Saturday 17 March 2012

Osborne's cunning plan to end the North/South Divide, NOT!

So there is a divide between pay in the north and in the south. Out public sector workers nurses and teachers for example find it hard to be able to afford to live in the South East for a start and getting on the property ladder is nearly impossible, so they end up paying higher rents they they would do in a mortgage.

As a result some civil service jobs were moved from the South East out to rest of the UK. In one of my previous roles I benefited from this. I was carrying out the back office role for a London Social Security Agency offices, here in Northern Ireland.

So on with Osborne's cunning plan. Having seen more and more public sector jobs away from the South East to save money on them under Labour, Osborne is now going to do away with the National Pay Scale for public sector workers! In the example of outsourcing services to other parts of the UK there is now therefore the possibility that someone might be able to earn more than their line manager who happens to be positioned in a 'poorer' or more northern part of the UK.

George this is not the way to deal with the north south divide. This is not the way to deal with the overcrowding of London because all the best paid jobs end up being there. If this is some cunning way for you to fund cutting the 50% upper tax rate.

Here's the other thing, when I left the public sector even on that national rate of pay, I was still able to find comparative work in the private sector that paid more. Therefore by reducing the national pay scale in the North for public sector workers you are liable to be opening up and even bigger differential with the private sector and find it even harder to retain staff.

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