Soft Targets and Pay

Soft Targets and Pay

Bailiwick Express reports that:

Nurses are being urged to “withdraw goodwill” and refuse to work extra time unpaid, as their anger over the States’ proposed pay deal reaches boiling point.

A head teacher has slammed the States for "rewarding" staff crippled under the burden of paperwork and rising standards with repeated pay offers below rises in the cost of living, in a blistering attack on behalf of the island’s school leaders.

Pay is in the news, and those currently threatening action are those whose jobs are soft targets. That is to say, that if they go on strike, the public are impacted directly. With teachers, it is their pupils education, and with nurses, it is their patients health and well being.

A study in the UK showed how over there, police have had the largest real wage drop—around £4,300 in eight years. Newly qualified teachers now earn around £2,500 less, followed by newly qualified nurses whose wages have dropped by £1,900. The situation is not too far removed from Jersey, and is a reminder that the issues the Island faces are not just local, but found in many other economies.

Indeed, a newspaper report from October 2018, warned of cutbacks in the UK:

“This has led to a crisis in the education sector, with nurseries forced to charge parents to make up the shortfall, schools and colleges unable to fund basic equipment and support for students and an exodus of teachers demoralised by stagnant wages and increasing demands to do more with less.”

Of course, one way to get around police pay is to have fewer police, which is one strategy which Jersey has adopted, but we already have far fewer nurses that we need, which means agency provisions to fill the gaps, often at considerable expense, and while class sizes can increase, the range of speciality subjects, especially at secondary school levels, mean that cutbacks can only go so far.

The States of Jersey, in August, issued a statement as follows:

In March, Chief Executive Charlie Parker announced that the States would negotiate two-year deals for all pay groups (except those who had accepted the Workforce Modernisation offer) to provide more certainty about pay. At the same time, he announced a two-year pay freeze for all employees earning £100,000 or more.

In June, we tabled an offer to nurses and midwives that meant increases of between 0.5% and 13.3% in 2018, depending on an individual's current job grade (average 4.5%); and between 0.75% and 2.5% in 2019 (average 2.1%)

The one positive element is the two year pay freeze. No one can accuse Charlie Parker of making sure, as has happened so often in the past, that top jobs get good pay rises. A relative fall in income is not nearly so severe for someone on £100,000 or more than it is for someone on £30,000.

But that’s still way below cost of living for nurses.

Meanwhile, the Teachers has had this to say about teacher’s pay.

Teachers have been subjected to a pay freeze in 2009 and 2012, followed by a 1% consolidated increase in 2013. The 4% increase in 2014 was then followed by another effective freeze in 2015, with a derisory 1% applied in 2016. An uplift of 2% in respect of 2017 was recently imposed. 3.4 There has been an increase in inflation as measured by the RPI to date of 17% between 2008 and 2017.

So obviously they want more for their members, but they also point to an unfairness inherent in the system.

The NASUWT notes that States members have an independent pay review body which sets the relevant pay uplift levels.

The NASUWT draws to the SEB’s attention the current system in England and Wales where an independent body, the School Teachers’ Review Body, makes recommendations on pay and other matters following a remit provided by the Secretary of State.

The NASUWT believes that the introduction of a Review Body process in Jersey, with its recommendations to the Minister then being the subject of negotiation with the NASUWT and other recognised trade unions, would be preferable to the current approach in Jersey which is extremely workload intensive and unproductive

Whenever the States Independent Review Body has recommended pay rises for States members, while they could propose less, vote for none, in practical terms no States member has ever done so. The argument is that this is an independent body, which takes it out of the hands of the members voting for their own pay rises.

We’ll overlook the fact that the Board is elected by States Members. It is not wholly independent, but it is more arms length that otherwise used to be the case.

So why not have an independent body? At least it would mean that even if there was no pay, there would be something extra on the table?

I feel some sympathy for Tracey Valois who has been handled the poisoned chalice of being Chairman of the States Employment Board, but at least even if there is no more money, she has had the guts to meet States employees, which is something her predecessor Andrew Green always shied away from.

There may be no money at present for any further increase in pay, but if she could put in place the mechanism for creating an independent School Teachers’ Review Body, and also an equivalent to the NHS Pay Review Body, another independent body, it would send a signal that matters have to improve, and the structures for improving them are being put in place.

References
https://fullfact.org/economy/pay-rises-how-much-do-nurses-police-teachers-and-mps-get-paid/
https://www.gov.je/News/2018/Pages/StatesJerseyPayOffers-.aspx
https://www.nasuwt.org.uk/uploads/assets/uploaded/433f92b0-2d2c-4c4e-b81ecfb8b94f4c97.pdf
https://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/news/greater-manchester-news/budget-education-manchester-mps-school-15331808
https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/720320/NHSPRB_2018_report_Web_Accessible.pdf