Are public service jobs really overpaid now?
 

I've thought that so many times but we have been told for years that all the 'best staff will be lost to the commercial sector' if the salaries arent similar. I think that is utter BSand that they have overtaken the harsher and more competitive commercial sector!

I see so many jobs with 'nonsense' job titles and imaginatve job descriptions in the paper - all with whopping salaries, loads of hols and a big fat pension. Meantime my council tax is crippling and goes up far quicker than inflation annually...

I just saw this job with a whacking great salary - sounds like a bit of education co-ordination with a nice army below you Strategic and Performance Director for Children and Young People and Life Long Learning jobs, Wrexham, £94,320 (subject to review) | Guardian Jobs

Am I being too harsh or just a green eyed monster?

D

being a silly servant, i agree the public opinion of us is a bunch of coffee drinking crossword solvers, and in some instances that may be true. i know i get paid very well for what i do.

I would agree that there are far far far too many nonsense jobs in the Pubic Sector .!!!!

I also think the issue mainly lies in the fact there are far too many of them in there offices doin nowt ,at Our expense .!!!

And just remember we now pay a fifth of our Council Tax to pay for their Gold Plated Pensions .And it will only get worse unless a big "Cull" takes place .!!!

IMO of course .:rolleyes::rolleyes::rolleyes:

Our council is slashing frontline staff, cutting the wages of the bin men. Yet advertising for a female traveller support officer on £36k a year, and a county parenting expert on 38k a year for a 37 hour week.
jobs for the boys.

Well paid for a relevant job is fine mate. Over paid for indeciferable wealth sucking nonsense is not!

D

Going by recent events, many of them have been pretty incompetent but are still protected from being openly reported or from having their careers affected.

Les

The mind boggles at what people have got paid in the past (even allowing for Daily Mail content!)

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/arti...s-bonanza.html

That was 2006-07, but still :eek:

If you were the one getting paid it, you wouldn't be complaining. Bit like footballers.

Actually it is more than likely that both of those jobs would be jobs for the girls.

Of course there is no evidence that the private sector is completely littered with high paid non-jobs. :rolleyes:

I know one guy who works in London who was in a 'holding' position for a few months waiting for a new key role. This holding position has now lasted three years and his salary...


...£400,000 per year!


He told me he was a bit disheartened as he didn't have anything meaningful to do!

What industry was that Trout? Was it a monopoly!?:eek:

D

Like any sector, some are overpaid and some aren't.

Head of british waterways = overpaid

job centre plus advisor = underpaid

and so the list goes on...

Do we have a labour government or something :Suspiciou

^^^^^won't be better under tories or lib dems. same scummy fcukers out to line their pockets. we get shafted, they get rich.

Post on Scoobynet all day? ;)

Thing with Public servants, is they demand a wage rise every year. Don't get what they want? Strike.

Private sector? Don't get a wage rise? Hard lines. I never got a pay rise last year, and may not this year. And the public sector workers are complaining cos the Government are only increasing their pay by 2%. My fcuking heart bleeds.

But what's your measure of what that position is worth? British Waterways generates ~£150M a year of it's own income which is topped up by money from the Government plus it supports tourist and leisure activities that attracts 11 million visitors a year which generates £500m in revenue. The Chief Exec gets ~£220k to run that "business" which is in line with what a CEO of a similarly sized company would earn.

It's very naive to decide for yourself whether a job is worthwhile or not based on it's title. Two of the so-called non-jobs above might not sound important, but when a parent's negligence causes a childs death, everyone will be wondering why the "authorities" didn't do something to support, educate or, in the worst-case scenario, take the child away from the parents.

I'm not saying there aren't any overpaid people, but I don't think most people really get why people in powerful jobs get the money they get. One of my mates (an electrician) doesn't understand why I get paid so much for "sitting on my arse in an office", for example. Just because you can't see the value, doesn't mean it's there. and given that your local council has to publish it's financials and they have regular meetings, why not ask the question if you think you've seen a non-job or someone who's overpaid? It's your right and, some may even say, duty.

I deal quite a bit with government clients and my experience tells me those that I've witnessed are a bunch of downright lazy fcukers

For example 1 particular client has an excel spreadsheet detailing date of those that WILL BE off sick.
THis excel sheet is tailored so that the HR department doesn't trigger a person having a whole lot of sick days.
I mean FFS.

We were putting a new accounting system in and I remember stating one day the training requirements for the rest of the week.

1 guy gets sheet and shouts over - Hey Davy, you're off on Thursday & Friday.
I thought nothing of it and said are you going for a long weekend and this fast whore with the sheet says no he's sick those 2 days :(

It also seems that if someone makes a cockup they don't get fired, just moved to another department

Having said that I'm going to try and get my son in to one of the places via some contacts

I seem to remember you posting something similar on a previous thread.

I'll post the same reply I posted on that thread, can you give examples of these strikes you keep mentioning?

Or shall I make it easier, how many Private Sector strikes have there been in the last 3 years vs Public Sector?

Concerning the 'Pay Rise', it would help if you knew the facts.
The 2.25% pay rise (to be exact) from April 2010 is the final part of a deal agreed 3 years ago.

When it was agreed, everyone else (yourself included no doubt) were getting much larger increases, just ours were agreed over a longer time period.

If the grass is always greener, get a public sector job....:rolleyes:

hey i only use it on my breaks, honest guv!!!

true in most cases

now that i have to say is true

hahahahahahahahahaha. dont do it. get him out to learn a trade. civil service is craply paid for new entrants, you dont even need an exam to get in ffs. seriously i only started with "the brew" temporary. i saw it as a stop gap before another job. i am still here 25 years later. admittedly i do a job i really enjoy, but i wouldn't recommend an NICS job for any young person.

succinct, salient, civil servant response. i like it. :D

Tricky one I think, There are a lot of jobs being created that could be put on someone already in the civil services work load but.....
If you want to attract the best people for certain jobs away from private industry you have to offer good money.

I think Diesel is spot on, good money for a difficult job = no problem
Money for old rope type job = maybe a civil service cull in some depts is needed.

Its the same in many large industries. People have incentives to expand their budget and staff numbers as much as possible. The council health and safety man has 2 staff so he gets paid as a manager of 2 staff. IF that man can inflate his role to make it require 50 staff he can then claim a salary in accordance with having 50 staff.
MIlton Keynes has recently had many of its grid roads landed with of traffic lights, more are on the way, the reasoning being that they have a budget to use up and they would rather spend it than lose it. Too much of the information involving a descion comes from people who benefit from it. THe private sector is limited in that a Boss often knows that the tighter he runs his budgets the better bonus he can get.

The bureacracy has gone mad in public departments. Because of this you need overpaid, anally retentive bureacrats to ensure that you are not stepping out of line. That is where the overpaid monkeys are, and in return you see a cut in front line staff and a reduction levels of service at greater expense.

Don't moan about these jobs ..... go out and get them! :thumb:

In answer to the question - no, Public Sector workers are not overpaid, in general. They get no company perks!

There are plenty of perks, just have to pick the right job. If your smart you can get fictional mortgages paid off, have second homes bought, gardens landscaped and even have you wife paid for cooking and cleaning.

It is yours and my taxes that are wasted on the bureaucrats. The coal face workers suffer because of this and are generally underpaid.

:lol:

I was excluding our MP's from my comment!

Sorry my reply was a little glib but it was a snatched moment on my iphone.

The head of BW is overpaid when you look at comparable public corporations - even other very well paid public sector chiefs think so !

I had a dig through their accounts and altough they do have commercial income of £112m last year, they also get grants of £74m and to meet their aim of break even all they really need to do is vary the amount of investment they put in. The bonus is calculated by Economic Value Created (which reads like a very fudgable target) and the renumeration committee last year didnt award parts of the bonus, due to what they say was a reduction in property income but I suspect was a reaction to the kicking they got in the press the year before.

Although working in a private sector company, I've spent my career so far working with the public sector and BW looks like one of the easier back waters.

Compare BW CEO's pay to the CEO of Job Centre Plus - probably a similar package (SCS 3 - probably won't be too far off) but has an organisation of 60,000, a budget of hundreds of millions and administers benefits worth billions. Screw ups at BW probably only make the Boating Times or some other mag - JCP screws up and its national headlines. I've spent a good few years working with JCP staff and the job of a front line advisor in JCP is one of the most difficult in the public sector, yet done well can save the taxpayer thousands (through reductions in benefits) and make huge contributions to someone's life. Average pay? £18-20k (AO or Band B in new money).

Across the public sector I've worked with everyone from Band A to SCS 2/3 (including people fingered personally in the press as overpaid public servants) - there are some great people and some real nobbers at all levels!


I have looked, and it's not there! I know all about senior salaries, and why they get it. I just don't think BW is worth it.