We welcome Islington’s decision to cut the chief executive’s salary by £50,000 a year, reflecting the difficult times we face. The years ahead will provide many challenges for residents and the council, especially in ensuring the cuts being forced on us by the Conservative-Lib Dem coalition do not hit the poorest, hardest.
However, we must be aware of attempts to cut pay at the lower end. The plan by Communities Secretary Eric Pickles to scrap the two-tier code (which protects conditions for staff transferred to firms that operate outsourced contracts) will hit residents on the lowest levels of the pay scale, as they are more likely to find their jobs outsourced. It will also allow new employees to be treated worse than others doing the same job.
We should be ensuring that, in maintaining high standards of public service and keeping good, local jobs, we do not enter a race to the bottom in terms of pay and conditions. Let us move to a genuinely fair approach to pay which ensures a living wage for all and where the highest paid earn no more than ten times that of the lowest paid.
The Greater London Authority has already paved the way there with the Green Party’s Darren Johnson’s motion to move towards this ratio. In an equitable world, this would be the case across all sectors of the economy but the public sector can lead the way until then.
