Public Pay Increase

You know what? I don't think its wrong at all. The vast majority of people working in the public sector get their increase each year whether they have done a good job or not. It's almost impossible to get sacked from them and they get a bloody good pension.

I think that since it is the rest of us that fund it, they should be accountable for the jobs they do and get a better pay rise if they do a good job, and none if they don't. THAT would balance out the payrises in the sector and improve the services for the rest of us.

What's the story, and then I can debate it!!

I think I agree with you though...!!

I am amazed at my sister's benefits at work. She is an NHS Nurse, very well paid and gets 40 days holiday a year including the public ones, so still 32.

That is 12 more than most companies give, and 7 more than even the better companies give...I find it amazing for an organisation in apparent crisis.

And the fab pension...of course!

It's the age old argument of getting a below inflation "pay rise" and going backwards in relative terms. Always difficult to get folks to agree to that one regardless of how good the pension scheme is!

Hmm.

Well the company I worked for last year didnt give any payrises for a year and a half, went into administration and people didn't get two week's pay that they had worked - but they still had to work dealing with expensive bookings e.g. Weddings and make sure they were memorable events, (not even knowing if they would get paid!!) before being thrown on the dole queue.

I am sure most of them would take 1.5% plus 1% plus their progression allowances taking them to 4.4% or whatever. This seems like a sensible offer to me.

marandina wrote:

It's the age old argument of getting a below inflation "pay rise" and going backwards in relative terms. Always difficult to get folks to agree to that one regardless of how good the pension scheme is!

But they all get it regardless.

My mum works as a manger for Falkirk Council and she is always complaining about the fact she has NOTHING to help her motivate staff. She has about half of them doing substandard work because they know they will get their wage each month and a pay rise each year.

And it will be these people who will be complaining the loudest. I don't think they deserve what they are getting while the people who DO work hard, are not getting enough.

Balance that out, and it would be like any other organisation. Plus, the standard of work would go up, potentially making the council or whatever more productive, thus wasting less money and being ABLE to afford more pay rises.

And this would help inflation because if they are being more productive, and keeping unnecessary costs down, less money from that end would be going into the economy counteracting the payrises they would get.

How is this difficult for central government to realise?!? Oh yeah, the unions.....

(man I sound SO right wing there......)

drewboy wrote:

marandina wrote:

It's the age old argument of getting a below inflation "pay rise" and going backwards in relative terms. Always difficult to get folks to agree to that one regardless of how good the pension scheme is!

But they all get it regardless.

My mum works as a manger for Falkirk Council and she is always complaining about the fact she has NOTHING to help her motivate staff. She has about half of them doing substandard work because they know they will get their wage each month and a pay rise each year.

And it will be these people who will be complaining the loudest. I don't think they deserve what they are getting while the people who DO work hard, are not getting enough.

Balance that out, and it would be like any other organisation. Plus, the standard of work would go up, potentially making the council or whatever more productive, thus wasting less money and being ABLE to afford more pay rises.

And this would help inflation because if they are being more productive, and keeping unnecessary costs down, less money from that end would be going into the economy counteracting the payrises they would get.

How is this difficult for central government to realise?!? Oh yeah, the unions.....

(man I sound SO right wing there......)

Performance related pay does not motivate staff, it simply demotivates those (the majority) that miss out on the best pay rises and causes feelings that the system is unfair.

If an employee is not performing only an ineffective manager would resort to witholding pay to sort out a situation which might have a variety of causes.

Why is the worker not motivated to work at a higher standard? Is the job not challenging? is it boring? Have they not be trained properly? Are they simply lazy in which case diciplinary action might be appropriate. Are there underlying personal problems that are affecting their perfomance? In which case these have to be sorted out. Simply saying that if you don't improve your pay will be cut is not a solution.

The pay rise is infact a 'cost of living' rise and should be given to keep pay in line with inflation. It should not be used as a blunt tool by managers to manage performance of staff.

I see that the CBI are approving of the below inflation public sector pay rise... I wonder what kind of pay rise company chief executives will get this year? And I think they have a fairly good pension too...

Let's just think again about the myth of the great public sector pension.

On the plus side....yes they still have final salary schemes but they tend to be based on 1/80th per year rather than 1/60th per year which is more common in the public sector.

My husband's prison service pension scheme got changed so that it's no longer based on 'final' salary but is now limited to something odd like the average of the salary for the last 10-15 years (I don't know the exact term but it's not good).

And who's to say that by the time he retires they won't have moved the goal posts yet again and changed out of final salary altogether.

All in all, I don't think civil service pensions for people other than those at the top (MPs and the like) are actually all that great. And salaries are generally considerably below the private sector. A prison governor with responsibility for hundreds of staff and even more prisoners, would probably earn less than I do driving a desk.

koshkha wrote:

Let's just think again about the myth of the great public sector pension.

On the plus side....yes they still have final salary schemes but they tend to be based on 1/80th per year rather than 1/60th per year which is more common in the public sector.

You are right about the changes affecting the current scheme however although the old scheme was an 80t scheme with reagrds to the pension paid the fact that they also got 1.5 times annual salary as a lump sum meant that it was an "equivalent 60th scsheme"

Mauri is right about the fact that pay is not a motivator, in the short term it can but not in the long term as sown by Hertzberg and Maslow and their motivation theories, what does motivate is job satisfaction, training and development, praise and a number of other factors sometimes specific to the individual.

What pay rises can do is actually demotivate if the recepient belives that it devalues the job or shows a lack of appreciation.

Ok, I would tend to agree much more with Expectancy Theory though.

Quote :

Expectancy theory (Vroom, 1964, adapted by Lawler, 1971) – pay could be a motivator if all the following can be satisfied - a) it is desired by the person (is valued and is perceived as fair) b) he or she can identify behaviours that lead to higher payment c) he or she feels capable of performing those behaviours.

....and Goal Setting, as that is what I saw the pay issue being in my example

Quote :

Goal-setting theory – This theory advocates goals that are defined in terms of a persons’ behaviour and/or accomplishments, not pay. However, if there is a clear and direct link between a person’s accomplishments and pay then specific, difficult goals defined in terms of earnings may be motivating.

man, uni came in useful!

I take the point re Maslow, however I would contest that as the initial motivation wears off, the worker would be a lot more used to doing the job properly, and if they have half decent management, will be used to getting praise for a job well done - which leads to job satisfaction.

I'm not claiming that linking performance to pay should be there in the long term, however I do think it would put the sector on the road to the right balance.