States ‘too generous’ pay to end
Monday 12th September 2011, 2:30PM BST.
STATES employees receive too many pay rises and the system needs urgent reform, the Treasury minister has said.
And the deputy responsible for pay and conditions confirmed there were plans on the way to address the issue – although he could not reveal what they were.
Treasury minister Charles Parkinson (pictured) made his comments after figures revealed that the average cost to the taxpayer for each public sector worker rose to £43,351 last year, while the average wage for islanders in general was £27,430.
‘One of the issues the States needs to deal with is incremental salary drift,’ he said.
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Not exactly news the.we the electerate have known about this for a long time, but hopefully something will finally be done to redress this massive differential. We live in hope!
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How much are the high earners distorting the numbers?
Isn’t it about time we found out what the top PSD civil servants are paid?
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Err… no. Don’t think it is. I pay my plumber’s salary, I don’t have a right to know how much he gets paid. Can someone please explain the difference to me?
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Hmmmm… If it was that generous when I worked there, I’d probably still be there. I was on the ‘average’ £27k wage. I think these figures have been inflated by the top-heavy management wages.
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what about the things civil servants don’t get – bonuses, health insurance etc.. Plus there are no ‘promotions’ – you have to apply like a job interview for all new postions regardless of who you are and what the job is. Civil servants do not get paid too much, utterly rediculous! And yes before you ask I am a civil servant and no I don’t earn the average amount.
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There is a big difference between a public sector workers wage and what they actually cost the taxpayer!
This is a misleading article but it will no doubt result in another session of ‘bash the States worker’ on this forum.
Unless I’ve missed something we get one payrise a year usually very close to the cost of living and not a lot else in the way of perks.
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How much are the highest civil servants paid? Those are the numbers that need to be looked into.
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He has been hanging with the bad kiddies too long,I will be voting The Four Horsemen Of The Apolcalypse, The Swarm Of Locust’s and Carol Steere, all safer hands at Treasury.
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Is this comparing like for like? Surely there is a difference between employment cost and what somebody is actually paid?
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Ali
What about the things you DO get, generous pension, job security! Not many people in the private sector (I exclude finance) get these and very few get bonus’s and health insurance. I doubt many civil servants realise just how lucky they are.
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High time, it’s a gravy train for many of the top earning States employees.
Billythefish – the difference is that you are only contributing towards a portion of the plumber’s salary for the services he performs for you and you obviously know how much you are paying him…whereas the taxpayer is paying for the entirety of the salaries of States employees yet it does not know how much it is paying for each.
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I’m not normally one to leap to the defence of the Civil Service but Kevin & Questor are right – this is a misleading article.
An annual salary comparison would be far more useful – and no doubt make the difference less than has been indicated here.
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ali
I dont get any of those perks either and i am not a civil servant.
I dont believe the figures show the true picture though.
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Mr G
See page 22 at http://www.gov.gg/ccm/cms-service/download/asset/?asset_id=13599979
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Questor of course it is not comparing like for like.
‘Average’ Mean, Mode or Median is the same one being used for each.
then there is the old saying of lies, lies and statistics, statistics can easily be maniputlated to meet your objective, eh!
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The very wording in this article suggests that two very different sets of figures are being compared to give a distorted picture in order to make the figures look much worse than they really are….Cost to the taxpayer of a civil servant will include salary, social security and pension contributions, whereas average wage will only be the salary….however, it is important to note that this appears to relate only to civil servants, and not include all the lower paid manual states workers whose pay would drive down the average figure for States employees, offsetting the fact that lower paid shop workers pay would lower the average earnings of all those Priavte Company employees including all the high finance earners…….not really a fair comparison.
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Rather a sweeping statement Mr Parkinson. My total pay rise in the last 12 months has been the grand total of £5.96 per week.
Taking into account the rises in the cost of heating oil, electricity, water etc, this is hardly a reason to break open a bottle of Randalls, let alone the champagne !
Its not as if I don’t have a responsible job..the KGB would have been proud of the way I was checked out.
£800 a week..in my dreams. I’m not angry at this article, just spitting feathers !
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kevin
Yes, you have missed something
“one pay rise a year usually very close to the cost of living”
That means you have had two more rises than I have in the last two years
“not a lot else in the way of perks”
What about your bullet proof job security?
What about your gold plated index linked final salary pension?
Just appreciate what you do have – it’s worth far more than you appear to think it is
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Once again this is mischief making of the highest order. If it isn’t the States Members under attack, it’s the Public Sector employees. Why never a bad word to be said about private sector businesses or their directors?
The stats provided are not comparing like-with-like, effectively rendering them meaningless.
What they do is compare the average SALARY in the island (£27k) with the average COST of a public sector worker (£43k). The former is BASIC salary (excluding everything else the employer may have to fork out for, such as social security, pension, health insurance, bonus, Summer Ball, Christmas Party etc.), whereas the latter includes ALL costs
to the employer. To make any sort of meaningful comparison it should be the average cost to an employer of a non-public servant (£??k) against the average cost to the taxpayer of a public servant (£43k).
Digest these type of headline-grabbing figures carefully folks and make your own mind up as to whether spin is being deployed or not.
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pyer,
I won’t ask what you do for a living but I’d suggest you look for another job if you’ve not had any sort of pay increase in the last two years — in the current economic climate that sounds pretty unreasonable unless you have received any other extra perks?
Maybe you consider a ‘gold plated index linked’ pension a perk – yes it will (one day) be a decent perk but we have no option, 6.5% of our weekly wage is deducted automatically.
Personally I believe we should have the choice, in many cases(particularly the lower paid)the money would be more useful now than in retirement — the way retirement age is creeping up thats assuming we are not dead first!
For the record I do appreciate my job although being at the lower end of the Public Services Department pay scale it does irritate me that many non States employees seem to think that we have it so easy – not always the case unfortunately!
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Glad to see that gravy time has stopped.
What will be funny now is watching all the frossard house employees stay exactly where they are and not leave. They use the threat of ‘better private sector pay’ all the time as an excuse for their fattened salaried and remuneration. However, now the private sector has tightened its belt there will be a lot of fat cats drinking milk like everyone in the real world!
Long time overdue. Working at the custard castle is a doddle! Many of my friends who are there have said how cushy it is.
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The phrase States Employee’s covers a broad church from a part time female cleaner at the hospital to the civil servant at the top of the civil service tree.
What does he mean by incremental salary drift, is it the the top civil servants salarys have drifted too far ahead of the hospital cleaners, so that the cleaners now need a catch up award?.
What happened to plain talking?.
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Looking at the Billet D’Etat only 16.7% are on salaries over 43,769 (the maxima for the next grading class)..
I did some quick sums using the maxima, adding up all the salaries in one grade class, taking an average and multiplying by number of staff in that class:
Senior Officer (340 staff, 16.7%) total cost:£28,892,520 – average salary £84,978
Executive Grade (966 staff, 47.4%) total cost: £ 35,714,179 – average salary £36,971
Administrative (383 staff, 18.8%) total cost: £8,504,387 – average salary £22,204
PA/Typist (96 staff, 4.7%) total cost: £2,576,640 – average salary £26,840
I have not included ‘other’ because the range is too high and it includes various of the above grades.
Average of all grades (Total of totals/total number of staff) : £42,409
Average of all excluding Senior Officers:
£32,384
So nearly a 10k distortion caused by the 80k plus salaries of only the top `16%………unsuprising.
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So, let’s say we remove £3,000 odd pounds from the States figures, and add a similar amount to the private sector figure we would end up with a disparity of only £10.000 Whew! That looks better, now I can sleep well tonight!
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kevin – real world I’m afraid. Thare are many workers who haven’t had a pay rise at all over the past few years – especially in finance.
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@btf
Aha the fin strikes again! You think its OK that there is no transparency on top Guernsey civil servants. What makes Guernsey so special, the salary of the British Prime Minister is public information.
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Thanks St Marcouf, but I’m not convinced. Yes, I pay a part of the plumber’s salary (and other costs!!) but I don’t know what he pays himself out of that and I have no right to.
As someone pointed out the actual salary bands of civil servants are published, so you do know what they are paid – you can also work out how much of your tax goes to the salaries.
And Damo, I was waiting for someone to bring up “fattened” salaries. Let’s assume that a Law Officer is going to be paid near the top grades. According to the link above, that’s probably in the region of £100-110k a year.
Yes, that’s not to be sniffed at. BUT, how many private practice partners would get out of bed for that money? Not many, I would suspect.
Same goes for the Chief Officers of the much maligned departments. Probably near the top scales, but would CEOs of companies with similar budgets (let alone the responsibilities they have) work for such amounts. Again, I suggest NO.
So you can’t have it both ways, Guernsey. You are always complaining that monkeys are running the States…. well, if you pay peanuts, what do you expect? You want the very best staff in the Civil Service, throughout the organisation, then have the audacity to moan when you feel they are overpaid. I hope I have demonstrated that, certainly near the top, they aren’t. I can’t comment more in depth as I don’t know the salaries of any grades, just making a couple of educated assumptions, which would appear to blow a hole in the gravy train accusation.
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Actually, while on the subject, this is a statement coming from the Minister, T&R.
The same minister who, on a quick google search, pops up as “the founder and, until 2004, chairman of the Guernsey office of PKF, the chairman or a director of two companies listed on the London Stock Exchange, including a property investment company.”
Hmmmm….. easy to throw stones in that position…..
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Just to be controversial I think we should lay off half of the states employees.
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Gilthead,
I don’t doubt that there is many other workers that have not had a payrise in the last few years but I’d guess many in the finance sector have either received some sort of bonus or other worthwhile perks?
Or maybe they’ve just earned too much money in previous years and the employers are having to tighten the purse strings in the current economic climate?
Going slightly off topic have you seen the amount of the latest ‘must have’ accessory, the new Chelsea Tractors(Range Rovers) that have appeared on our roads in the last few months?
I doubt that many are owned by nurses,sewage cart drivers or roadsweepers.
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In the good old days, it was prudent to get a job in the States – the pay was good, the fact that it was a job for life was tempting, the holidays also good. Now that isn’t the case.
It often seems to me that people who complain that others are getting too well paid, are those who are not fully trained or competent to do the sort of jobs which are advertised for.
There are no benefits to working for the States – you tend to work with inferior management teams and people who in “the real world” would never be employed. That is not to say that everyone is tarred with the same brush, and a lot of people do their jobs for the greater good. I have a family to support, therefore I personally wouldn’t countenance a job with no benefits, no decent pay and no autonomy to do your job with the minimum of red tape. TO say that the Civil Service pays top dollar is a fallacy.
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Without looking at the date on the press, I can tell it’s September. Is it any accident that these stories come out every September when negotiations for the Manual Workers are about to start.I don’t think so.
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Seems like a cheap dig to win some votes from Mr parkinson, who himself I am sure is handsomely rewarded, I bet he doesnt hand some of his salrary back stating that he is paid to well and doesnt need it all. You can twist the stats all you like, at the end of the day there is little in it, it all depends on each persons view of what perks mean more to them, some people prefer security in job and future, others prefer the healthcare or the bonus culture, you choose the type of work you do to suit your preference. Those that complain oft are those that are jealous!
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@ Billythefish
That’s purely because they are not intelligent enough to be a partner of a private pratice !!!
It is true, that if you pay peanuts you get monkeys. However those monkeys given enough time will retype the entire works of shakespeare long before i see at least three out of five states employees actually doing something fruitful at the same time. If they are not leaning on a spade whilst somone else does the digging outside, the ones in frossard house are busy hanging out small local business’ to dry.
Working in the private sector is exceptionally competitve, with no pay scales. All work benefits hould be offered on a performance scale and not a pay scale. It should not be a right to have a pay rise every year that you are there.
Just take for example the airport fireman debacle…a perfect example of states employees throwing the toys out of the pram. If anyone says in the private sector, pay rise or i’m off, or i’m striking. Their possessions would be handed to them in a box whilst being frogmarched out of the building. Not force a vital link to be shutdown.
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Damo… so many things wrong here, I’m not sure where to begin..
Firstly, do you know any Law Officers to be able to make that judgement? I suggest you don’t. Nor do I, but I’m not judging that they are not intelligent enough to run a private practice. If you take your position, clearly these stupid Law Officers will be doing an awful job – does that mean that you will happily pay £300,000 each to attract some that will do the job the Island deserves? As I said, you can’t have it both ways.
I’ll leave your second paragraph alone, as it simply smacks of some sour grapes.
On to para 3. When I worked at HSBC there were a number of distinct pay bands, so you’re wrong there. You could also argue that it encourages wage inflation when there is no cap. At least in the CS, there is a cap on the salary for a particular job.
And onto the firemen. Slightly daft comparison to make. If anyone in the CS says pay rise or I’m off, they’d be off too. The difference is a group got together and said that. And a very specialist group at that. If a bunch of admin workers tried that they would be marched off and a bunch of temps brought in. I doubt there are many temp firms specialising in Airport Firemen.
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Any ‘pleb’ who works for the States will know that these figures are badly distorted by the high salaries paid to the upper echelons within the States departments. I moved to work for the States 3 years ago from a private company and accepted a much lower salary. Do the public know that States workers have to pay for their own cups of tea/coffee/ milk/sugar etc? (supposedly because we cannot have the benefit of the public’s money!!). The wonderful pensions are only applicable to officers of a higher grade or people who have worked for the States for about 40 years. The staff pension contribution is compulsory-no choice. Yes the departments are top heavy with higher civil servants, but don’t knock those junior members of staff who work hard, but have no benefits and do struggle at (often) less than the average wage. Why do you think there are always so many staff vacancies in the States departments? Mainly I believe because the salaries and/or benefits do not compare to those in the real world.
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i am fed up to the back teeth of all the adverse publicity we get in the press merely for being a hard working civil servant, (yes a lot of us are hard working), for a start i am no where near the average wage that has been quoted in the press and i have worked for them for 40 years, also i am sick of the editor in his comment column forever implying that my wage is too high and my pension is gold plated, maybe if i earned his salary i wouldn’t need a pension, but strange as it may seem, he never prints how much he earns, i’ll bet it’s a lot more than me. when i joined the states i applied for a mortgage and was refused on the grounds that i didn’t earn enough now all of a sudden i’m overpaid. I WISH!!
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Billy…i’m only here to add fuel to the fire of debate ! ;-)
I do like to make the odd sensational comment or two
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When I first started work for a States Department (Guernsey Telecoms, then the States Telephone Department) 40 years ago there were set grades and set wage scales to achieve throughout the Company, each grade having increments to achieve before moving to the next grade. The minimum time spent in each increment was judged by your standard of work, customer relations and training courses and before you were moved up an increment, or grade, you were judged by older and more experienced workers who then had a word in the lower grades training.
This set a worker a standard to achieve before earning more money which was always the aim.
It also gave the worker the stimulus to please the trainers and bosses and a degree of respect for your elders and betters was instilled in everyone.
As you moved up the scales you were rewarded and promoted and many of the lower ranks went on to become well respected managers and senior managers with huge amounts of experience that made the Company a major asset of The States of Guernsey.
Now there are hidden wage scales and grades and the accent on training is practically nill. Management are all outsiders recruited from C&Ws worldwide system and they have no knowledge of local customs and conditions. The emphasis now being on making more money rather than the customers.
There are a few of the “old staff” that have progressed but very few and once the older ones are retired they will be replaced by staff from off island almost certainly.
My point is that I knew, in the days of wage scales, exactly where I was ranked and what I had to do to progress because the man next to me had his wage scale published. We all knew what we had to do to be better than he and get promoted over him but it led to good competition and a greater standard in the company`s workforce.
You had a say in how far you wanted to go in your career but there is no such stimulus these days. Most people will never achieve their true standing because their futures are decided by outsiders who have very limited knowledge of their staff`s experience except on paper.
Bring back set wage scales attached to experience then it is up to the worker to prove his/her worth.
One other thing, whatever happened to Apprentiships? There was no better way of training for your future in any company both in the Company`s benefit and the public`s benefit. It is also a very good place to start teaching respect for both yourselves and your elders, something that is sadly missing these days.
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Isn’t it ironic that civil servants pay and associated perks are being compared to those working in the private sector, which let’s face it in Guernsey (means predoimnantly (although not exclusively) the finance industry. Those poor folk have had to tighten their belts and go without a pay rise for a year or two, wso why shouldn’t civil servants.
Can someone remind me why after all these years the finance sector has had to tighten its belt. Is it anything to do with a global financial crisis? Was that the fault of civil servants?
I think not.
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Geoff, I don’t doubt you are a hard worker. All I can say is that I have employed two ex States workers in recent years. Both were the same. They clock watched and were off on the dot of 5pm. Asking them to stay a bit later was like asking them to commit a cardinal sin seeing their responses. They couldn’t multi task to save their life and as soon as things got busy they threw their toys out of the pram.
Most States workers just can’t cut in in commercial life. Sorry, that’s just the way it is in my experience.
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Well said Chris !!!
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Chris – not a terribly big sample. My dear mum worked as a CS and, yes, she worked with some people who didn’t really pull their weight (as you get in most large organisations), but she was always bringing work home with her and working in the evenings.
I have quite a few mates in the CS (and these are the reasons I get a bit het up by all the CS bashing), and they are often cancelling on me for lunch because of work pressures.
So for your two clockwatchers I have a few that aren’t. As I said, not a very large sample when you’re talking about a few thousand employees!
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Chris – I duly doff my cap in your direction, I think what you did was very brave. Were you conducting a social experiment?
I haven’t employed any long time ex-States workers (manual or ‘civil’) But I know plenty of people that have briefly worked for our government and left. All citing the same stories of terrible management, unionised jobsworths at every level, terrible wasteful working practices etc.
Those that remain for any length of time in any capacity, from cleaners to senior civil servants, are those that can’t hack it in the real world. You know that place where your performance dictates not only what pay you receive but whether you have a job at all.
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Chris, i would suggest that is why they left the states, as they couldnt cut the workload. I would advise you rethink your hiring policy, obviously you didnt ask the right questions to weedle out those not capable of doing the job?
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Chris – you are right. Problem is without someone telling them what to do/when to sit/what to think, a lot of these CS are incapable of working in the commercial world. However, break times and going home times are always understood.
It would be interesting hearing from any more managers who have had unfortunate incidences with ex CSs. I am sure it cannot simply be Chris and me!
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I didn’t intend on getting into any kind of debate about this but I felt I must respond to chris,eggy bread and sarnia expat, of course there are bone idle people in the cs but it is not confined to only the public sector, the private sector has their share as well , however you shouldn’t tar everyone with the same brush there are good and bad in every organisation, we employed someone recently from the private sector and that person was the same as the people Chris employed, they will never work one minute past their allocated time or arrive one minute early, luckily those type of people are in the minority, I was bought up to believe you got a fair days pay for a fair days work.
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Geoff – “there are good and bad in every organisation”
To think and agree with that is to set yourself up to fail. Don’t pull your weight here and you are out of the door, simple as that.
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well said Chris and like minded contributors for the biggest load of tosh I have heard for years. This real world all these great people have mentioned seems very different to the one I live in. Instead of bickering about each other we should all unite and try to work at building a better Island for everyone. In the meantime all I can do is work for the good of all the people of Guernsey, and Guernsey itself, and one day if I try really really really hard, I might be half as brilliant as you.
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Geoff – the thing is i’m not paying for people to be bone idle in the private sector !
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Geoff you shouldn’t have got into the debate I worked for the States for 29 out of my (up to now) 49 year working life and I’ve seen both sides of it.
None of these people have ever worked for the States which is very apparent from the posts here.
Guernsey gossip and pub talk thats all it is, and remember that you only get one side of the story here and a very biased one at that.
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I agree in every organisation there are people who do not pull their weight, you cannot point the finger at civil servants alone, I was a cs for 22 years in a very unpopular dept and I can categorically state that I earned every penny,with absolutely no perks, just working with a great bunch of staff.
There were many staff who had worked there for a long time and knew their job inside out, and much much more, they could have gone into the private sector for mega bucks but they chose to stay, they gradually went up through the departments and ended up where they wanted to be, these people were precious to the department, why they stayed who knows, it is maybe for some, not all about money,I am sure the cs could lose a few as technology takes over jobs.
All I know is the states got their money’s worth from me and most of my colleagues. I am not complaining I loved every minute of it.
Dont knock all civil servants, there are lazy people in all walks of life, I have also been in the private sector employing staff, well that is something else, what staff want now in perks is unbelievable, but I wont even go into that one.
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Damo, you don’t quite understand capitalism do you…..
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i just heard the States are getting rid of 50 jobs.
Wonder if that’ll conveniently be 50 lower grade ones, thus maintaining the status quo and ensuring the staff earning the top salaries remain firmly in place…? ;0)
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To all you CS bashers, Thanks for all your constructive comments on how usless CS workers are! Nobody seems to think about what it would be like if there was not a nurse to look after your frailing mother or a fireman to rescue your child from a burning building. The CS does a lot of good but oh know lets concentrate on the negatives! We all know that the GP never paints the CS in good light and all you moaners get straight on the band wagon. Instead of sitting there moaning/slating why don’t you get off your b*tts and do some good for your island? Or if you don’t like it why don’t you leave the island? Or maybe there are economic constraints all over the world at the moment? Get a life and get on with it. Stop blaming Cs workers for everything that goes wrong in your lives.
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Couple of points.
Yes there is a clear distortion of figures created by executive level staff in the Civil service, however thats a redundant argument IMO because the private sector figures will be distorted in a similar manner.
Secondly.
The vast majority of people I know in the private sector, havent had pay rises for a couple of years, in fact the only friends I know, that have had a pay rise, are civvies.
There is also a fallacy that private sector employees enjoy massive bonuses, trust me, unless you are a senior manager or a trader with personal performance related bonuses written into your contract (of which there are very few), or a partner in a legal or accountancy practice (again very few), the likliehood is, you havent had a bonus either. But I gurantee that you’ve been expected to work longer and harder as the excuses rain down about the economic climate and the “we all have to pull together” rhetoric that justifies a leaner operation, executive bonuses and profits that are unreconcilable to the average employees package.
Clearly there is a misconception about Civvies working conditions, pay, benefits etc from the private sector, however, what the civvies need to realise, is that they display a similar misconception towards conditions in the private sector.
Truth is, as much as we dont like to admit it, the private and public sector working conditions, benefits, responsibilities are very similar, the key difference is that one group pays for the other, so its natural for the group paying to ask questions, when their money is deemed to be paying for a more competetive package than their own.
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I know many people, including relotives, who have gained skills in the private sector and have all left good jobs and gone to work for the States.I wonder why? is there an obvious answer?
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Dave Haslam,
Whilst much of your post is fair comment I’ve picked up on a couple of points that I don’t really agree with — firstly, one group does not pay for the other, both private and public sectors contribute to the main coffers that pay civil and public service wages, secondly, who exactly has deemed that the civil service are receiving a more competitive package than their own?
One other interesting point, could it be that the finance sector in general have been paid over the odds during the boom years and that is why they are now feeling the pinch?
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If the States pays so well why aren’t all the best people working there??
As an ex-employee there is a reason why there is no ‘brain drain’ from the private sector to cushy jobs in Custard Castle and that reason is the low pay civil servants receive.
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Eggybread (September 14, 2011 at 10:59 am ) yes, well I couldn’t experiment on little furry animals could I? Sue Vidamour would be knocking on my door, (let’s not go there). Anyway CS are not an endangered species, in fact quite the opposite, their numbers continue to grow. :-)
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AJ, why don’t you ask them and get the simple answer.
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Guernsey is very well run, a well oiled ship with a crew who go the extra mile when the gale blows in and this happens a lot. In five years time when outside consultants have finished streamlining the whole of the Civil Service I will return to this blog to see if was all worth the 7 million that it will have cost the taxpayer and if it has benefitted the well run well oiled little ship, who actually could have oiled it’s machine from within rather than bringing in external oilers.
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Kevin
My comment that one group pays for the other stands as far as I’m concerned. Yes, civvies contribute to their own pay, however if you compared the 2 the bulk of the funding comes from Private sector taxes.
Your second point, the key is the word “deemed”, whether Public packages are actually better than private is moot, because many in both sectors beleive the other package is better.
I dont beleive the finance sector has ever been paid over the odds, the issue, as ever, is that there are a select minority of people doing extremely well out of the finance industry. This has always been the case, the vast majority however, arent, this, in my experience has always been the case also.
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