A throwback to the 80s

By Sarah Hayward / @sarah_hayward

A snippet in yesterday’s Guardian highlighted the difficulties the coalition are having recruiting a head of the new National Crime Agency. The issue is the Tory-led government don’t want to pay the post holder more than the Prime Minister earns, but all of the appropriately qualified, appropriately senior police, earn more than he does already – the Met Commissioner earns nearly £250k. The head of the NCA is an important post for the coalition and they will be concerned. But on the wider issue I reckon coalition ministers will be pretty happy with the way the piece played out.

They look tough on public sector pay at a time when everyone else is belt tightening. And when you’re talking about the differences between two six figure salaries, even if one is half the other, it’s difficult to muster much sympathy.

It’s politically nearly impossible for Labour to defend these salaries. In Camden where I’m a cabinet member, and in many other Labour councils around the country we’re busy cutting our senior pay bills. When we’re being forced to cut and close services it’s essential that we look at pay first.

But we could be storing up long term problems for ourselves. And I suspect the coalition parties know it.

While it’s difficult to defend these salaries there are legitimate questions to be asked about skills, experience and the value of the post. When the Chief Executive of Tesco earns in excess of £5m, is it actually that disproportionate that a very senior police officer earns low six figures? After all, I pay the salary of the chief executive of Tesco through the profit margin they make on groceries – it’s just less easy to see than the tax taken off my salary each month.

It isn’t just senior salaries that are being cut in the public sector, pay freezes are real terms cuts and many public sector bodies are looking to review, and cut, terms and conditions for all workers.

Labour run councils have little choice but to do this bidding for the Tory-led government. It’s very difficult to justify continuing paying higher salaries or better terms and conditions when preserving them means cutting more services or making more staff redundant.

Defending good salaries and terms and conditions should be in our DNA, but even among our own number I’ve found myself defending decent pay and conditions. Very recently I spoke up for paying qualified and experienced professionals doing a skilled job a salary of 35-40k. They’re above the national average but, given the cost of living in London hardly a king’s ransom. But the view of my comrade was that they were too high.

I know my comrade is closer to the public mood on this. Standing up and defending public sector pay isn’t going to win me that many brownie points. But defending the pay of the people who provide public services is essential to defending the services themselves.

Back in the late 80s and early 90s the last Tory government basically cut the pay of many essential public service workers year on year. By freezing pay or giving below inflation increases, salaries stagnated or fell in real terms. Class sizes went up, people died waiting for NHS treatments. Salaries matter when trying to attract people to careers.

The Tories have form for using salaries to undermine public services. As salaries and terms and conditions drop the number of people attracted to certain careers will fall away, and the calibre of people to run the services of the future will drop. The Tories know this. It’s what they do when they’re in power.

At some point later, they’ll throw their hands up, exclaim “but we just can’t get the staff” and use it as an excuse for whole sale privatisation. Arguing that they have a case for services being unsustainable.

At that point Labour needs to be in a position to defend good working conditions including pay. We can’t have spent the previous months and years buying in to a hair shirt view of how public service workers should be paid and treated.

Some of the things I’m most proud of over Labour’s history are the moves we’ve made to improve pay, holiday, working hours, paternity and maternity leave and more. We shouldn’t turn our backs on defending our record on employment now, just because it’s expedient to do so.

Next week in Camden, cabinet will consider a paper on improving workforce standards for employees of services provided by external contractors. If approved this will set a clear set of standards that private companies bidding to run our services will have to meet, and it will improve conditions for many employees.

I’m proud that, in the middle of the biggest financial maelstrom local government has ever faced we’ve been able to put down clear standards we expect companies who provide public services to meet. The standards could improve working conditions for thousands of people as contracts come up for renewal over the next few years. Many of the people who benefit will be some of the lowest paid.

Our new workforce standards could also help level the playing field between public and private sector providers. Often the main or indeed only reason a private provider can do it cheaper is through reduced remuneration for staff.

Defending public sector pay, including senior pay, is going to be tricky territory for Labour over the next few years. But we should grasp the nettle, and not only defend public services through paying people properly, but also lead the way on changing conditions of poverty employment that too many private sector firms still get away with.