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 I
have listened to the spin put on the June Average Earnings Index by the
Treasury Minister, Senator Ozouf, and write to point out some facts he
did not mention and might prefer to keep quiet.
He is the Minister behind the unilateral and arbitrary decision to
impose a wage freeze on all public workers. He it was who informed the
States on 14 July that ‘the public sector needed to be setting an
example’ and that there were ‘pay freezes across the private sector’.
Here we are, a little over a month later, and this is shown to have been
misleading. The reality is shown by a 3.3% rise in earnings for the
private sector, led by the finance sector with 3.5%. This compares with
the public sector workforce falling behind with a mere 1% rise in
earnings over the year.
What is worse, in terms of recruitment and retention of vital workers
in our hospitals and schools, is that the comparison with the UK
revealed in the AEI figures shows that while the Jersey private sector
did 1.7% better than its UK equivalent, the public sector workers fell
2.7% behind workers in the UK. Nurses and others are better off
elsewhere.
With his pay freeze, the Treasury Minister has insulted our dedicated
public employees, who are already working hard to hold public services
together in the face of funding cuts, and the threat of redundancies.
The fact that public sector employees are meeting to discuss joint
action for the first time in at least 30 years is indicative of how far
he has set back industrial relations and lost the respect of our
workforce.
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