Pay inequality adds to States headache

Most obvious is controlling the economic shock and subsequent recovery from Covid-19.

This will come at the same time as the unknown impact from Brexit, now so far from the public eye.

Another strand will be work on public sector pay and eliminating what appears to be a very real gender-linked chasm.

Last week Policy & Resources vice president Lyndon Trott told the States that to comply with new equality legislation and implement equal pay for work of equal value would cost the public purse £50m.

There has been some work already on simplifying public sector pay and conditions to eliminate the inefficiencies inherent in having so many different pay groups negotiating different contracts.

The nurses’ pay issue flung the discrepancies between job types into the spotlight and the anti-discrimination debate has added a new focus on ingrained bias in the system.

Scrutiny raised several issues with public sector pay during debate on the accounts last week.

They include much higher than normal recruitment costs, the drift of more and more people into higher earnings brackets, increased reliance again on expensive agency staff and large amounts of spending on transformation staff but little sign yet of progress.

They are all concerning signs.

Inequality in pay leads to disharmony and resentment and therefore a workforce that will not be working to its full potential.

But a wary public will always be asking about whether the right value has been attached to the job itself, whether the best course of action is about lowering the ceiling rather than automatically raising people up to it and ultimately who decides?

Much has already been promised on pay costs, not all of it delivered.

Moves to level the playing field are going to be fraught with difficulties, but they must be made to ensure the public sector is capable of attracting the best staff and therefore providing value for money services to the public.