Sort it put for yourself Tim, and good luck.
I donât think it was ever true. Although average remuneration has been higher in the public sector, this was a reflection mainly of the fact that many more public sector employees are highly qualified and skilled, and generally older - doctors, nurses, teachers, etc - the private sector average is pulled down by the fact that it employs a great many unskilled and young workers.
Simply looking at average pay levels is meaningless without taking into account the nature of the jobs being done.
Have you heard about the Donât Pay Campaign Billy - itâs very well organised - aiming for a million energy-bill-strikers by OctoberâŚ
Yes I have.
Itâs one of the reasons I donât think the UK will be economically stable this winter.
But no use to anyone on prepaid meters.
I hope though it is part of a more general realisation of what needs to be done to curtail exploitation and profiteering.
Much of the left has been stuck on the old âworkplace organisationâ way of thinking - and this was indeed pretty successful over a very long period. But the kind of structural changes to workplaces we have all seen - the decline of âtraditional industriesâ, etc - and moreover the movement of investment out of enterprise and into assets (so brilliantly evidenced by Piketty etc) - have tended to move the sharp end of exploitation from the workplace into financial instruments (monopoly pricing, insurance, rents, debt, etc). This is obvious, for example, when you look at some electrical goods: theyâre so cheap all the profit on them comes not from manufacturing or indeed sales, but from financial instruments such as purchase finance and insurance.
Itâs much harder to organise resistance to this - you donât start with the natural solidarity of a concentrated workforce - it is more of an individualised exploitation, behind closed doors. Debt, especially is still seen as something to hide.
Workplaces are still exploitative, of course, and action there still important - aspects of this indeed are other kinds of legal/financial instruments like âzero hours contractsâ and âuberisationâ - but of equal importance nowadays, I would argue, are actions like rent and other payment strikes.
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Should be totally banned IMO.
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Saunak is a complete and utter a*hole.
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He also laid claim to starting âFree Portsâ as a back bench MP⌠problem with that is they were started before he even became an MP 
So you donât know either John.
Of course I do Tim, Iâve been through the process. As I say, good luck 
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I only notice job to job by either looking myself over the years (comparing ads, for instance, for jobs that I do know about - and because of some of the jobs Iâve done Iâve had access to true information about quite a lot of different types of jobs and their pay and benefits that is normally hard to get). Since the late 1990âs public sector roles definitely held their pay (and benefits) better than the equivalent private sector jobs.
The private sector is what pays the bills of the country for everyone - including for the public sector. itâs more exposed to the market whereas it takes a long time for public sector jobs to feel the winds of the market - a very long time indeed. Hence private sector employees having less and less job security and progressively worse benefits certainly over the past 25 years that Iâve been noticing.
This does not seem fair in the first instance - and more importantly , it is not economically sustainable for the country long term.
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And pray tell, are there any of these in the public sector? No?
Nuff said.
Geoff that is one of your most brilliant posts
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uh?
Hasnât the Govt introduced these for auxiliary staff in the NHS - cleaning services for example - and there are other examples on wich to draw - or did I misconstrue your pointâŚ
It will be a sad day Graham if they have done that.
The public sector is largely protected (so long as they remain publicly employedâŚ) but I agree with @Nigel-at-BUF-House that no one should be on a zero hours contract neither public sector not private, as that is just a exploiting their labour, taking profit from it, and asking the rest of society to pick up the costs of that personâs needs.
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This is a total myth Karen - part of the larger mythology that a whole economy is like a familyâs or businessâ income and expenditure. It isnât. Viewed accurately, most value in developed economies is created in the public sector - by doctors and nurses, teachers, fire-fighters, refuse collectors, etc - who all not only pay tax but are pre-eminent in allowing the private sector to make profits (imagine a world in which every business had to educate its own staff from birth, and look after them through potentially long illnesses, and in retirement - oh, and build its own roads, maintain a police force, army, etc, - not to mention educating all those from birthâŚ).
What appears to be âprofitâ in the private sector is very largely illusory (if business paid the real cost of its âexternalitiesâ no major industry in the world would be viable - see the UN research on this - âprofitâ largely amounts to nothing more than theft from the public - and of course from our children).
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Youâve said that before but I think youâre confusing GDP - which does include all the public sector stuff - with the country being able to earn its living in the world and finance all these services, which is the private sector Ie earning real money
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I donât think the confusion is mine Karen. Again, youâre imagining a whole economy as if were like a family of small business - that âearnsâ itâs money only from selling outside itself. This is not true. Throughout history many countries have thrived with hardly any international trade - indeed, most countries at most times would have been better off without international trade! - thatâs the whole purpose of slavery and colonialismâŚ
I donât think in terms of GDP at all by the way - itâs another myth (ie. based on false assumptions).
âReal moneyâ! Donât know quite where to start on that (did you see Billyâs recent thread on this very subject?). I tend to think in terms of real value creation - so to take your family analogy, not to think of just the âbreadwinnerâ as creating value, but also the unpaid carer, etcâŚ
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