Public sector workers are unused to receiving invitations these days (other than to take their P45’s, clear their desks or take their brooms and go quietly perhaps), so when David Cameron’s ‘Invitation to Public Sector Workers’ pinged up on my screen, I thought Unison members’ luck might have changed.
For those of you who haven’t been lucky enough to receive the invite, it has seven pledges and an interesting invitation by DC himself to our 6 million public sector workers ‘to join the government of Britain’. If he’s elected, the ‘big choices’ of the election will lead to ‘big changes’, when the ‘big society’ will do away with ‘big problems’ and ‘give everyone a stake in cutting our fiscal deficit and delivering better services’.
Better services? Sounds interesting. Unison members certainly want the chance to deliver them. So let’s look more closely at ‘Mr Big’s’ invite. After a UK map inscripted with ‘We’re All in This Together’, we are advised that ‘millions of public sector staff...feel demoralised, disrespected and unrecognised’. Mmm. Could be something in that. Let’s continue. Proposed solutions are hinted at when DC goes on to say that the Conservatives will say ‘bye bye bureaucracy’, cut central government targets and give millions of public servants ‘the right to set up employee co-operatives, bid to take over services and be their own boss’.
Not sure about that one. But let’s delve further. The Executive Summary sounds promising. Apparently the professional lives of ‘public sector workers at all levels’ will be transformed and the Conservatives will ensure ‘that their hard work and enterprise are at last recognised and rewarded’. This deserves further exploration. Let’s look at the seven pledges in more detail.
Firstly ‘Trust in Your Professionalism’. Centrally monitored targets will be done away with and public services will be asked to publish data on results ‘in an open and standardised format, making them directly accountable to the people they serve’. Yup. It’s true that we all feel targeted out, but there are problems here. With no central standards, what will prevent a localised free for all and even more of a postcode lottery in service delivery? How will the public get to see these results and what will they make of them? What will they do with their views? What about prisons, probation and social work users? And surely some services will need regulation? Child protection, heart surgery, policing - that sort of thing......?
The second is ‘Deliver Fairer Pay’. Now that’s very interesting. Labour’s National Insurance increase will be stopped, our members will have the £150 a year back in their pockets and ‘greater pay equality’ will be achieved through a cap on chief executives pay of no more than 20 times the bottom rate. Oops. Definite problem here. Firstly, there’s no mention of tackling the huge gender pay gap, particularly in local government. Just ask Birmingham about that. What’s more, 20 times the bottom rate in the lowest paid part of the public sector – local government – would give chief executives around £250,000 a year!!! That’s far more than most get now. Has someone got their maths wrong?
Then there’s the third pledge – ‘Giving You the Chance to Take Over the Services You Deliver’. Those who want ‘far more independence to innovate’ will have the power to form co-ops with colleagues, paid for through ‘outcomes based contracts’, with ‘the chance to share in any financial surpluses created as a result of making improvements and efficiencies’. Certainly our members would welcome the opportunity to engage in innovation and make services more effective. Sadly, their knowledge and experience is rarely tapped into and lowest cost privatisation is usually the answer to the change challenge. This might be tricky.
If they are tempted by the prospect, will public sector workers be given some time off to get their co-ops up and running? Many Unison members already work significant unpaid hours on top of their working week and the UK has the longest working hours in Europe. There’s the small matter of our family responsibilities too and we know from the experience of Co-op Development Agencies that setting up co-ops takes time and care. They also require start-up expertise and funding. There’s a lot of administration involved once they’re up and running too. Wont all this require ‘a big bureaucracy’? Who will ensure the best use of taxpayers’ money? And should the co-operative ideal suddenly grab millions of public servants, how will fragmented services be co-ordinated? Will it be Total Place or All Over The Place?
The fourth pledge is ‘Rewarding Hard Work and Excellent Service’. Now you’re really talking Mr Cameron! Take our members in councils. They have already helped them improve significantly. And with two thirds of them earning less than £18k and facing a pay freeze, they’d love to be rewarded ‘for innovation and going that extra mile’. The unpaid overtime must count for something and they regularly go that extra mile for school kids, vulnerable elderly people, tenants... that sort of thing. And how about our members providing public services through private contractors? Many of them are on the Minimum Wage with minimal holiday and sick pay and certainly no pensions. Will they get a look in? Perhaps we could have co-ops instead of IBM? I must admit, I’m getting a bit sceptical now.
But on to number five anyway: ‘A More Family Friendly Workplace’. Great!! Two thirds of public sector workers are women (75% in the NHS and local government), so we’d really appreciate this. You say it will help boost declining productivity and morale. With 25% vacancy rates in some social work departments and 23,000 redundancies across councils in the last year alone, I’m not absolutely sure I buy into this productivity argument. Our members are now doing the work of all those jobless ex-colleagues, so I guess productivity might have taken a leap? And in any case, we all know that you can’t just apply manufacturing output measures to public services. With fewer people doing the same work, where will the chance for more family friendly workplaces arise?
Pledge number six is to ‘Back You Against Unfounded Litigation and Bureaucratic Rules’. Well, it’s certainly true that the fear of ‘unfounded legal actions’ can be a bit daunting for some UNISON members, but I’m not so sure about ‘perverse health and safety restrictions’. Third party violence is a big issue for many of them- lifting clients and patients, dealing with floods, fires and accidents, working outside in all weathers – that sort of thing. A degree of health and safety protection might be good perhaps? Could we keep that?
Last, but certainly not least dear Unison members, David Cameron wants to ‘Ask You to Help Build the Big Society’. Not alone, mind you. Public sector workers will be joined by ‘an army of civic (sic) servants and volunteers in every community and neighbourhood...diversifying and improving the public sector for all’. OK.
We want a more vibrant democracy, we want people to have more engagement in their local services and say over how their taxes are spent. And (supervised) volunteers certainly can add value to some public services, like libraries. They can sometimes add that little personal extra to the core (stretched) services we provide. But excuse me for asking, who will manage large numbers of them? And might you possibly be thinking of replacing paid employees with an unpaid Mum’s Army to ‘cut our fiscal deficit’ by any chance? What role will volunteers play in those co-ops you want to see? And what happens when things go wrong? Will you back us then? Will the Big Society also be Big Hearted? We doubt it.
