Fairy tales tell of urchins opening magical jewel-filled caves, but in the future children may be lulled to sleep hearing of brave attempts to assail the impenetrable vaults of the Treasury.
Rumours of the end of austerity are rife and government ministers themselves have hinted that services might get more funds, and bounty will soon be sprinkled on those public sector workers who still have a job. We have already seen education secretary Justine Greening promise increased spending of £1.3 billion, although this is to be liberated from other parts of her department’s budget rather than “new money”.
In addition, the government has promoted discussions about allowing public sector pay to increase above the current one per cent pay cap. Now, that would be a very good thing, but it does need to be funded properly. And as of yet, there has been no screech of rusted metallic vaults being opened in Unit 1, Horse Guards Road.
The pay squeeze has hit recruitment and government attempts to engineer non-pay strategies to get more workers have struggled. A recent damning National Audit Office report stated that the Department for Education cannot demonstrate that its efforts to improve teacher retention and quality are having a positive impact, nor are value for money. The government response was to throw out selected favourable teacher recruitment data and hope that this would counter the pressure.
Even the OECD has acknowledged the fall in teacher pay over the last decade. Of course, school support staff are too unimportant for mighty international economic cartels to comment on, but I can tell you that support staff have taken an even greater pay hit (as they had to suffer an additional couple of years of pay freezes) and also missed out on George Osborne’s £250 one-off public sector bung.
UNISON has been providing evidence of the impact of low pay on school staff for some time, but morale-based arguments showing the impact of pay caps on low paid workers have taken a long time to resonate. Now politics is taking over. From the recent election data the government knows that public sector pay is now a big issue for voters, and their new partners the DUP have supported pay rises in recent years.
So the question is not if the government will loosen the cap but “when and how”. We can expect some news in the November Budget on the “when”. No doubt the chancellor Phillip Hammond will try to push it as far down the road as politically possible.
But the “how” is vital too. The government could decide just to take the cap off for media-friendly jobs, such as nurses and teachers. If the government recommended to the STRB that they should offer more cash to teachers and funded it, but made no similar provision for support staff this would lead to widespread anger among those already treated as poor relations.
There will need to be some adjustments to support staff pay whatever. Increases in the government’s own national minimum wage will force the lowest points on the support staff national scales to rise in coming years. This means a necessary restructuring of the bottom points, which UNISON is currently negotiating. This might add a few per cent onto the support staff pay bill, but this wouldn’t provide an increase for all support staff and all ought to be entitled to a decent rise after recent fallow years.
Should you be interested in helping our cause to get a fair rise for all, you can sign UNISON’s petition (see below). The government has raised expectation levels and it would be foolish of them to botch it by picking and choosing favourites. This time they need to dig deep and find some new funds. It is time for Mr Hammond to call out the magic words and open the mystical treasury vaults.
- Jon Richards is UNISON’s national secretary for education. Visit www.unison.org.uk/education.
You can find the UNISON fair pay petition at https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/200032