Building on Michael Carty's post on the minimum wage, I've been looking at the major parties' manifesto promises on pay and pensions. There are a lot of them, so I'll cover Labour here and post separately on the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats.
As Duncan Brown writes on the Public Finance blog, a focus on driving down the cost of public sector pay and pensions was to be expected in the manifestos (external website). "What is much more of a surprise is the way in which pay is, secondly, being used to reinforce a core theme in all the major parties' manifestos, which is fairness and transparency," he says.
You can find summaries of all the employment issues in the manifestos on the Personnel Today website (see these articles on Labour's manifesto, the Conservative manifesto and the Liberal Democrat manifesto).
Labour are promising to (my comments in brackets):
- Impose a 1% cap on public sector basic pay uplifts for two years from 2011 (as announced last year);
- Impose new restrictions on senior pay setting in the public sector, such as requiring ministerial sign-off for any appointment attracting a salary of over £150,000 (presumably along the lines of the report recently commissioned by the Prime Minister on the Office of Manpower Economics website);
- Ask government departments to "follow the lead of those who already pay the Living Wage" within their existing budgets (the London living wage is currently £7.60 an hour - see the Living Wage Employer website. Incidently, the Green Party wants to introduce a national living wage of £8.10 an hour);
- Implement the changes already agreed on public sector pensions, to cap taxpayers' liability (see XpertHR's coverage of the Pre-Budget Report, which summarised these proposals);
- Ensure that the Low Pay Commission's remit includes the goal of the national minimum wage rising at least in line with average earnings over the period to 2015 (see Michael's blog);
- Encourage employers to make greater use of pay reviews and employment checks to eliminate unfair pay gaps (no mention of using statutory means if encouragement doesn't work...);
- Require banks to put their remuneration policies to shareholders for explicit approval;
- Give the FSA additional powers if necessary to "constrain and quash executive remuneration where it is a source of risk and instability";
- Restore the link between the basic state pension and earnings from 2012; and
- Extend statutory paid paternity leave to four weeks.
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