Public service workers aren’t asking for the earth

It should be little wonder that pay is high on the agenda at UNISON’s annual conference in Bournemouth this week. Teaching assistants, care workers and paramedics are in the midst of a damaging squeeze on their pay. During a period in which inflation has stood at around 5%, those who work across the public services have endured two to three years of a pay freeze.

To make matters worse the government has announced plans to cap pay at 1% for another two years and signalled its intent to push towards localised and regional pay to make it more “market facing”.  UNISON has commissioned independent research which seriously undermines the case for local and regional pay.

This research shows that private sector, multi-site employers that operate across the UK generally use national pay bargaining with London and sometimes South East weighting. Or in other words…precisely what the public sector already does. What could be more market facing than that?  Today the Government seems to be backtracking, saying it would need ‘serious evidence’ before it moved to more localised pay bargaining.  Well UNISON has all the evidence it needs – let’s hope the Government is serious about listening.

UNISON has also highlighted the damaging consequences of paying people less if they live in the midlands, the north and other parts of the UK.

Attacking workers’ pay (in any sector of the economy) is a continuation of a damaging structural trend in our economy that will only increase inequality and damage our society.

The share of national income that goes to wages is being reduced and skewed away from ordinary working families in favour of  the top 1%.

It is becoming increasingly accepted that these trends impact negatively on us all.  Millions of households will rely on both a public and private sector wage to get by.  Of those households that have more than one earner (approximately half), 40% will include someone in a public service or public service related job.  Evidence shows that privatisation and outsourcing have helped to drive this downward trend in wages, and that this damaging pattern is now intensifying under the coalition.

The madness is that cutting pay will not help the wider economy.  You need look no further than the dire consumer confidence figures for proof of that.

Our delegates in Bournemouth know only too well that pay, as well as insecurity about jobs,  has a direct impact on how likely people are to go out and spend their wages – which is so vital for our economic recovery. No wonder it is stuck in reverse.

What the Tory-led coalition should not forget is that behind the economic arguments are millions of human stories of families suffering.  Today UNISON has published the results of research into the impact of austerity on our members lives.

This includes detailed statistical analysis, but also 15 in-depth interviews with public sector workers who are struggling to make ends meet as a result of the Tory-led coalition’s drastic spending cuts.  To give just one example, “Louise” has been a detention officer, booking prisoners into custody for the West Yorkshire police authority for seven years.  This is what she says about her financial situation:

‘I just don’t know where they expect us to find this additional income and this additional money from … this government has got its priorities wrong and it’s always the working person that suffers … I feel I’m only just holding my head above water -I feel like I’m on a sinking ship’

Public service workers aren’t asking for the earth – just a fair wage and a decent standard of living for them and their families in return for serving our communities. What could be fairer than that?

David Arnold is a Policy Officer for Unison. This post forms part of our coverage of Unison Conference 2012.