The Sunday Star Times has an article where Bill English repeats his comments in response to my oral question earlier this year that there will be no pay increases for state sector workers, without some as yet totally undefined productivity gains. Full marks for consistency on this issue Bill (as Tony Ryall continues to admit it is a pay freeze), but a massive fail for this approach.
Those working in the wider state sector are well aware that we are in restrained times, but by ruling out pay increases this far ahead, English is setting himself up for widespread industrial action. It is as the union reps say in the SST story also not acting in good faith. The Police got a 2% increase this year, and much less than that could lead to industrial action in the very near future, let alone next year.
Moreover in two of our most essential services- health and education is Mr English really saying that he will do nothing to support retention and recruitment. There is global demand for doctors and nurses. New Zealand teachers are sought after in the UK. A pay freeze will likely push some off-shore.
Mr English bandies about figures of public servants getting 8-10% increases this year. I would like to hear some actual examples of that. What he is likely referring to in terms of more modest increases are the multi-year deals that some state sector workers got in recent years. To take nurses as an example their pay increases were large, but they came after years with little or no increase and a desperate need to make the profession attractive and sustainable.
But my final question for Bill English is how does the A and E nurse at a hospital demonstrate productivity or a teacher of special needs children? English admits he does not have a measure for state sector productivity and National’s usual definition of productivity- fewer people doing more work- just does not cut it when it comes to our collective health and the education of our children.
Posted in Health, Public Servants and Education. |
Each year the Government releases its expectations for pay setting in the state sector. Fair enough. The government is trying to balance the books and they need to give an indication of the parameters of settlements that will work for them. Its not just about wage rates. but can cover other areas such as productivity. This year the Nats combined it with ditching two pay equity investigations and the common leave provisions that were going to make movement between agencies easier. Each to their own!
This year the Nats document looked and sounded like a pay freeze. However, Tony Ryall actually tried to deny this in Parliament, noting that pay negotiations are the responsibility of Chief Executives. In the tertiary sector the law sets out that the Chief Executive of the institution makes the agreement and must consult the State Services Commission.
So you can imagine the surprise of three Polytechnic Chief Executive and Council Chairs who were dragged to Wellington to be told off by Tony Ryall and Anne Tolley for what they had either agreed or offered in pay settlements with their general staff. In all cases the Polytechnics had found significant productivity gains, and had offered small pay increases (2-3%) to their staff, after consulting with the SSC. What became clear in the discussions was that Mr Ryall had only a passing acquaintance with what he was appropriate for him to do under law and indeed the Cabinet Manual, and that he had in fact been aiming for a pay freeze. Among other things, I understand that the Polytechnics were told by Mr Ryall that pay increases in the 0% to 0.5% was what the government had been expecting.
Mr Ryall argues he was having appropriate discussions. By law and convention he was having neither. The government’s attitude in terms of polytechnics shows that nanny state is alive and well and roaming about the tertiary sector. The government is moving to take control of Polytechnic councils (reducing them to 8 and having the power to appoint half, including the Chair) and now putting pressure on the Chief Executives to agree to their pay freeze. The Chief Executives are arguing that if they can find 5-8% productivity gains then a modest pay increase is appropriate. The good news is so far the Polytechnics are sticking to their guns, but Mr Ryall needs to butt out.
Posted in Public Servants, Public Service and Education. |
Who said this?
Few problems are solved by significant reorganisations- in fact many more tend to be created. It is easy to underestimate the amount of energy and inspiration soaked up by institutional change, as well as the loss of personal and institutional knowledge.
A clue- he is the same person, in the same speech, that said National would cap, but not cut public services, and we know how that has turned out.
Posted in Health, Public Servants and Public Service. |
Bill Ralston has had a couple of goes at the public service in his recent blogs. In particular he has come out swinging in support of Treasury Secretary John Whitehead’s speech on Monday. I will write a full response to Bill’s comments in next few days, but I just wanted to note that there is a bit of a contrast in analysis between Bill and John Armstrong in today’s Herald.
Bill was pretty critical of my statement that the speech was a precursor for privatisation and deeper cuts to the public service. Today Armstrong says
Whitehead’s sugar-coated prosletyzing for what is clearly intended to be holus-bolus privatising of services delivered by state agencies went way beyond a chief executive’s brief.
and
Clearly, however, both the Treasury and English - who this week revealingly said he wanted the reforms in the state sector to “stick” so that no future government can unravel them - are using the recession as cover to reduce the role of the state and strip back the public service to some kind of skeletal level that will make it difficult to rebuild.
He also picks up the theme of my stalking horses post the other day, with a slightly different take, but certainly emphasising that this was an unusual speech for the Treasury Secretary to make. Hopefully get my full response to Bill up tomorrow.
Posted in Public Servants and Public Service. |
The speech by John Whitehead, the Secretary of the Treasury, is another example a strategy of the National Party to push controversial ideas out through a series of stalking horses. We saw it with Mark Weldon on SOEs, Whitehead has already done it, and here we go again. This time, however, it is all a bit odd.
John Whitehead is a good public servant. He was a loyal servant of the Labour Government, as he has been of all governments in the 27 years he has been at Treasury. He would simply not do a speech like the one he did yesterday without a clear direction from government. But why John Whitehead, why not Iain Rennie, the State Services Commissioner? Rennie refused to totally endorse Whitehead’s speech in his interview with Kathryn Ryan this morning. Given numerous opportunities to say he supported everything in the speech, he would not do it.
It looks as if SSC and Tony Ryall have largely been left out of what Bill English tells us is a programme for “significant and lasting change to the public service’. Treasury and English are in charge. It certainly is not what John Key said in October last year:
I also want to reassure people - and this is my second point - that a new National Government is not going to radically reorganise the structure of the public sector… Few problems are solved by significant reorganisations- in fact many more tend to be created.
If we look back over the last few weeks, English has really been upping the ante in terms of state sector. He went out of his way to suggest that teachers and nurses should not expect a pay rise when their agreements expire next year. Now we have him hammering the message about cuts and potential privatisation in the public services. But why? Word has it that some Chief Executives are not going fast enough or deep enough for Mr English and he think a further shot needed to be fired across the bows. This will be interesting, because the current State Sector arrangements do put the power in the hands of the CE. Could some of them be on a collision course with the government?
Posted in Public Servants and Public Service. |
