From The Evening Standard:
A council which paid out more than £500,000 making 12 human resources staff redundant hired 11 new employees to replace them. Greenwich council spent the money - the equivalent of pay-offs of £42,422 each - on the 12 redundancies in the department from 2008-2009.
But in the meantime the Labour-run council advertised for 11 new people to work in its human resources department, provoking fury among locals who face £70 million in council cuts. The jobs advertised include a Human Resources "lead business partner" on a salary of £64,827 and a trainee "health, safety and wellbeing" officer on £23,970.
A spokesman for Greenwich council said: "These posts are part of the planned reorganisation of the service which is contained within existing budgets."
There’s a Surprise
10 hours ago
6 comments:
Rick had a good take on this:
http://flipchartfairytales.wordpress.com/2010/10/06/council-pays-off-twelve-hr-staff-only-to-recruit-eleven-more/
SF, that logic may well stack up in the rarified atmosphere of the public sector, but it doesn't explain why the good burghers of Greenwich need " 'lead business partner' on a salary of £64,827 and a trainee 'health, safety and wellbeing' officer on £23,970."
Sounds familiar - Brighton and Hove fired six 'strategic directors' then set up a high-profile campign to recruit four more on higher salaries.
I think it's all down to which pot the money comes out of...
Awful but awfully familiar, sadly. The only unusual thing about this particular abuse of taxpayers' money is that they didn't replace the 12 with 13 rather than 11!
I remember Eric Pickles recounting at the Tory Conference that when he became leader of Bradford Council they sacked half the HR people and were worried the HR department wouldn't be able to function. Later on they decided their only regret was not sacking the rest as well!
In my day we did not have HR Depts - we had Personnel Depts which were small compact units that used to deal with all the admin. But then again, they did not have to cope with all the racist, discrimination, elfin safety, etc etc beauloxx that current mangers have to cope with.
wv: rehab !! maybe that's where i should be sent then...
And what's the betting that those eleven places are already filled with friends or colleagues of the existing staff and the advertisement of vacancies is simply a time-wasting exercise for potential applicants which Greenwich Council are only doing because they have to.
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