The evidence is now in to confirm that the government has succeeded in pushing down the level of public sector pay rises this year - to the lowest since 1994.
A study of public sector pay deals written by Rachel Suff for IRS (subscription required) finds basic pay awards running at a median 2.5% in the year to November, compared with 3.5% in the private sector.
Most public sector pay deals were worth more than the government's inflation target of 2%. The two main reasons for the difference are that some pay rises for this year were already agreed as part of long-term pay awards (the 2.5% increase for teachers from September for example) and others (such as those set by local councils that opt out of national pay bargaining) offer limited possibilities for government interference.
So who fared the best and who fared the worst in the latest public sector pay round?
The armed forces were the big exception to the rule that pay rises should be based on the inflation target of 2%, with most services personnel receiving a 3.3% pay rise and those at the bottom of the pay scale getting 9.2%.
The hard-fought campaign of industrial action taken by university staff in 2006 certainly paid off in the form of a three-year pay award which gave lecturers and support staff a 3% rise this August with a further 3% next May and 2.5% from next October. Their colleagues in further education have rejected a 2.55% offer, delivering a giant "scrooge" Christmas card to the FE employers' association yesterday.
In the civil service, many 2007 pay awards have not yet been agreed, but those which have tend to target those employees at the bottom of their pay scales and/or those with a high performance rating, netting increases of 4% or more for a minority.
Teachers received what now appears to be a relatively generous 2.5% increase, while local government workers reluctantly accepted a 2.475% pay rise, which may be substantially below inflation but at least breaches the 1.9% over the year received by the majority of nurses, NHS support staff and prison staff, not to mention the pay freeze for GPs. Local councils opting out of national pay negotiations received a median 3% pay increase.
Of course the fact that RPI inflation was 4.3% in November puts all these pay rises well below the cost of living. That is mainly why battles over pay continue across the public sector, with the latest missive fired from the police federation to the home secretary reaching new levels of bitterness.
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