States pay body apathy
Monday 22nd June 2009, 2:29PM BST.
ONLY three States members responded to a Policy Council consultation asking whether a Public Employment Board should take the place of the Public Sector Remuneration Committee.
The future of the committee has become increasingly uncertain after its members resigned in protest over the handling of the airport firefighters’ dispute.
The consultation asked deputies to read Dr Graham Robinson’s review of the role of the States as an employer and respond to the key recommendation of the creation of the board.
‘The point has been made clearly that there is no fixed approach in mind. The report is floating an idea and assessing views before reaching a conclusion,’ said a council spokesman
One of the three who did respond was Deputy Jan Kuttelwascher (pictured). ‘It asked us what mechanism we wanted to deal with pay and has PSRC passed its sell-by date,’ he said.
‘What I said was that if such a body was set up I wouldn’t want to see any public service workers on it other than States members because you can’t have people who will benefit financially from the decisions they have to make on the behalf of others.’
He said PSRC’s future was not looking bright. ‘I know there are a number of deputies who want to boycott the whole thing.’
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‘…you can’t have people who will benefit financially from the decisions they have to make on the behalf of others.’
Please remind everyone JK who sets the pay scales for Deputies?
The arrogance and hypocrisy being blurted out of the States is now, officially, beyond a joke!
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AM
I was one of the three who responded on the Robinson report and States members pay is set by an independent pay review panel every four years, it doesn’t have any states members or ex -states members on it and is headed up by an eminent judge. The current rates of pay for States members are fixed at the rate the panel set for the four year term.
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Dave Jones
What makes a judge “eminent”? In what way does this judge differ from his brethren?
Only yesterday we saw Nick Mann refer to a seconded Crown Advocate as giving high level legal advice.
Why not say judge and legal advice.
Would the legal advice of HM Comptroller that a £4000 payment to employees was not remuneration, be classed as high level?
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SJ
Eminent
Well Known
Renowned
Distinguished
Prominent
All these I believe apply to Chris Day former Deputy Bailiff and senior Judge.
I think you will find that 3,000 of that was already on the table from PSRC.
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Deputy Jones
Surely you are not suggesting the PSRC did not regard their £3000 on the table as being remuneration.
Although it is a moot point as to why the HR man Elliott did not share his view that £3 or £4 grand was not remuneration. I wonder why?
The handle remuneration was a convenient, although silly way to sideline the PSRC and let Public Service have a dab at continuing the impasse.
I say continue the impasse because it hasn’t sorted the basic problem.
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As I understand it ,it was a one off payment to get the airport open.
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Deputy Jones
Are you suggesting that a one off payment is not part of remuneration?
Give the head of the tax department a call and ask his opinion. Payment whether one off, two off, twelve off or fifty two off, is part of remuneration.
The reason to get the airport open doesn’t make any difference. Still remuneration and still taxable.
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Does it matter what it is called?
The sum of money was given to the firemen in order to get them back to work, to ensure that they would cover all shifts and work overtime on a regular basis to enable all flights to continue – in the absence of any other agreement.
Surely the argument is that the ‘talks’ were allowed to go on for so long with no prospect of any new agreements, with the PSRC knowing that there were not enough ff to cover all the staff holidays and training etc but continuing to put off making a decision.
Whatever the rights and wrongs of the payment it did the job – it got the airport open and Guernsey back to business.
I hope that the States are not now going to prevaricate and pay another huge sum of money to some ‘Consultants’ to come up with another report telling us what we already know.
I, as a taxpayer, want the States to get a move on, make a decision on who is going to be made responsible for public sector pay, and ensure that the island remains viable as a business centre with an excellent infrastructure to support it.
Remuneration is paid on a regular basis to lots of workers. HSSD pays up to £4,500 remuneration to entice nurses to come and work in Guernsey for 2 years – it is a one off payment and not available to local nurses, but i don’t hear anyone shouting from the rooftops that this is a bad thing. I chose to leave and work in the private sector: my remuneration is health insurance, bonuses etc – is that bad? We all have choices. The ff had run out of choices (apart from all resigning) so they did the only thing they could to make their voices heard quickly – they shut the airport. I don’t agree with strikes and agree that any new agreement has to have a ‘no strike’ clause included – but again refusing to work overtime is not the same as going on strike!
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States members, stop messing about wasting time and money on consultants, enquiries and requetes and deal with the real issue – otherwise a few months down the line we will end up with the same problem again!
The amount of time, money and effort completely wasted is ridiculous – if you States members can’t do what you are paid for i.e run the island then do us all a favour and resign.
As a taxpayer I am sick and tired of our useless government wasting my hard earned cash.
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Molly, here here I could not agree with you more on your comments, I was listening to the states debate (for the first time last week) and learnt that they had to take a vote just to take off their jackets because it was so warm in the chamber. Says it all really eh. The local government is so old fashioned and antiquated. The Airport Firefighters have basically been given another (sweetner)however, it is now 11 months and counting lets see how quick the states can sort it out.
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