Despite the public sector pay freezes announced yesterday (see the coverage in the Guardian, Telegraph and Financial Times, plus the reactions from the First Division Association and the British Medical Association, all on external websites) many public sector employees will still be getting a pay rise in 2010.
These include the armed forces (see the announcement on the Ministry of Defence website), some prison officers (1% from April 2010 to maximum salaries, senior prison officers get 1.5%) and various medical groups such as registrar grades, foundation house officers and speciality doctors who all get 1% from April 2010.
In his speech yesterday, the Prime Minister said that GPs would have their pay frozen, but in fact some of them (the minority of GPs that are employed rather than self-employed) will be getting a 1% rise.
So when we put those groups together with those we already know will get pay rises in 2010 in the stages of long-term deals - most NHS workers, schoolteachers, police officers and various government departments - then somewhere between a third and a half of the UK's six million public sector workers are going to be getting a basic pay rise this year.
Even some of those who are having their pay frozen, such as senior civil servants, will still get non-consolidated performance-related pay rises.
We'll be covering the various public sector review body reports in depth shortly on XpertHR. In the meantime, our 2009 round-up summarises the state of play (subscription required).
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Comments (3)
I know that you wrote this a month ago but I've just come to it from a link in the latest post.
My point is that it is wrong to describe senior civil service non-consolidated performance awards as "still getting a pay increase". Surely it's only a pay increase if they get a better performance appraisal than last year? And, given the system for distributing the pot, that will probably mean someone else gets a reduction.
Posted by Frank Hobson | April 7, 2010 8:53 AM
Posted on April 7, 2010 08:53
Good point Frank. I think you're right that a non-consolidated performance-related payment may or may not constitute a pay increase for an individual employee - it all depends on whether the individual payment is bigger or smaller than the previous year's payment.
If it is smaller, it clearly represents a pay cut for that individual compared with their previous year's earnings; if it is bigger, it represents a pay rise, albeit only a one-year, temporary rise.
Presumably if the pot allocated to non-consolidated payments across the whole staff group is the same per head as the previous year, it can fairly be described as a paybill freeze on non-consolidated payments?
From that point of view the key question would be: has the proportion of the senior civil service paybill allocated to non-consolidated performance-related awards increased or decreased compared with the previous year, or is it the same?
If it is the same, you would logically have to conclude that there has been a freeze on non-consolidated payments. The distribution between individuals will vary according to performance appraisal but the pot of cash will have been frozen and remain unchanged from one year to the next as a proportion of the paybill. Or am I missing something?
Posted by David Shepherd | April 7, 2010 11:28 AM
Posted on April 7, 2010 11:28
Hi Frank
Yes, you're quite right, I should have said that some senior civil servants would still get non-consolidated performance-related "payments" rather than "pay rises", the key point being that they are non-consolidated so don't actually increase salaries.
And yes the budget for these payments has been frozen this year rather than increased or reduced, at 8.6% of paybill.
Having said that, the point I was trying to make was that for many public sector employee groups that are having their base pay frozen this year, that is not the whole story of their pay.
In 2009, 73% of senior civil servants received a non-consolidated performance-based payment worth up to £15,000 (the average was around £8,500) so these are fairly substantial payments on top of basic salary, worth mentioning I thought.
Posted by Sarah Welfare | April 8, 2010 9:20 AM
Posted on April 8, 2010 09:20