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The title of Colvile’s latest contemptuous rant reeks of disdain, of the kind, modeled after the pretentious fop Joseph Rees-Mogg! Surely a bit of hyperbole, but not by much! The title of his latest essay, please note the use of the royal we!
If train driver pay irks you, look at the perks we’ve let them keep.
Well, that worked well. On Thursday Louise Haigh announced that as part of her policy to “move fast and fix things”, train drivers from the Aslef union would be getting bumper pay rises to end two years of industrial disruption. On Friday, fresh walkouts on the east coast mainline were announced by … the Aslef union.
It would be churlish to suggest that a transport secretary who describes herself as a “proud trade unionist”, who used to be a shop steward for the Unite trade union, and whose uncle and grandfather were trade union officials, was anything less than ruthless at the negotiating table. But it’s not exactly a great look. Just like when Rachel Reeves told us that the country’s finances were in a hideous mess, and that many pensioners would lose their winter fuel payment, without acknowledging that much of this “black hole” derived from her decision to accept above-inflation pay rises for teachers and NHS staff, on top of a separate, extremely generous settlement with junior doctors.
Already the signs are that these deals won’t be the end of it. GPs recently voted to take collective action for the first time in 60 years, despite a Labour offer of a 6 per cent pay uplift. The RMT rail union has said that it wants the same deal as Aslef. Then there’s the border force. Police. Fire brigades.
Editor: Reader not to fear, Mr. Colvile hasn’t yet reached a brisk saunter!
It’s easy to be envious of the generosity of these settlements — especially when you’re one of those whose taxes are going to go up to cover them. It’s also easy to worry about the consequences. In Scotland, the SNP has just been forced to impose emergency spending controls to pay for strikingly similar public sector pay deals. The SNP being the SNP, it has blamed this on Whitehall. But it has more to do with Holyrood’s habit of granting very generous pay settlements, not least to show it is nicer than those nasty Tories. Until the gravy train crashed, the typical public sector worker in Scotland was getting around £1,500 more than the UK average (up from £400 before the pandemic), even as private sector employees earned £700 less.
Editor: Mr. Colvile does a volte-face?
If you ignore the impact on the public finances — and inflation — there is actually a decent case for many state employees to ask for more. As the Institute for Fiscal Studies says, public sector pay has risen more slowly than private in recent years. Nurses, doctors and teachers have all seen their earnings lag behind inflation. And many public services do have retention problems, which higher pay might help with. Teacher vacancies, for example, are up sharply since the pandemic.
Set against that, the average public sector worker has long earned more than their private sector counterpart, has far greater job security, and can look forward to a massively higher pension. In the latest government accounts, the liability for public sector pensions stood at £2.6 trillion — roughly equivalent to the national debt, and increasing far more quickly.
Editor: This was a mere political feint, as his next paragraphs return to standard Thatcherite Procedures, carefully massaged for the political present.
But in fact, the real issue isn’t about pay at all. The public sector headcount has been rising rapidly. Yet shockingly, the bits of public sector productivity that we actually measure — ie, the estimates for how much we as taxpayers get for the many billions we spend — show that we are getting worse value for money than we did in 1997. The most egregious example of this is in the NHS, where the Tories hired huge numbers of staff after the pandemic, without any apparent impact on the number of patients being seen or operations carried out.
Editor :Thatcherite Procedures are about mis-characterizing the grasping Lower Orders, who seek through blackmail, via strikes to rob the Tax Payer! Yet that ‘Lower Order’ also pays Taxes! Reader with 533 words left to this diatribe, I will engage in some selective pruning of Mr. Colvile’s ‘essay’!
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On Times Radio last week, the Labour veteran Lord McConnell said that what took him aback about Haigh’s deal with the train drivers — who aren’t technically in the public sector, but very soon will be — wasn’t the money, but the lack of conditions.
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Some of the more ridiculous perks and privileges enjoyed by train drivers, beyond the £70,000 salaries, were doing the rounds last week — guaranteed medical appointments in case of exposure to microwave ovens, or the right to reset the clock on your work break if your boss interrupts it to say hello.
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Yet the unions have consistently fought a rearguard action against innovation, including such ideas as automated ticket offices or driverless trains.
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By settling with drivers without reforming working practices, Haigh has left the taxpayer on the hook for huge subsidies — as well as continued disruption, given that Aslef will continue its work-to-rule practices, and that drivers receiving three years’ worth of pay rises just before Christmas may not exactly feel the need to sign up for weekend shifts.
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Almost every week, a job ad does the rounds along the lines of, “Head of AI safety policy, HM government, must have world-class tech expertise, starting salary £33,000 plus discount in the canteen”.
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Editor: This last sentence fragment means what: A riff on Derrida’s signifier? Or just misbegotten class bias, tinctured in Russophobia? ‘which is progressive and compassionate, but a right bugger when you are trying to recruit world-class talent to run NHS trusts or thwart Russian cyberattacks’
For all the talk of “public sector fat cats”, it is state employees at the upper end of the pay scale who have seen the toughest wage constraints in recent years, while salaries have risen substantially for those at the bottom — which is progressive and compassionate, but a right bugger when you are trying to recruit world-class talent to run NHS trusts or thwart Russian cyberattacks.
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To give managers the most basic tools used by their private sector counterparts to incentivise and motivate their staff.
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The government is handing over the quid. But where’s the quo?
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