Councils pay freeze announced

Measures to fill gap after government cuts will leave 1.4 million employees earning less in real terms as inflation rises

* Polly Curtis, Whitehall correspondent
* guardian.co.uk, Thursday 17 February 2011 14.29 GMT


Councils are to freeze pay for their 1.4 million employees to help plug the gap left by their funding cuts, it has been announced.

With inflation confounding expectations and now running at 4%, the freeze means a de facto pay cut. It applies to all council employees, other than teachers and firefighters, who negotiate their deals separately.

Unions had asked for a rise of at least £250 a year in 2011, which would have added £265m – or 1.23% – to the local government pay bill, employers said, blaming the government for leaving them £6.5bn short in the financial year that starts in April.

Jan Parkinson, managing director of Local Government Employers, said: "Hardworking council employees help make local government the most efficient part of the public sector.

"This decision has not been taken lightly. Councils are facing extremely tough choices this year and have to ask their whole workforce to recognise the need to limit spending in all areas."

It follows a row over council chiefs' executive pay, with the communities secretary, Eric Pickles, calling for town halls to reduce their wage bill to save costs before cutting frontline services.

On Wednesday he moved to force councils to hold a full council vote on all salaries above £100,000.

Brian Strutton, the GMB union's national secretary for public services, said: "GMB members will be sickened by the imposition of another year's pay freeze. These are some of the lowest-paid and hardest-working people – home helps, social workers, school dinner ladies, refuse collectors.

"These 1.5 million council workers had below-inflation pay rises in April 2008 and 2009 and a pay freeze in April 2010. With inflation still running high, council workers have now had a 10% real pay cut over the past three years, leaving many of them in poverty."

Strutton said there would now be a meeting of the National Joint Council for Local Government Services, which brings together unions and employers, to discuss the issue of pay.

He said: "On top of huge job losses and attacks on their conditions and pensions, it's abject misery for workers in local government while fat-cat bankers who caused the recession still rake in the bonuses."

The GMB has calculated that more that 160,000 jobs are now at risk in local authorities. Reforms to public sector pensions, which will say that workers should pay more into their pensions, are due next month.

The pensions issue is the only theme that unites all public sector workers and could be legitimate grounds for a national strike.

A spokesman for the communities secretary said: "Every bit of the public sector needs to do its bit to help pay off the budget deficit. Local government pay is a matter for councils and they have decided that these savings will help keep council tax down and protect vital public services. Indeed, freezing pay rather than hiking it will protect frontline jobs."

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