Two weeks ago Manchester City council announced that they were going to have to cut around 2000 jobs this year. I work for a smaller neighbouring council and we're also facing significant job losses. I am personally dealing with numerous shell shocked, angry, frightened people who are in the process of consultation over their jobs. I've sat with men in tears, women raging, people shouting, panicking and asking what they're going to do and how they'll pay their mortgages? The jobs that are miraculously supposed to appear from the private sector are thin on the ground. The partner services, like Jobcentre plus who we're referring people to for extra support are themselves shedding jobs and losing grants and funding. Occasionally there are people who are nearing retirement age who are happy to be given the opportunity to leave early. But these are rare.
On my way home on the night Manchester CC made their announcement I caught the end of PM on Radio 4. They apologised and wanted to clarify a point that Grant Shapps had made regarding a story about Manchester CC's announcement of job losses. R4 wanted to point out that according to the council they definitely do not have a Twitter Tsar-this idea was reported in an article in the Daily Mail. Grant Shapp's 'people' said that he had relied on the Daily Mail article for this information. Slightly worrying that a Government minister is playing politics by lobbing insults gleaned from a Daily Mail article - without checking the facts. But obviously he now DID have the facts.
Fast forward an hour to the local BBC news where Mr Shapps is interviewed for his views on the Council's announcement. He happily launches into an attack on Manchester City Council, saying the job cuts are unnecessary, that they could be done through efficiency savings and the council Chief executive should 'lead from the front' and take a pay cut. During this interview he repeated the Twitter Tsar comment - despite his 'people' obviously being aware that it was untrue. So either he's surrounded by people not very good at keeping him updated or he didn't give much of a stuff as to whether it was true or not. In fact, when the interviewer pointed out to him that the role was in fact a 'web manager' Shapps responded that this was more or less the same thing.
My problem (well, one of the many) with this is that it feeds into the repeated argument perpetrated by the coalition that the public sector is bloated, lazy, bureaucratic, inefficient and needs to be reigned in or cut back.
Nowhere was there a shed of compassion from Mr Shapps towards those 2000 who will lose their jobs. No a bit of it. That's 2000 families. 2000 human beings. and to suggest that it could have all been avoided if the council had been more 'efficient' is disgraceful- It's not only unsympathetic, it's insulting.
I work in the public sector. I love it. sure, there are frustrations like any work place. but the main thing that I adore is the number of people - and that is the vast majority, who are working there because they want to make a real difference to the people in the local community. Whether that be keeping it clean, supporting the vulnerable or catching dishonest benefit claimants. There is a culture of going over and above the basic requirements - people care, they have a passion for making things better. This might not be apparent is your only experience of the council is them cleaning your street, collecting your council tax or inspecting your new extension.
Obviously there are some people, like in any organisation, who view it as a job only. But in my experience, these people are in the minority. It's no longer the culture (if it was ever) that people expect a cushy ride working for their local council. Quality Targets and efficiency savings have been the culture in the public sector for a long time now. There are programmes that have cut sickness absence, reduced staff turnover and improved outcomes and results for service users.
I've also worked in the private sector-in fact I've spent more of my working life employed by private companies. Believe me, there were no dramatic differences in levels of efficiency, sickness absence or hard work. But the sense of service & responsibility to the community wasn't there at all. The public sector has lots of requirements placed on it. The private sector has one - the bottom line.
It's not just those who are 'front line' in the public sector who carry out their work with a sense of responsibility - of course it burst the coalition's bubble of the myth of faceless bureaucrats, pushing paper and stating 'it's more than my job's worth' several times and hour but I'm afraid it's not quite like that. The reality is that managers in the public sector have to deliver year on year improvements in outcomes, increase savings and efficiencies, and manage changing measurables and legislation. Public sector managing requires more than simply improving profits - and the measures of these successes changes frequently.
There are lots of reasons why people join the public sector - although it increasingly strikes me as a thankless thing to do. The pay doesn't compare like for like with the private sector. I regularly get comments from colleagues in the private sector about how frustrating it must be for me working for somewhere so slow and inefficient, or half jokingly asking if I've used up my 6 months of fully paid sick leave this year. These jokes were irritating before but at least we didn't then have a government who seemed to believe they were true.
It may be comforting for groups of people to point fingers at one another and to rationalise cuts as being less painful because those effected basically deserve it. But this is a fiction. The staff in the public sector are no more deserving of losing their jobs than those in the private sector. And with the exception of the bankers, those who've lost jobs from the private sector have at least been spared the indignity and insults of the suggestion they were somehow asking for it.
Today Liverpool City Council announced it was shedding 1500 jobs.
GMB General secretary Paul Kenny says that the total number of job losses announced or threatened by local authorities is now over 145,000. And that's not including the 285 councils still to make announcements.
These people deserve better than a kick in the teeth along with their redundancy papers. But that seems too much to ask of this caring, compassionate conservative government.
I couldn't agree more. Grant Shapps is particularly "good" as this business of just making unsubstantiated assertions without any evidence whatsoever. He just repeats whatever mantra he is practising at the time, and never actually considers or deals with any effort to pin him down to reality. I came to the same conclusions as you in my piece published on the day of MCC's announcement of job cuts: http://billynojob.wordpress.com/2011/01/13/grant-shapps-displays-his-mastery-of-misdirection/
Posted by: BillyGottaJob | 01/27/2011 at 09:38 PM