably involve some combination of improved salaries and better working conditions (which probably means more people being employed).

Not necessarily a problem, is it?

If our teachers were better, school-leavers would be better qualified and better motivated. The better working conditions are built in, because teaching would be more rewarding as a vocation.

The better salaries, sure, the best of the profession deserves them and the educational outcome would be improved by paying them. What's in the way of being able to pay them? From where I'm looking, it looks like too many poor teachers and a public sector culture that defends the lowest common denominator, preventing those poor teachers being eased out.

Very few people want public services cut. Very many people want them delivered more efficiently. The current level of performance (not to mention job satisfaction) is pretty low in some areas, and the one good thing about such a situation is that modest investment and a proper balance of challenge and support ought to yield a lot of value.

The culture has to change as well, however. Large parts of the public sector are behaving as if the whole system is being collectively victimised. The collective aspect, though, is a creation of the public sector itself and its unions in particular. Organisations that defend the worst aspects of themselves are inviting the derision of the public, aren't they?

Of course the education of some could be improved by reducing the education promise for all and thereby lift the quality of the whole educational system. Why push education beyond the age of 20 then set the age of retirement beyond 65 to pay for it? The age of retirement needs to be a personal target, even though it takes longer and demands more effort than winning the lottery. Life needs objectives, targets and rewards. Otherwise there is no point to living and oldies would give up.
That's the carrot the stick is another issue.
Happy Easter.

<<Of course the education of some could be improved by reducing the education promise for all and thereby lift the quality of the whole educational system.<<

Yes, dear, education only for those who can pay for it. We have too many working class members with university degrees. They are mining the social class division that leaves everyone in their place. What do they want education for? A waste of money indeed.

The Top Ten choices for University Degrees in 2006 were -

1. Law
2. Design Studies
3. Psychology
4. Management Studies
5. Business Studies
6. Computer Science
7. English
8. Medicine
9. Sports Science
10. Social Work

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/6071026.stm

Yay for us! We absotively need more lawyers and psychologists. Pity we don't have any chemists or engineers or physicists in there but hey ho bring on the social workers.

Pinniped, I don't disagree with much of what you say in post 134, especially about the need to return to manufacturing - though actually the extent to which we've abandoned it is probably overstated. But let me pick out a few points:

"We cannot afford our bright young kids to eschew this high-risk career path in favour of cushier options. The problem is manifest at many levels. Craftsmen in our best manufacturing firms should on this model earn more than junior administrators in council offices."

Well, they're not, and they do. When choosing career options, I don't honestly think money is primary - it's about job satisfaction. Who here would take a 20% pay rise to do a job they hated? Not me. People with the ability to be engineers/designers/craftspeople generally wouldn't be satisfied by working in a junior admin position on anything other than a very temporary 'pay the bills' basis. If you were to go to a local authority admin office, I doubt very much that you'd find many people who could have been an engineer if they'd chosen to. That's not to disparage them - just to say that their abilities and interests are different. I know it's a stereotype, but it's probably not unfair of me to say that some engineers would struggle with a customer-facing role. If the question is, where are our potential engineers being lost to, the answer really isn't low paid junior public sector roles.

"The real problem with the public sector, for me, is that it fosters a job-for-life mentality."

I was about to say that, yet again, I don't recognise this at all from my experience. But instead let's try a different approach. There's a big difference between a "job for life" and a "profession/trade for life." No-one has a job for life any more, but plenty of people - public and private sector - have, or expect to have, a profession for life. Teacher, nurse, accountant, plumber, police officer, solicitor, funeral director. It's very hard to see any of these professions vanishing, and so anyone who trains in one of them can have a reasonable expectation - subject to market forces, supply and demand, and their own abilities - that they will be able to earn and living with their skills.

Each of these professions requires an investment in a training period, generally paid for by both the individual and the state. So a good teacher should have a reasonable expectation of a 'profession for life', which is not the same as a 'job for life'. Even if a teacher stays at one school throughout her career, she is very likely to change roles within that school - head of year, head of subject, head of pastoral care/special needs/deputy head/project work etc.

"A weary and resentful expectation of a dead-end job for life in teaching is the precise opposite of what we need, but I continue to meet teachers who seem to see their lot in these terms. They drain my spirit when I talk to them, though I'm lucky enough to only get ten-minute bursts of it."

It would be interesting to hear from some teachers to see whether anyone recognises this. From the relatively few teachers of my acquaintance, I don't recognise this at all, but then most that I know are still fairly new to the profession. I think also there's a very human temptation to whinge and complain, but I'm sure we've all worked with people who, in spite of constant negativity in private, continue to work well in front of the customers/pupils/clients.

Teaching is a tricky one. The government has made moves to make it a little easier for people to train later in life - there have been lots of stories of ex-bankers becoming teachers, for example. And they'll bring a new perspective, and if they're any good, a combination of the enthusiasm of the newcomer and the life experience of someone older. But make it too easy, and the profession is devalued. Maybe it should be easier for teachers to take sabbaticals and go and do something else for a few years, and then return if they want to.

"Large parts of the public sector are behaving as if the whole system is being collectively victimised. The collective aspect, though, is a creation of the public sector itself and its unions in particular."

It's not surprising, though, is it? Large sections of the print media will seize on any opportunity to attack the public sector and its staff. And as we've seen with the 'Times' article, when there isn't an opportunity, they'll simply make one up. And there's large sections of the public who just lap this stuff up and believe it unquestioningly, and spout stuff about non-jobs and inefficiency and waste and inflated salaries and vast pensions in spite of having no personal experience of what they're criticising, having little or no idea what public servants do, and in spite of having absolutely *no evidence whatever* for their views. These are people who seem to think that "Yes Minister" was a documentary.

And then politicians pander to this crazy sentiment. They'll talk about "maintaining frontline services" as if the infrastructure that supports them is expendable. And then, with no apparent awareness of irony, talk about making sure that police officers spend as much time on the beat as possible. Er.... who do you think makes that possible? It's a good thing they don't run Formula 1 teams, or they'd cut the pit crews.....

Even reading this thread, which I have to say is about a billion times more reasonable than most online discussions on the subject, it's not surprising that public sector workers feel under attack. And if it's a collective response, it's because it's a collective attack.

"Very few people want public services cut. Very many people want them delivered more efficiently. The current level of performance (not to mention job satisfaction) is pretty low in some areas, and the one good thing about such a situation is that modest investment and a proper balance of challenge and support ought to yield a lot of value. "

I'd agree with this. I think we have a problem in this country with managers and management. Managers are just vital - for the vast majority of people, the quality of their manager is an absolutely huge factor in their performance and satisfaction levels at work, and general well-being levels. But we don't train our managers enough - we just promote them and leave them to it, maybe send them on a short course or two. I think the great management evils are micro-management, culture of blame/back covering, and alienation. The first two crush initiative, the third - not telling people how their work fits in with the goals of the organisation - crushes spirit and commitment too. But this requires resources. The performance or productivity of people without the resources to do the job will be inevitably low.

"Organisations that defend the worst aspects of themselves are inviting the derision of the public, aren't they?"

Absolutely. But that's not what public sector organisations are doing. My experience has always been that most workers (public sector or private) are loyal and committed, and are always willing to cooperate and engage with ways of doing things better, and with coming up with their own initiatives to do just that. But a lot of the attacks aren't on the worst aspects, they're on something that's largely imaginary, or so vague as to be useless. Critics aren't generally saying "by doing x you could do y better", they're largely ad hominem.