Being deadly serious about this for a moment, and putting political differences to one side, let us assume that we are going reduce government spending while protecting 'frontline jobs'. I accept that some people think that the state shouldn't be a provider of education or health (and I am one of those people) but that is not a majority view (yet).
Which jobs do people, in general, consider to be 'frontline jobs' in the public sector? In my crude sort of way, I'd consider 'frontline' to mean ' people who come into contact with members of the public' and/or 'which you consider to be useful but which the private sector would not provide'.
To get the ball rolling, I'd suggest:
Teachers, dinner ladies, lollipop ladies (and lollipop gentlemen), nursery nurses.
Policemen, prison officers, social workers, immigration officers.
Nurses, doctors, ambulance men (and women), cleaners, porters, health visitors, people who do shopping for old people.
Coastguard.
Librarians.
Street sweepers, dustbin men (and dustbin women), traffic wardens.
Armed forces.
That is of course far from an exhaustive list - my problem is that I once did a list, and then looked up how many people there were in each of those categories, added them up and arrived at less than two million people, as against six million people officially on the government payroll or eight million taxpayer-funded jobs in total. I'd hate to bash out a manifesto and then realise that I'd missed off the vitally important category of ... what?
Answers on a postcard.
Surprised by the outcome
1 hour ago
32 comments:
Fire services
Highways agency
Tax collectors ?
MPs and their staffs of course.
Council repair men (are there any council employees left who do small repairs on council houses, patch holes in the road etc., or is that all subcontracted?) Some of that is council qua landlord rather than qua government, but if we're accepting that the state should provide some housing, we keep them.
Caseworkers in the DHSS or whatever it's called these days. As long as you have state benefits rather than a CI, you need these people.
Environmental Health Officers ... remember what the streets used to be like, Reg.
/lifeofbrian
BQ, fire service = largely part time (notwithstanding they do a great job); Highways Agency = bollocks, either they are traffic cops (good) or they repair roads (good) everything else is bollocks; tax collectors is a separate issue (simplify the system and cut the number of staff by 50%); MPs don't need taxpayer-funded assistants.
Anon, OK, let's include people who repair roads, council houses, playgrounds, parks etc.
DP, I've read the book by Christopher North and your ideas about restaurant regulation, so I'm a tad jaundiced here, but sure, we need a few of those as well.
It would be easier to collect the types of workers NOT required:
Anything to do with anti-racism/sexism/social exclusion.
Anything to do with 'The Arts'
Anything to do with 'Climate Change'
Other proposals:
A 25% cull of all senior managers.
A top local govt salary cap of £150K. If the PM can run the country (however badly) for £200K, then running your average local council should not get you more.
A local referendum each year on what level of council tax should be in the next year. Three choices a) 5% cut, b) No change c) 5% increase. Voting form on the bill sent out in April, legally binding on council for next fiscal year. One vote per household paying Council Tax.
S, that's the approach taken by the TPA, and they have identified about half a million non-jobs, no disputes there.
Starting from the other end, I have identified about two million proper jobs. That still leaves us with three or four million who haven't yet been yet put into either category.
As to salary cap - anybody in the public sector who is paid more than £50k should be subject to democratic election.
As to Council Tax, exactly, provided of course, Council Tax made more than a minor contribution to the cost of 'local services' (which it doesn't). That proposal only makes sense if there were less national taxation and more local taxation (which there isn't).
Emergency services operators.
http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/breaking-news/california-cities-start-charging-for-911-calls/story-e6freuyi-1225835870081
"...and then realise that I'd missed off the vitally important category of ... what?"
The euphemistically-named 'support' staff. All the background trainers, statisticians, HR people, storekeepers, IT workers, communications teams, PR people, estates managers, etc.
And now, of course, all the diversity and disability and 'green' staff.
You missed out agency staff. When you dont pay the going rate for quality (productive) staff then they goto the private sector and you have to pay a premium to get them back.
I am a productive tradesman and have worked within state departments all my career but 90% of the time through an agency. Therefore not counted on the figures.
Good point. Though at least, with agency staff, the taxpayer isn't on the hook for a final salary pension scheme too...
JM, when I say 'frontline' I mean 'useful' or 'productive' I know that any organisation needs a couple of typists and receptionists and caretakers, but not the nonsense that you list, they aren't 'frontline'.
Anon, 'agency' doesn't count. Of course the state has to employ people to maintain its buildings and schools and so on, but that is a function of how many government buildings there are.
Not all those in front line departments are front line staff. As Professor Parkinson demonstrated, bureaucracies that support front line staff have a tendency to grow at a prodigious rate.
You might want to make an assumption here, say 20% of all front line services are non-jobs
"Highways Agency = bollocks, either they are traffic cops (good) or they repair roads (good) everything else is bollocks; "
I thought they said which vehicles where safe and planned the roads (HA).
Whether it's them or another department, that doesnt seem like bollocks.
To be fair, hospitals cannot run on just doctors and nurses otherwise they'd never see any patients.
You'd need to factor in a reasonable number of admin and back office staff depending on the size of each hospital, school or other public sector establishment.
scientists are mostly employed by the government, directly or indirectly
That's me back to selling mobiles by the looks of things then :)
Incidently, BIS seem to be attempting a putsch to pull trading standards out of local government.
Homeless workers/ adhoc projects that spring up to cover White paper implementation.
And there is an excessive amount of agency staff that do front line work especially within social services and yes granted there is no pension but the rate agencies charge LAs is extortionate. As an agency worker I would often be on a higher wage than my colleauges and this would over a long duration.
LFaT - my Mum trained at Barts in the '40's. Bart's finance department was a bursar and three assistants!
You have to separate genuine State jobs, for example Ambassadors, from jobs that could be done by private business, whether funded by the State by way of transfer payments (vouchers?) or not. Some of these are an inherent Good Thing, for example, teachers.
If you do that you actually get to very few genuine direct State jobs at all.
I support taxpayer funded education and health care, but I am totally against the State monopolies in both. In my ideal world we'd all have some form of health and education account or voucher we could spend on the service provider we preferred. I have a personal bias in healthcare as I am commercially uninsureable so I really appreciate the 'insurer of last resort' role of the State. But, my personal experience of the NHS, has made it clear to me that it is a massively out of control leviathan that wildly exploits its good staff and over-charges its patients. It needs urgent reform.
TGS, maybe they are, that's details.
Anon, it's private garages who do MOTs. And how many people does it take to decide where a new road goes? Donzens, maybe, thousand, definitely not.
LFAT, I'm happy to pencil in 20% for back-up staff (cancelling out the 20% that TGS deducted above). Heck, I'm happy to pencil in 50% for back-up staff, but that still only gets us to three million useful taxpayer funded jobs.
Anon, why would the government have to employ scientists, and if so, how many? Higher Education is a separate category.
SL, maybe. How's your series on regulations coming along? I was enjoying that (making you probably the most specialised single interest 'blog of all time).
O, sure, good stuff, but I've included them with social workers. Good point on agency staff.
L, exactly, both comments. At my school, there were 1,000 boys, fifty teachers and about five back up staff (bursar, receptionist, two caretakers and a groundsman) and a few dinner ladies. Hurray for vouchers and universal insurance.
"Anon, why would the government have to employ scientists"
How else can they push globalwarmthink.
Judges & others who run the legal system.
Spooks
Hurray for vouchers and universal insurance.
Things have moved on a bit since your day. At my son's school there are 400 pupils and:
50 teachers
Head and Deputy Head
3 lab technicians
3 IT managers (not teachers)
10 catering staff
6 ground staff
4 maintenance staff
12 admin staff
2 Bursars
1 Bursars' PA
1 Head's PA
1 Deputy's PA
and a Director of Marketing.
I may have missed a few, but you get the general idea. Those vouchers won't go very far...
Mark, Anon@14:47: There is, still, (amazingly) a private sector in education. An economic level of backup to frontline staff shouldn't be a matter of speculation! I suspect, however, that even they are suffering from the effects of Parkinson's Law and elfinsafety legislation.
I deleted it - paranoia. Every time you write about a gvt dept they start reading it.
Then when they come to visit I get paranoid they know it's me.
We've got our own private forum to keep me busy these days, where I can wind up aging bureaucrats talking about how markets will regulate things and quoting Milton Friedman.
bayard: re @14:47 I should perhaps have added that my son's school is private - and has been gaining management staff at a rate of knots since the new Head arrived five years ago.
"Anon, why would the government have to employ scientists, and if so, how many?"
I think the idea is that blue sky scientific research is a public good. The sort of research done in institutes and universities is often different to that done by companies and it is true that many important commercial technologies which benefit everyone have been spun off from publicly funded research.
Unfortunately government now takes a very active role in determining the direction of research and I think this removes many of the benefits.
I have no idea how many scientists are currently employed by the government in total, but I think it is a relatively high number. In addition to those recruited into the civil service, the research councils NERC, BBSRC, EPSRC etc are all funded from central government. I believe the department of business innovation and skills controls the flow of money.
From the BBSRC website for example: BBSRC's current budget is £450M. It supports a total of around 1600 scientists and 2000 research students in universities and institutes in the UK.
Scientists in universities and institutes can also apply for grants directly from government departments (e.g. DEFRA), various quangos, and also from Europe. I think probably the majority are publicly funded to some extent.
B, I know, my kids go there.
S_L, pity, do you want to start posting here?
Anon, OK, we can bung in a couple of thousand scientists, we're still nowhere near explaining why the taxpayer funds eight million jobs.
In any event, scientists are largely part of Higher Education, which I don't mind subsidising to some extent, provided there are still top up fees to deter the lacklustre and half-hearted.
How many administering our relationship with the EU and implementing EU directives?
Big saving to be had there I would guess.
Also, a cull of Govt PR and other spin doctors will put a dent in the number.
TGS, no idea, but we're way beyond 'selectivee culls'. What we need to do is 'zero based budgeting' and list the people that we do need and the rest can all go.
Farmers are all on the public payroll. Could save a lot of money cutting them loose.
Anon, true, CAP payments are going sraight in the bin when I'm in charge, but I'm trying to do a list of people we need, not expenditure we don't.
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