Council workers’ pay has fallen by 13%, says Unison
By Richard Johnstone | 22 February 2012
Below-inflation
pay deals have slashed the value of council workers’ salaries, Unison revealed today.
A study carried
out for the union by the New Policy Institute shows that full-time wages have
fallen by 13% in real terms over the past three years, as a result of a below-inflation pay
rise in 2009/10 followed by a two-year pay freeze.
Living on the edge has been published ahead of the start of annual pay negotiations tomorrow between trade
unions and Local Government Employers.
Chancellor George
Osborne has called for public sector pay increases to be limited to 1% when the two-year freeze ends.
But Unison is
today calling for a ‘substantial increase’ in pay to make up for the decline in
living standards.
Heather
Wakefield, Unison’s head of local government, said employers ‘must come forward
with a decent offer on pay this year’.
She said: ‘For
many local government workers and their families, it’s a daily struggle to stay
out of poverty. They’re doing vital work caring for the elderly, the vulnerable,
for young children, and as job cuts hit, they’re picking up the pieces doing
even more, for ever diminishing wages. It’s bad news for families, local economies,
and for community services.’
The study also
found that council chief executive pay had risen by 59% between 1998 and 2007.
Report
co-author Peter Kenway, director of the New Policy Institute, said typical
full-time hourly earnings in local government had sunk back to the levels of
the early 1990s, while hourly earnings of part-time staff had fallen to 2002
levels.
More than a quarter of town
hall staff now earn less than £7.20 an hour and have to rely on benefits and
tax credits, Kenway said.
He added
that continuing high inflation meant earnings would fall further still.
‘Local
government workers are portrayed as part of a pampered public sector. With two thirds of them in manual or
clerical jobs, doing important and sometimes essential jobs, this report shows
what a distortion that picture is.
‘Since the
last time pay went up, in April 2009, prices have risen by 13%. Everyone is
feeling the pinch but a fall in living standards this big is much more than
that.’
