The Police and Pay
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Two Points
1: Even Caligula didn't upset the Praetorian Guard
2: It is every workers unalienable right to withdraw their labour
Just for the record i am not, nor have I ever been a Police Officer
I don't know why the police are complaining. Every single year of the last 20 years they have got a bigger pay rise than local government.
Every single local authority struggles, for example, to find qualified social workers. This is because the training for social work is harder, more expensive, and demands higher qualifications for entry than the police.
Not surprisingly, many people over the last 20 years who would have opted for social work joined the police instead.
It's not just pay, however. Even on pensions, police get a better deal.
As a serving Police Inspector I can say that neither I nor the staff I'm responsible for want to take industrial action. We just want a fair, independant and transparent pay system. We had that until this government chose to dismantle it. The Home Secretary has shown clearly how we will be treated in its absence
If the police do go on strike, who would be sent in to enforce the laws on picketing? Yorkshire miners perhaps?
The police do have the right to withdraw their labour. They can resign. The armed forces have been treated in the same disagreeable manner by previous governments and they either grumbled and accepted it or they left. Of course the main difference this time is the Government's decision to take on the most unionised (and well provided for) of the public services.
I recall the miners strike in the eighties, and the attitudes of the police officers billeting at my mothers house.
How they loathed Scargill, how they condemned those lads fighting for their jobs, how they cheered the batten charges...
Isn't it about time that the police federation stopped whingeing? Up here in Yorkshire there is little sympathy for their case, some of us still remember the miners strike. The police have done very well for the past 27 years.
Well done home secretary!
Nick Glover and James O'Ryan are both absolutely right. It has been part of the mechanism of police pay negotiations that they don't strike - and that the government honour the independent review's recommendations. If the government want to choose whether they pay or not, then the police should regain the right to strike.
Sid
I don't know why the police are complaining. Every single year of the last 20 years they have got a bigger pay rise than local government.
Every single local authority struggles, for example, to find qualified social workers. This is because the training for social work is harder, more expensive, and demands higher qualifications for entry than the police.
Not surprisingly, many people over the last 20 years who would have opted for social work joined the police instead.
It's not just pay, however. Even on pensions, police get a better deal.
Social workers, however, do not stand between the establishment and the masses
What really interested me about the Taliban and would he talk to them piece was the interviewee. Did I hear that he was a journalist formerly of 'The Mirror' (like A Campbell then)I wonder how he got his job? What was the position again??Spokesman for the Foreign and Commonwealth Office? Great job.I hope he's completely objective.
Any room for public service workers not to be competing with each other. Any room for solidarity, rather than rivalry, about who deserves a higher salary Linda Roberts?
As a social worker, I am mighty glad of the police accompanying workers on certain house calls. They protect workers and the children we are safeguarding. We expect them to walk into situations where are acutely aware of the risks to ourselves.
It is a different culture, and I struggle with that on occasions, but who cares that I had to learn more stuff; what kind of comparison is that? & who said only clever/well trained/educated people deserve to be paid well?
If the police do go on strike can we send the miners in to give them a good thrashing?
Being of the opinion that we have a police force that is institutionally arrogant, corrupt, incompetent and racist, no news about increasing pay comes as good news!
There is no contractual provision in any employment contract that provides a "right to strike" - withdrawal of labour is always breach of contract. However, the argument that a "reasonable" return for a limitation being placed on an employee's ability to strike is automatic, year-on-year inflation-busting pay awards is nonsensical.
Equally interesting is that the Police Federation calls for the Home Secretary's resignation on the grounds that they can no longer "trust or respect her". Sadly we have a police force that we can also no longer trust or respect, but there is very little we can do to remedy that.
Can anyone from the Police Federation explain why refusing to be intimidated by the petulant foot-stamping of their members is considered to be a resigning issue, while allowing the murder of an innocent man on the tube is not?
Can anyone from the Police Federation explain why refusing to be intimidated by the petulant foot-stamping of their members is considered to be a resigning issue, while allowing the murder of an innocent man on the tube is not?
Re. Peter Munro's comment above. Both of them?
Whether the award is fair or not is not the issue. Its the government ignoring the arbitration scheme.
What is the point of an independent arbitrator if the payment agency i.e the government ignores it. They have done it for nurses and most other government workers.
The fact that the scottish parliament is paying in full just throws open yet another inequality and the fact the money is actually there just takes the biscuit.
As someone who has only been on the "good" side of PC Plod, that is they soon defer to me once I start talking, I can see their point of their agreement re pay settlement being torn up by the current Interior Minister (aka J Smith).
Some of the above seem to forget that it was not only PC Plod and his mates in Yorkshire in the 1980s but the Army in another Uniform, notable by the lack of number on the shoulders.
I suggest we send in a group of heavily-armed ex-miners to deal with this "Enemy within"
Hmmmmm. Record numbers of people in prison, and so presumably a need for record numbers of police personel to put them there. More legislation over a ten-year period than at any other time in our history, so more and more new laws for the existing police to learn and enforce. A new police force called community police, paid a great deal less than the regular police are and given far less training.
I can see why this government might want to pay the police force less per person, just looking at that lot. There are going to be a lot more police needed, aren't there? And I think they already boast about how many extra police they have recruited during the past few years.
It occurs to me that the nation simply cannot afford to give the agreed rate for the job, if they have to pay it to so many more than before.
But I still agree with whichever policeman t was who said that the government's behaviour in renaging on their deal with the police was 'dishonourable'. It is.
'It ain't what you do, it's the way how you do it'.
So how much money was wasted on arbitration.
Still, when the police are so scared of a peaceful lady on an aeroplane that it takes three of them with guns to arrest her, perhaps we are paying them too much.
The police accuse the Home Secretary of behaving dishonourably and disgracefully? Once again, the Pot calls the Kettle black.
We need public servants who serve the public, who should be adquately rewarded for serving the public. Public servants who do not serve the public should be penalised, not rewarded. They should have their pay frozen or cut until they start serving the public, or get a job in the private sector and see where public sector pay increases really come from.
Radio4 reports a charlatan chief constable who gets caught speeding in North Wales. Radio4 listeners on You and Yours give an effective no-confidence vote by emailing "generally negative" comments on police performance. Even local councillors make statements in private like "with the police, its any excuse not to do the job". Even people with friends in the police say "they really are in the job just for the pension".
The fact that it really is all about money and not about public service is demonstrated by todays tirades of protest about police pay. Is it not significant that we have heard more on this subject in one day from normally silent police spokespersons than we have heard from them all year on the issues that really matter to the people that pay their wages?
I declare it is disgraceful and dishonourable that the Scottish police have got the full pay rise. This amounts to discrimination. The police is the police is the police is the police. They should be penalised for greed, inadequacy and incompetence just the same as their English and Welsh colleagues.
why isnt this working?
How about making it performance related pay?
With the performance targets set by the community they serve. That may stimulate a more positive attitude to solving crimes, rather than the moaning we hear about too much paperwork, not enough resources etc.
Performance related pay doesn't work in any public sector. Public sector workers do far more that pure atatistics can display. The police are already in the situation where crimes are investigated provideing there is cash in the pot or the crime is part of the latest Government iniative. It's about time central government goes back to allowing the public sector to do their jobs as they know best and stop interfering. It's been doe in Policing, Teaching, Health Care, Public Transport, etc etc etc. Each of these sectors have experts in their fields and these experts are just ignored when it comes to improving the system. They all have far more to do now with far less real money. Too much tax-payers money is wasted on burocuracy instigated by the current Goverment. Here's to emigration in 8 years!