On the topic of a public sector pay freeze

The Local Government Officer a href="http://thelocalgovernmentofficer.wordpress.com/2009/07/06/not-just-another-drop-in-the-ocean/" has an article on the talk of a public sector pay freeze /a.br /br /Now, if the economy is not growing, there will have to be some pay freezes. However, it seems foolish to cut public spending [including that on wages] in a recession. The fall in purchasing power will just make things worse as consumers will have less money to spend and so give less business to retailers etc.br /br /And, on grounds of equity, it seems strange to enforce a pay freeze on the whole public sector - which has some well-paid employees but some poorly-paid ones too. It is one thing to freeze the salary of the Head of the Audit Commission at £245,000 but its another thing entirely to freeze the pay of people on £14,000 or £15,000 a year. The wealthy can afford a pay freeze, low earners can not.br /br /There is also a strange meme going around that "the private sector" has had to accept pay cuts and so the public sector should as well. Firstly, I would point out that lots of private sector workers have not had pay cuts or freezes. In addition, I would point out that there still seems to be enough money sloshing around for City bonuses to make a comeback and for bosses in big firms to earn more than 100 times more than their average employee. The reality is that, in most cases, where wages are being forced down it is because of the greed of management and of shareholders. They are making the poor pay for errors made in the boardroom and on the trading floor. Private sector workers need the strength to fight back. This bizarre approach of trying to - instead - hammer down on public sector workers so they can have the same misery that some workers at bad employers are suffering seems rather perverse. Instead, the aim should be to level up - and ensure that workers at bad employers can fight for their rights and defend their standard of living.div class="blogger-post-footer"img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/38622711-6704448022604494630?l=vinospoliticalblog.blogspot.com'//div

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