It will be open season on local government workers

On 5th July I wrote that the public sector could expect severe pay restraint. Today it has been forecast that hundreds of jobs will be axed across East and West Sussex.

The scale of projected budget deficits is staggering. Between 2011 and 2014 one in ten jobs will go. There will be pay restraint, compulsory redundancies, huge cuts in programmes, and further funding reductions to voluntary organisations, many of which will go out of business.

Local government workers have lost the confidence of the community at large, if comments on the Argus website are anything to go by. Local government unions such as Unite and Unison are perceived as protecting already over protected workers. That is all about to change. Come the next general election it will be open season on local government workers.

What worries me is that important serrvices to the elderly and the young will suffer while local government unions will only be interested in defending 15% pensions.

Pay freeze for public sector workers

The head of the Audit Commission, Steve Bundred, has called for a pay freeze to be imposed on Britain’s 6 million public sector workers. He says that ” severe pay restraint” is necessary to rebalance public finances. He says that “nothing should be off-limits” and “at a time when inflation is likely to be between 2% and 3%, a pain-free way of cutting public spending would be to freeze public sector pay, or at least impose severe pay restraint. This is especially true if real wages in the private sector are still falling”.

Unfortunately, the public sector unions, such as Unite and Unison, have become mega-unions that inspire little confidence from their members. Similarly, the leadership at a local level will be unable to galvanise a credible campaign to defend its members against cuts such as these which will be inevitable after the next general election. (This is particularly true in areas such as Brighton and Hove where Labour and Green councillors say the Unison leadership in the town hall is embarrassingly incompetent).