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March 27, 2008
Poor impoverished local government officers
Commenters here sometimes tell us how hard it is to work in so called public service. The salaries, they say, are low and the other benefits negligible
My friends down in Hampshire have just received their council tax bills for the year - with the accompanying leaflet which tells them of the all the glorious work that is done for them by the unfortunates employed by the county council
They discover that there are 483 people working in the council who receive a salary of more than 50,000 pounds each year--- and that the council spent 131,000 pounds on bottled water for ... well, it's hard to know what for.
The council staff in Hampshire are not so hard up after all. That's a surprise.
Posted by Perkins at March 27, 2008 11:40 AM
Comments
So Perkins - what do you think is a reasonable salary for someone managing a public service with a multi million budget?
Posted by: Gary Marks at March 30, 2008 1:04 PM
For a library service of 15-20 libraries in which visits, or more particularly book issues are static or declining, I would say that the head of library service is worth about 40k per annum at most. For a similar sized service in which the book issues are rising consistently, then a salary of 50k, or more, might be merited.
In almost every service at which one looks, the cost is greatly overloaded with the cost of management and overhead, which is not needed and does not add value to the service to the public
Posted by: perkins at March 31, 2008 3:53 PM
I don't know if this is relevant her but my partner is a library assistant in the central library of a large northern city. They are currently undergoing a new pay & grading structure (as are all local governments I believe). In October all library assistants received their job score & new pay grade - B1 which is about £14,500 the current point at which they have to complete a portfolio to progress up to £15,800. This was welcome by all staff as being recognition for what they do. However last week they received another letter saying that actually they were scored lower at A1/B1. There has been some confusion over this & no straight answers from their senior management team, although it appears that a portfolio is still required to reach B1 from A1. HR are insistent that the first letter that was recieved (voted upon by the unions)was wrong and that the senior management team knew this was the case months ago. Although this may be the case, to many of the library service employees it appears as though the job score was re-evaluated after the first score would have resulted in a majority of staff receiving pay raises that perhaps wasn't acceptable. I know that many people will think that this is a trivial matter but to me it just seems as though the people who deal with the day to day running of the libraries and the people who are often the only faces known to those who visit the library are being unduly penalised. All posts from librarians & library manager upwards were reviewed last year with most getting a pay raise and an extra layer of management was added. The library assistants are the only (known) staff group who have to complete a portfolio to pass this ceiling and it seems unfair that the lowest paid members of staff in the service are the ones being penalise.
Sorry if this sounds like a rant but as a former local government library worker I still get easily wound up by the incompetence and inefficiency frequently displayed by them and those that run them!
Posted by: Olive at May 16, 2008 12:58 PM