Save money, earn more
Wednesday 9th June 2010, 2:30PM BST.
CIVIL servants will get an extra 0.5% pay rise if the States lives within its budget.
The performance-related incentive is part of a new three-year deal.
But to be paid the extra money, the States must rein in expenditure each year from now until 2012.
Based on March’s figures, a civil servant at the top of the pay scale could earn nearly £12,000 more up to 2012, if the target cash limits are met.
But the performance-related payment would disappear if the States finances continued the trend set last year.
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And what extra tax releif will i get if they stick within budget, considering it is my tax paying this wage. Disgusting.
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Bart:
So, because your taxes happen to pay the salaries of civil servants, their pay should not be competitive and provide incentives for efficient working practices?
Using the same rationale, because shop workers are paid via our purchases, they should not be allowed incentives. Same would apply to restaurant workers, bank workers etc… Hang on a minute – when you think about it ALL workers in ALL industries are paid for by you, me and our peers. Why should public sector workers be paid less just because the origin of the funds is called ‘tax’ as opposed to ‘profit’ – both are paid for by you.
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They should be reducing their earnings by 0.5%, not rising it!!
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Oh GG, you are a clever girl arent you? Or perhaps you are a law degree holder, and now an economist too? Or perhaps your just plain clueless. Why should Civil Servants have their salaries frozen (behind that of their private sector colleagues) and then be told to make massive changes and drive for efficiency, with no carrot on the end of the stick? I am sure that during the course of your law degree you were made familiar with the concept of carrot and stick? Private sector employee’s are offered bonuses if they can cut costs and improve profit margins, this is no different. And when you think of the average Joe on say £25k per annum that £125 extra a year is really going to make them rich and rush out to buy Mercs and Beamers isnt it?
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And so the civil servant bashing begins. I’m pretty sure all these wingers and moaners would be the first to climb aboard their mighty chariots of righteousness should all the services on the island provided by these workers suddenly disappear! This island’s infrastructure does not run on wishful thinking.
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Why is that then GG?
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Truth Man, well said! Bart, what a silly imbecilic comment.
I think this is a good idea, financial incentives are there in many companies for one reason or another. I would rather my tax money went towards a well earned bonus than to waste.
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Sadly in the current climate many of us are expected to improve efficiency with little or no incentive. Many sticks no longer have carrots dangling from them these days. I happen to think Bart has raised a very valid point. Why shouldn’t we get extra tax relief if/when the States keep within budget?
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So Dean. If we were to get extra tax relief you would waste yours would you? Well that’s entirely up to you of course but many of us don’t get bonuses for our hard work and I for one didn’t get a pay rise this year so extra tax relief would be very welcome indeed.
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EMZ, you guys earn more than enough, the money which is saved should be put back into the community, not spent on a bottle of pop for your “well earned” money saving techniques!
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While I’m all for an incentive to save the Island money,my worry is senior Civil Servants will take the easy option of reducing or outsourcing the local Civil Servant and Manual Workers jobs, and not look at ways to make big savings by reducing out of Island consultants and contracted workers etc.etc. Is it right that some could gain a bonus by reducing a lower paid families income, Causing massive hardship to the ones that can least afford it.
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Truth Man/Dean.
You are not forced to go shopping or eating out.
You are forced to pay tax.
Do you get paid a bonus for doing your job properly (if your not in CS or Finance)?
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It seems the pro civil Service lobby is out in force rubbishing any opposition to the idea.
First the proposal seems to have the intent of paying for doing what is the basic job. Or is it an acceptance that spending is out of control and there is no other way to control spending.
One of the criticisms of so many wishy washy incentive schemes is that you can fudge the figures to meet your personal needs, without the need to open any of the many books on creative accounting.
The idea of GG re reducing wages if targets are not met is not so far fetched as some make out. At least that will be some form of retribution for failing to do the job they are paid for.
Time will tell, but it might well be a more effective means of control that to give more money when so many budgets are capable of manipulation to provide the answer you want.
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Tut Tut Truth Man and Dean, you two of all people should allow an opinion to reside. I presume you both work in Sir Charles Frossard House or alike then (that was tongue in cheek by the way, before you get upset ) :-)
Forgive me if i’m wrong but in my humble opinion this is no different to the idea of rewarding those troublesome youths who stayed out of trouble for a prolonged period of time. The other youths who had been always been “good” weren’t rewarded.
I really don’t understand why Civil Servants should be rewarded an EXTRA .5% for doing what they are supposed to do in the first place and not widening our black hole. Riddle me this…
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Bart, what I don’t like is people such as yourself who believe that because they pay tax they become an immediate expert the management of these workers. You know nothing, as you have so very clearly demonstrated.
As yes your comparison is wrong, I’m looking forward to hearing how civil servants like being compared to ASBO kids.
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If you want to incentivise (is there such a word?) civil servants to save public money offer them 10% of any savings they come up with in any twelve month period
If they think up something which turns out to save £100,000 they receive £10,000
Don’t look at it as a loss of £10,000 tax money but a saving of £90,000
I should think the counter staff at the ‘unemployed’ handout desk could save quite a bit with a little effort
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Civil Servants do not ever get bonuses, did not get pay rises and certainly do not cost of living allowances this year.
Whilst all private sector employees I’m sure get all 3 every year.
Even though the cost of living has risen a large amount from 2009 civil servants are not paid a penny more. And where has this crazy idea popped up from that civil servants get paid massive amounts I have no idea!
A lot of people seemed to have forgotten something here – it is the top useless dogs of the civil service that have been over spending NOT the thousands and thousands of ‘average’ civil servants that are all actually doing their work like they should be. Please don’t tie us altogether.
May I also point out civil servants also pay tax and that is our money as well.
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Missy
The opposition is to the scheme, and not the the civil service.
Your comment on the top useless dogs suggests you have seen some of the flaws in the scheme.
If those who can influence spending need up to an etra £12000 a year to their job, then they can do it on the salary they have sans the bonus.
By the way Missy pensioners have had pensions frozen. In case you were unaware times are difficult not only for civil servants!!!!
i must say I like Ray’s incentive plan. Problem is it makes sense so will be ignored.
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Missy
You are very misguided, your quote
“Whilst all private sector employees I’m sure get all 3 every year”
Is blatently wrong, try talking to people before you spout such claptrap.
I know private sector workers who havent had a payrise since 2007, meanwhile the public sector has been wasting our taxes.
And try contacting any investec workers about their current monetary situation.
Fact is the private sector will use any excuse to cut costs, this recession is a wonderful excuse for “sorry guys, in this climate we cannot afford it”.
This is not public sector bashing as I have good friends at the custard castle, however, the fact is (as mentioned above) this proposal is extra reward for doing something they already should have been doing, my civvy mates accept this.
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missy is closer to the truth than many of the ” self interest” writers above.
Why is the chief executive paid so much in a private company which operates in a very competitive open market battle field. It will be cost based, no profit, no company, no jobs scenario, ( Woolworth’s serves as an example) it must be run efficiently, be cost effective, and provide the service product correctly, ( mistakes are made ie Toyota ) in order to make the firm successful
Why is a ( now called ) chief executive of a States department paid so much, being none of the above and actually holding the post of administrator. The important part, responsible for working the department efficiently and not wasting money which is in the public interest and follows best practice seems to have been forgotten.
Should the head of the department not achieve this he/she should be replaced. When did you last hear of that happening? Instead give all his / her staff bonuses and a job for life and also the gold plated final salary pension costing Guernsey £70 million a year alone. Not good economics, the Greek syndrome.
Davey
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Sorry made a mistake the figure is still a hefty £21 million for Guernsey taxpayers,not £70 million which is the Jersey contribution.
ISLANDERS are spending £21m. a year maintaining the States employees’ pension scheme and a senior minister has called for it to be closed.
Social Security minister Mark Dorey (pictured) said, ‘I think it is unacceptable, this increase the taxpayer has to pay to fund the superannuation fund.
Read more: http://www.thisisguernsey.com/2009/11/23/21m-a-year-to-prop-up-pensions/#ixzz0qS4rbajX
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Missy,
All private sector employees get bonuses,a pay rise and cost of living rise every year.I know that to be wrong.My friend works in a finance job and has not had a rise in 2 years. Also was not the rpi in a minus situation for most of 2009. Now it has gone back into plus, civil service will get rises.
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GG – Civil Servants are not living in the land of milk and honey. Have you worked for the civil service or do you make naive sweeping statements from an ivory tower? Civil servants pay tax. We are not ‘Tax Ninjas’. Please think about lecturing the civil servants on their salaries (which do not compare with private sector, in my view) when you actively avoid paying tax. I am also interested to read about what you will do with your law degree when you grow up. Surely the point of such qualifications (I, too, have a law degree) is to earn a comfortable salary to be able to support your family? That was certainly my motivation.
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GG – You are aware (I hope) that many positions in the private sector that are comparable to civil servants positions are paid considerably more.
Your inexperience and lack of knowledge of pay grades perhaps would be enough for you to keep shum on this subject rather than barging in with random, sweeping comments. In order to formulate an opinion that civil servants are paid too much you must have a basis for this. Or did you just decide that they must all be driving around in beamers owning 5 bedroom houses?
Freedom of speach is all well and good but usually opinions need to be based on something to be taken seriously.
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Steve: You must be the only person I know who does not have to shop. What do you eat/wear? How do you heat your house/water?! How do you light your house?!
Bart: I respect your right to your opinion, I just don’t agree with you! Also, like Dean, I don’t see how you arrive at comparing troublesome youths to civil servants!
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Not much chance of a bonus at HSSD !
Cost of Taxis for the department in 2008 …. £28,527 slightly up on 2007
Cost in 2009 £34,450
When asked about this the department refused to be drawn further as to why the cost had increased
Perhaps some enterprising Deputy can ask that very question of them at the next States meeting ?
Open Government? Yeah, right!
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Much like a family where one of the bread winners loses his or her job. In the Guernsey family’s case its gone from a 50m surplus to a 60m deficit; the parents still want a new car every year, Jemima still wants her horse riding lessons, Johnny wants his private education; the old man is in denial telling everyone its going to be ‘alright’; while the dog gets it in the neck.
At some point this island needs a bit of a conversation with itself. What does it need, what can it afford, what does it want and how is it going to be fair for all?
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The syllogism appears to be:
1. Businesses pay their staff bonuses.
2. Businesses are successful.
3. Therefore if the civil service pays its staff bonuses, it will be successful.
There are several faults with the logic.
First, not all businesses are successful.
Secondly, it is not at all clear that the bonuses in a business are an incentive, or just a reward for success which would have happened without the incentive, or could even be accidental.
Thirdly, the civil service is not a business. It is not at all clear that a successful civil service can be obtained by a device which may (or may not) be successful in business.
Fourthly, if the civil service is not successful, can it be expected to successfully run an incentive scheme?
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Actually miss, the average civil servant, is lazy, unhelpful, uncaring, overpaid and underworked.
In fact please remmeber civil servants, you work for us, so you answer to us. If we think you are overpaid, then you are – period.
I call for further pay freezes until this awful govermenet is shaken up, and sorted out. Could do with a Maggie Thatcher for Guernsey.
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Yes, but why should you have a pay rise for doing what you should be doing? You should be saving more money already…
I have a law degree, but I haven’t used the full potential of it yet, as I enjoy avoiding tax.
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GG – how on earth do you have a law degree at 17?
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Lynnie asks GG if “You are aware (I hope) that many positions in the private sector that are comparable to civil servants positions are paid considerably more”
I’m not that sure that many of the senior States employees would get a job with anything like the terms they enjoy in the civil service.
On the other hand many of the more junior States employees would be able to get and do, get jobs in private industry.
As an example I can’t see many of the overpaid heads, managers and administrators in Education get any other than the most basic jobs (and pay) if they went over to private industry.
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Fair Pensions 4 All.
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GG – you are a WUM
Our tax system provides hardly any opportunities (or reason) for tax avoidance, and so you must actually be talking about tax evasion – just like your made up story of using marine fuel in your car. I say made up because you talked of ADDING red die to marine fuel to disguise it.
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GG: You say you have a law degree, but you also stated very recently you were a 17 year old girl. Are you a child prodigy? Which university took you on as a student? That should have been front page of the guernsey press!
If you aren’t 17 and that was a typo…then why are you wasting the degree that (I assume) the tax payers of Guernsey paid for? You aren’t big or clever, I think you need to engage with the real world and get over yourself.
You don’t come across as intelligent so I think my tax receipts are rather wasted and I shall be taking this up with the tax office.
Oh as as for civil servants pay, please will you all look into the graduate recruitment scheme and check out what people expect to be paid, despite having no real world experience….the civil service is rotten to the core with numerous inefficient and unaccountable add-ons (GHA?)
Guernsey people’s taxes are truly wasted.
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Neil Inder:
A better analogy would be: Family where one of the bread winners wastes money and runs up uncontrollable debt through gambling. The other bread winner says “This is your problem, you sort it. You CANNOT let the kids and I suffer from your negligence”.
David Cranch:
The civil service (in this context) is far, far too large to be subject to such a sweeping statement that it ‘is not successful’. Equally, whereas business can be measured by profit and loss, measuring public body success is much much harder. For example: Some people think the police fail the public. Do they? Can we measure their success effectively? Of course we can’t, because we have no idea of the state of things if the police did not exist.
Therefore, the civil service sets targets. Some are met, some are not. What it proposed here, as I understand it, is a small incentive for meeting targets. This happens in private business all the time, and usually a couple of times per year.
Sanguien:
Same to you – there are far too many civil servants to label them all, and their roles stretch across so many sectors that I would be very interested to hear how you have come to your ‘average’.
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Newsflash for all those poor, put upon civil servants out there who think that the private sector offers their workers the moon on a stick – NO THEY DON’T.
I know people in the private sector who haven’t had so much as a cost of living pay rise in over TWO YEARS, who are expected to work large amounts of unpaid overtime, and who certainly don’t have a pension scheme subsidised by we tax payers.
So. Instead of ‘rewarding’ the already over indulged civil servants for doing their job – that is, staying within budget – by giving them a lot of the money we’re supposedly saving (which seems a tad futile…doesn’t it?) how about an equally good ‘incentive’ of FIRING the heads of department who allow massive overspending instead…?
Hhmmm, let’s see…stay within budget and keep job/gold plated pension versus go over budget and lose job/gold plated pension…
there’s a no brainer that even your average civil servant could figure out.
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Sanguien – are you for real?
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Truthman
Few people save money when times are good. Most houses and holidays are either bigger or longer depending on the income of the family. Guernsey has acted no differently then any other family; we had the income, we actually saved a bit, and now we need to cut our cloth.
In the good times we, as the public, were happy to take the low tax environment, the high profits on our houses and demand a massive expansion of services; dafe in the knowledge that ‘daddy’ would be bringing home the bacon.
Pointing fingers at one specific sector be that the civil service, teenage mums, prisioners or incomers serves no real purpose.
We have had it extremely easy for 20 years. In my view Policy Council or Treasury needs to have an open conversation with the public of Guernsey regarding a future tax strategy and deliverable services. Everything open, everything on the table.
This continued sniping, be that media driven, politically fed or just public idiocy needs to be distilled into one big democratically accessible project.
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GG, I would be very careful when posting on these pages in future. Your comments seem to be more about provoking a reaction, rather than having a genuine input.
Personally I don’t believe you are 17, and I certainly don’t believe you have a law degree (that one is laughable). You spend far too much time on these pages to be either a 17 year old girl or a lawyer.
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Sanguien…what a quality statement. “We could do with a Maggie Thatcher for Guernsey” Beyond disturbing. It makes me laugh to think people believe Maggie Thatcher was actually a good leader. View the destruction of all prestigeous heavy Industry, a nations customs dissolved, thereby allowing drugs and crime to devastate entire regions. Society eroded to the point of extreme selfishness…ie the “freedom of the motor car” where entire cities sit in gridlock at 8-9am and 5-6am. And “no such thing as society”
Don’t be silly.
Getting back on topic, just to breifly explain the chain of command…the “average” civil servant answers to their line manager…they cannot and should not answer to people like you who have no respect or concept for what the “average” Civil Servant actually does.
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Belinda – basically when GG was chastised for “her” old fashioned views on a previous thread “she” came out and told us “she” was 17.
When comments arose regarding “her” sexist and chauvinistic views “she” came out with saying “she” was female.
When challenged on the need for transport for work “she” came out and told us “she” has to drive 15 miles to work and starts early in the morning therefore not able to use public transport.
These are the ones that I’ve been involved in. I’m sure there’s many more. TL is quite right. GG is a wind up merchant.
As you can see, I’m not convinced over “her” statements. In fact I believe that GG is in fact a middle age man who has nothing better to do than to try and ruffle some feathers on this community.
GG – you really would be much better off to go away come up with another user name and post comments that you believe in and have valid views on. All what you’ve posted so far is rubbish and has just been to cause controversy.
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Neil Inder:
We have common ground there: I too think we need to have a really good look again at our tax strategies. We love paying little tax, and then moan when our public services don’t deliver what we want. I for one would support a (slight) rise in tax to boost public services budgets if I could be convinced the money would be well spent. But, there lies the problem – we will never all agree what is a good spend as is highlighted in this thread.
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Great posts Neil Inder – too many of us seem to be living in the past.
It reminds me of the movie “The Madness of King George” when the king keeps on talking about the colonies even though they are now the United States of America. Another example are British expats living in Africa who still think they’re in the colonial age of empire and should get preferential treatment.
I can’t really say any more about your posts other than “hear hear!”
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