This Is Guernsey

By Nicci Martel

Sewage cart drivers talk about the States’ 3% offer.

HUNDREDS of States employees are receiving pay below the island’s poverty line.

A 2002 Townsend Report revealed that the net wage for workers in the lowest four out of seven pay grades was less than £300 a week, putting them in a position of severe deprivation.

In presentations to States manual workers on Wednesday, Unite representatives showed the findings of the report, alongside statistics outlined in the manual workers’ pay and conditions survey, which was commissioned by the States.

‘All the figures are based on methods laid down by the government and uses information they’ve gathered, so it’s not just something we picked out of the sky,’ said union member and States electrician John Mitchell, who compiled the information.

‘When we showed the workers graphs showing how their pay compared, there was a round of applause. People just didn’t realise where they stood. People had been coming up to me to say they were hard-up and the graphs showed them just what they were perceiving to be true.’

If two of the highest paid public service workers were to cohabit, their joint incomes would be below the latest household expenditure survey average of £748.58 per week, he said.

The survey also showed that public service workers received less annual leave and had a longer working week than other States employees.

It calculated that skilled public service employees earn 29% less than their private sector equivalents, so States workers such as plumbers and carpenters, who are on a basic pay of about £400 a week, could earn around £140 more in the private sector.

* Unite has refused the States’ offer of a 3% increase and is demanding one in line with September’s RPI figure of 4.9%, plus another 3%.