how much longer does jacqui smith really think she will be keeping her job. First the one rule for one and another for scotland with regard to our police officers pay deal (I read in thelondonpaper that Broon said it was to help keep inflation down!!) and now this...............

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/7142436.stm

She's let us (the Police) down badly with her actions on the pay award. She's supposed to be our "boss" but not one of us trusts her now. How can she continue??

They're taking the p*ss out of you offering you 2%, the fact that they're staging it goes further than taking the p*ss, it's rubbing your noses in it, the fact that the Scots are having this pay award made in full tells us that this isn't a United Kingdom anymore with regard to law and order.

So tell the Gov. to shove it up their a*se and go out on strike with the truckers and farmers who have also been shafted by this avaricious government.

In fact, why don't we have a general strike and remind this government where the real power in this country lies.

Meanwhile civil servants have been awarded 0%

civil service

and MP's have been awarded a £10,000 a year expenses increase

money for old rope

did they award themselves a pay increase this year .... was it staged?

I don't think so.

i was watching questiontime last night and hazel blears kept repeating that it was due to stop inflation rising depsite everyone else ridiculing the logic behind that.

What is is £200 a year? How will that affect inflation when interest rates are coming down trying to encourage spending again? Also, isn't this pay rise lower than the CPI index anyway therefore a below inflation rise!!

I honestly don't know anybody in the job that wants to go out on strike. What people forget sometimes is that we are the public too and we don't want to see anarchy reigning. There are plenty though who are well within their rights to hand in their firearms authorisation cards and just return to normal beat policing, plenty who are well within their rights to no longer agree to rearrange their rest days in order to police weekend football matches. EVERY police force relies on the goodwill of its officers do do overtime to make up for a shortfall of officers on the street.

I don't know how it's going to end and I can't see what she hopes to gain from not backdating our pay increase. Surely, any kudos she gained with Darling has been negated by the bad publicity it's given the Government and the damage to its credibility in future discussions on anything!

Few people ever do want to go out on strike.

But in the absence of protest, you have no choice but to accept what you've been given and shut up.

Which is exactly what the government is banking on.

Your choice

Personally I don't see their is a choice. The pay arbitration board is now a waste of time in light of the Governments descision poke two fingures in the air at them! I assume the police want to reinstate their arbitration board's authority thus their only option is to strike.

The statement that this was done to control inflation is not so daft as it sounds. Public sector pay awards are massive and often set the tone of many private sector pay increases too.

There is no reason to disbelieve Hazel Blears when she says this was done to control inflation.

Having said that, this is a ham-fisted and badly thought-out move. It does betray the trust of the police, who did give up the right to strike for the promise that the Government would follow the advice given by the independent pay awards body.

Far better to offer payment in other ways, that would not affect inflation as strongly, higher levels of mortgage tax relief for public sector workers, for instance. This would also ease the slow down in the housing market a little and help the police and medical staff who often have difficulty finding homes near to their places of work. Just an idea, but what do I know?

Steve, any suggestion that public sector employees need improved packages is misguided.

The discontent around pay or the police's right to strike need not be issues - it is time to educate this misguided greed. The public sector are already being treated more generously than the private sector - none more so than the police.

1/ Over 90% of the public sector enjoy gold plated pensions compared to 12% and falling of the private sector. Private sector employees also have to work a minimum of 5 years longer before 88% retire on means tested benefits.
http://www.sippsandssas.co.uk/newspapers/the-telegraph/

2/ The cost of the public sector gold plated pension is on average 38% of your public sector salary. For police it is over 70%. If you are employed in the private sector that is the proportion of your pay you would have to invest into a private sector money purchase pension to enjoy comparable benefits. For the copper on £30k you and I are funding over £20k per annum for his cushy pension (yes Mr Copper I know you have to contribute 11% in superann, my heart bleeds, the rest of us pick up the remaining 59% - and he wants the right to strike!
http://www.iea.org.uk/record.jsp?type=release&ID=114

If you require the workings of why this is the case refer to the following pdf (page 44)

http://www.iea.org.uk/files/upld-book329pdf?.pdf

3/ Public sector pay has moved ahead of private sector pay (always a favourite throw away defense for gold plated benefits);

http://www.personneltoday.com/Articles/2005/11/11/32504/public-sector-continues-to-outdo-commercial-pay-rates.html

Quote:
Public sector stays ahead of commercial pay for fifth year running.
Public sector workers are earning more than their private sector colleagues, according to an annual survey by the Office for National Statistics (ONS).

The standard public sector employee earns almost £250 more each month, with an average weekly income of £475.10 (for the year to 30 April), compared with £413.10 for private sector workers.

Public sector wages were also found to be rising faster, with a 4.1% increase since last year, compared to 2.5% in commercial organisations.

One in five workers are employed by the public sector, which recruited an additional 95,000 employees in the UK last year.

David Willetts, shadow trade and industry secretary, claimed the figures revealed confusion in government policy.



The pay gap between the two sectors has grown steadily over the past five years.


Gordon Brown is guilty of creating an unfair society of haves and have nots. He is also not a stupid man. He is aware of the facts just as I and you are. What does this make him? What does it say about the unions and public sector workers in general?

Let's not forget all these gold plated pension promises have a liability of £1,000 billion. (ie £1 trillion = a million millions)

http://www.thisismoney.co.uk/retirement/article.html?in_article_id=407513&in_page_id=6

They also take more duvet days at your expense;
http://www.personneltoday.com/Articles/2006/07/17/36403/public-sector-absence-25-higher-than-private-sector.html

They also like to retire even before their already lower normal retirement date;

http://www.personneltoday.com/Articles/2006/07/17/36403/public-sector-absence-25-higher-than-private-sector.html

Quote:
Perhaps the biggest scandal in these schemes is the level of ill-health retirement. Members who retire due to ill health receive an enhanced pension paid from the age at which the ill health retirement takes place. Nearly a quarter of all teachers, civil servants and NHS workers retire due to ill health. This rises to 40% of all local government workers,50% of police and over two-thirds of firemen. Again, the taxpayer picks up the bill. It is simply not credible that our policemen and local government officers are this unhealthy. The problem is with the governance of these schemes. Easing an employee out, using the pretext of health problem such as stress, is an easy way of dealing with difficult situations for management, because public sector employers, such as individual hospitals and schools, do not bear the cost of their decisions. Alternatively, it could be argued that public sector employers do not put sufficient effort into managing and nurturing the health of their employees because they know that generous severance terms are available for them and employers themselves do not pick up the cost of these generous severance terms.


They also like to pay less National Insurance than you and I;

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/money/main.jhtml?xml=/money/2007/05/14/cmserps14.xml

I could go on but the police need educated on the value of the package they currently enjoy.

Any pay increase would need to be tempered by a reduction of their staggering pension provision. If I were a copper I'd think twice about taking illadvised action. Once the general public are availed of the facts you will have no sympathy.

Neat idea - an "indirect" benefits package on top.

I agree that the public sector package is too generous - as an example, my sister lives in Northern Ireland and works as a teacher.

The school holidays are different (some half terms are long weekends, so the summer break is longer to compensate )but total up to the same as those for a teacher in England, Wales or Scotland.

It goes something like this ...

9 weeks (all of July and August) summber break
2 weeks Easter
2 weeks Christmas
1 week Hallow'een
1 week or so for various half term breaks

and very short working days in May/June when the kids are on study leave for their GCSEs.

09:00 to 15:30 is, allowing an hour long lunch break, a 5.5 hour day.

So, for May and June, sis works 2 hours less than people in the private sector (who typically work 7.5 hours a day).

10 hours a week for 8 weeks adds up to the equivalent of 2 more weeks off work.

I make that the equivalent of 17 weeks leave.

Plus an above average full time salary and a gold plated pension on top.

The public sector - including teachers - cannot complain about being hard done by (marking in the evenings - having left the school building at 15:30 rather than staying on to finish work around 17:30 - or not).

Andrew, another good point you raise about the hours "worked". I do believe in fairness and that I believe is at the core of this problem. My own conversations with public sector workers (police included) lead me to believe they do infact think that they are underpaid / undervalued and "deserve" further improvements in their packages. They also believe they "work hard".
The evidence does not back those beliefs up - indeed the evidence clearly demonstrates that on the subject of pay they are at worst on a par with the private sector. Their pension package is on average worth another 40% on top of salary (70% for the police). They also take more "sickies" and retire earlier that the rest of us.
There is a slow realisation within the public sector that their lot in life is less than fair to the rest of us.

It does make me laugh though when the MP's award themselves inflation busting salary rises using the excuse that they are merely acting on recommendations from an "independent" enquiry.

This nose in the trough attitude of MP's makes any reform of the public sector monster much harder than it need be.

Well, to be fair, I wasn't addressing whether the pay award was justified in relation to the private sector, but the way in which the existing arrangement was simply ignored. This is akin to breaching a contract, simply because it is inconvenient. Would you stand for that from your employer?

The Tax relief idea was just off the top of my head, but the principle stands. Changes like this must be negotiated and not just forced on the workers when the employers feel like it.

No the people in your force area are your boss.

The people on your local Police Authority are your boss.

Your Chief Constable or Commissioner is a political appointee of the Home Secretary.

It is time for Police Chiefs to be elected by the public in the force area, to stop the centralisation of the Police Service and ensure it serves the public in its geographic area.

Jacqui Smith is pretty dreadful and clearly not upto the job. Only Blunkett has been worse, so far. The position of home secretary is third in importance after the PM and chancellor, so why has it fallen into the lap of someone like Jacqui Smith? Have Labour got nobody with the gravitas for the job?

They're all been useless so I'm not sure singling out Smith is fair. I feel relieved tho that the only people they could find to destroy the country were all incompetent.

Can't imagine that David Davis will find the position easy. Reid had the right idea calling the dept "not fit for purpose", but then again neither was he so...