Council strike, inflation and living cost
Some of the people working for the local councils in Great Britain are now on strike.
What struck me is the offer that they seem to have been given, 2.45% wage rise. Compared to inflation, probably going to be higher than 3%, this seems to be a pay cut in term of real wages. How does the people react to that? I also have a question regarding the wages, for that of the teaching assistants: 15,530 £ a year. Is it possible to live on that? And to those who who have experience working with teaching assistants, what sorts of labour do these positions attract? (hi TK) Source: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/7508717.stm |
Re: Council strike, inflation and living cost
They should get over it. The same is happening to much of the private sector, who on top of that have to worry about redundancies and 'down-sizing'. The public sector is a cushy place to work in and Labour have turned it (in particular local government) into a gravy train for those not good enough to get to managerial level in the private sector.
Of course there are exceptions and some areas of the public sector are underpaid in comparison to others that are overpaid. However, the public sector has seen a huge rise in pay under Labour with no trade-off in terms of reduced job security. In fact, they've never had it so good. |
Re: Council strike, inflation and living cost
Another decade, another recession.
|
Re: Council strike, inflation and living cost
Quote:
|
Re: Council strike, inflation and living cost
Quote:
In the Welsh Valleys, I would say yes. In London, I would say no. But I don't think anywhere in the UK you would be 'comfortable' on £15k. |
Re: Council strike, inflation and living cost
Quote:
Isnt getting 2.45% wage rise when inflation is above 3% a pay cut? How much have public sector employees gotten under Labour? (but are council employes not under the councils, and not under the state, and so does really Labour holds any power/influence on the setting on wages?) |
Re: Council strike, inflation and living cost
Quote:
And some of the time the continuous pressure to request pay rises with no actual real background for it - no increased productivity per labour - eventually excerts upwards pressure on price development. Quote:
Would it be possible for you or kal to answer my enquiry? It's in your private message box. |
Re: Council strike, inflation and living cost
Quote:
|
Re: Council strike, inflation and living cost
Quote:
Quote:
Quote:
A pay cut is a reduction in pay. If your company's not growing when there's positive inflation (i.e. a recession) then where is the company supposed to find the money to increase pay from? Council employees are employeed by the local council. The council gets some money from council tax and some as a grant from central government. You may have noticed the council tax controversies in recent years - these are because the government has increased the duties of councils without increasing the amount of money it gives to them :salute: Quote:
Quote:
|
Re: Council strike, inflation and living cost
Quote:
Quote:
Quote:
|
Re: Council strike, inflation and living cost
I have every sympathy for local councils, who are underfunded and often lack the people with the expertise to do a good job. Generally, they make the best of a bad lot and many people who work there are very dedicated to the cause. Those who are striking have no appreciation whatsoever of the position of local government and that actually, they are fortunate to be in a workplace that is relatively less stressful than a lot of jobs on equivalent pay.
I disagree with their strike action. |
Re: Council strike, inflation and living cost
as a local govt. worker who voted for the strike, im going to put my 2p in :)
i dont know where you are getting your figures from furball, but i have worked for durham county council since 2000, and i assure you in that time we have never had a large pay rise, evidenced by the fact that this is our 3rd strike in those 8 years. In those 8 years my place of work has endured budget cut after budget cut, in fact, my department had to make savings of a cool million last year, consequently we lost (iirc) 20k from our programming budget and 12 hours of staff time - yet are still expected to do more work to get more people through the doors so that the budget fairy looks elsewhere next year for its ritual sacrifice on the altar of efficiency. another consequence of these on-going budget cust is that training budgets has evapourated, and whereas in the private sector you will get a lot of promotion from within, this simply isnt viable within some councils now, as due to post restrictions (that they either cant or wont re-draw) the most skilled people for the jobs simply cant apply for them - and i know from experience that going for this kind of training yourself can cost easily upwards of a grand, and for some of the professional qualification you are easily staring at a bill for 3k - how do you afford that on 15k a year? now then, looking at your nice headline figure of 15k a year there... I know for a fact that teaching assistants do not start on that figure outside london (dont know what the london weighting for them is though so that figure might apply to them) and in the council that i work for, a teaching assistant would also have to be getting supplements (being responsible for Special Educational Needs pupils, after school clubs etc) to reach that figure - and the basic wage is (ballpark figures, not sure of the exact scale without looking it up) a starting salary of 11k rising to 14.5k (you would have to have 5 years in the job to reach that top figure though. overall the government are once again in a hole of their own making - they have pissed away funds for years and years, as usual, the people at the top have insane salaries compared to 'the little people' (for instance, im sure that looking down the barrel of a 2.5% pay rise is a lot less of a hardship when you are getting 100k a year, which is what our chief exec is on) and overall, there is no central government leadership to address issues that have been being raised for years now without sucess - hence strike. unfortunately i for one believe that the unions simply dont have the will to pull it off, they will cave before the end of the summer, possibly after another 1 or 2 day strike, after getting us another .2% on top and call it a victory, which it isnt. local government needs a full review of funding, and unfortunately, more funds need to be diverted. Because no matter how they paint it, the problem isnt going to go away |
Re: Council strike, inflation and living cost
I don't like what i wrote. Seems a bit harsh.
|
Re: Council strike, inflation and living cost
Quote:
Quote:
Quote:
|
Re: Council strike, inflation and living cost
stop indulging the spastic communist
|
Re: Council strike, inflation and living cost
Quote:
oh, and yahwe - its a popular thread generating more replies than the rest of GD tonight, why dont you just go away |
Re: Council strike, inflation and living cost
Quote:
|
Re: Council strike, inflation and living cost
Quote:
And yeah, you remember correctly - half of my family is from Crook/Hunwick :) Quote:
|
Re: Council strike, inflation and living cost
but thats what i mean - most swing voters have already turned away from labour - lets face it, they are going to lose the next general election, its simply a matter of how badly they lose now. by pissing off heartland voters (he 10p tax, low pay rises, massive redundancies that arent their fault but people will blame them anyway) they are going to lose former safe seats (with a bit of luck our majority will even drop below 10k finally!!!)
oh, and although crook is a shithole like bishop, hunwick is really nice, i have friends there underperforming: (top of my head, havent looked at teh stats in months) our flagship branch (durham city obviously innit) and a ratio of 77ish books issued per hour of opening, and my branch has an issue rate of 50ish, however, my branch is considered marginal, because the government have targets even for book issues (can you believe) and we have more staff than other branches who issue 50ish books an hour - but we have other things on site (art gallery, tourist information center, theatre) but because the govt. only looks at manhours and books issues, we fight for funding. the other branch that i was on about issues 23 books an hour, if they closed them and we got even 50% of their custom down to us, that would put us in the moderate performers band (the bands really are that close) and our funding would be safe. but if they closed the other branch in a socially depreved area (even though the majority of its users arent off the socially deprived concil estate) they would lose a tick box from the targets list, and if you lose too many tick boxes, you lose funding |
Re: Council strike, inflation and living cost
Quote:
|
Re: Council strike, inflation and living cost
Quote:
How about an underperforming Ministry or Police Department? |
Re: Council strike, inflation and living cost
I suspect your not entirely convinced of the greatness of New Public Managment, roadrunner :)
|
Re: Council strike, inflation and living cost
you could say that :)
|
Re: Council strike, inflation and living cost
i cant afford a drug habit :(
|
Re: Council strike, inflation and living cost
Quote:
|
Re: Council strike, inflation and living cost
Quote:
|
Re: Council strike, inflation and living cost
Quote:
|
Re: Council strike, inflation and living cost
Quote:
|
Re: Council strike, inflation and living cost
just like to point out the % payrise depends on the salary its worked out from. eg if u get 3% raise which equates to 4000 its a hell of a lot different from getting the same percentage raise and only gettin 1250. With the higher amount you can adjust your spending to come in line with an imaginary lower amount and save the difference in a high interest account (beating inflation).
drug habits rock btw, but you may in need one to understand my logic here. |
Re: Council strike, inflation and living cost
Quote:
|
Re: Council strike, inflation and living cost
Quote:
|
Re: Council strike, inflation and living cost
Quote:
|
Re: Council strike, inflation and living cost
Frankly, work sucks right now.
Losing the 10p band on tax has hurt alot. Im losing twice the money now on income tax. Then add on rising costs in council tax and energy. Hell, people HAVE seen the 35% price hike in British Gas right? Crazy. How the hell are people supposed to pay more taxes and then pay more for living costs (water, gas, electricity, council tax)? It's really annoying :( Means I have to basically search for a new job as I'm only on 12K a year and all these price hikes are bursting my bubble of financial dependability (and thats without a mortgage to worry about) |
Re: Council strike, inflation and living cost
Why would any government place the tax burden on its electorate. It's Voodoo Economics. Cianara meine rougesten.
|
Re: Council strike, inflation and living cost
if you are with british gas, either get on their click 5 or their fixed tariff rate now as they are their best deals
|
Re: Council strike, inflation and living cost
Quote:
|
Re: Council strike, inflation and living cost
Quote:
|
Re: Council strike, inflation and living cost
Quote:
|
Re: Council strike, inflation and living cost
Quote:
|
Re: Council strike, inflation and living cost
Quote:
There's no way new schools or hospitals would have been built without it. The lifecycle of the existing buildings was long gone (the maintenance bill alone for discontinued plant would be in the millions per year per hospital) The problems have arisen where the local councils/trusts have had no commercial awareness and signed up to awful contracts with no performance measurement or cost control. (I hate myself :() |
Re: Council strike, inflation and living cost
He said don't get him started.
... You won't like him when he's mad... |
Re: Council strike, inflation and living cost
Quote:
|
Re: Council strike, inflation and living cost
What's even more interesting is where the tax money goes to once the government has gotten their hands on it.
|
Re: Council strike, inflation and living cost
Quote:
Corporate income tax Main article: Corporate tax in the United States In the United States, the federal corporate income rate for the year 2006 varies between 15 and 39% depending on taxable income. But since 1999, when Treasury announced the "check the box" system many corporations can elect to be treated as a pass-through entity, thereby skipping the entity level 35% tax and having all income pass through to the shareholders. This is the tax treatment that the much discussed "S" corporations receive; but now many more types of state-law corporations may avoid double taxation by "checking the box". Dividends are also subject to a lower rate of income tax in the United States. The U.S. corporate tax rate is ranked as the second highest statutory rate among the OECD countries (the U.S. average rate of 39.3 ranks just behind Japan's 39.5 and well above the OECD average of 28.7).[27] However, the U.S also has the greatest number of corporate tax loopholes of any OECD member,[28] allowing many corporations to achieve a lower effective tax rate than the published rates. |
All times are GMT +1. The time now is 20:37. |
Powered by vBulletin® Version 3.8.1
Copyright ©2000 - 2024, Jelsoft Enterprises Ltd.
Copyright ©2002 - 2018