PAY rises for public sector employees will cost the taxpayer around £41 million in 2024, it can been revealed after an 8% rise for government employees was confirmed last week.
And £502,000 of this sum was to pay the extra 0.1% given to civil servants and other public sector workers to match the increase given to teachers.
Former Senator Ben Shenton said that the public should be “appalled” at the “clandestine attitude” of top brass in Broad Street, adding that the pay rise looked “underhand” and “less than transparent”.
There was no press release or official statement to the public about the additional rise for the public sector.
Meanwhile, States Employment Board vice-chair Deputy Malcolm Ferey said that the government would need to look at “vacancy management” in non-frontline services – cutting roles which become vacant.
Following JEP requests for information, the SEB revealed that the entire public sector received wage increases of 8% in 2024 in addition to 7.9% in 2023.
Deputy Ferey said that the Government Plan 2024 budgeted for pay inflation across the service of 7.9% this year, but that the additional increase of 0.1% (£502,000) had been funded by departments from within their existing budgets.
Government staff are also set to have increases for 2025 and 2026 which will be 1% over the rate of inflation.
Deputy Ferey said the additional 0.1% was due to their acceptance of a teachers’ pay packet of 8%, saying: “We aligned it with the pay negotiation for teachers.”
He added: “We’ve got provision to cover future pay increases, but we will need to look at vacancy management in non-frontline services.
“If a vacancy comes up because someone has left or retired and it’s not a frontline service, then we will look at how we manage re-recruiting and consider whether we need that role.”
Mr Shenton, speaking to the JEP, said he was “reliably informed” about the rise on 30 April.
He said: “The promised above-cost-of-living pay rises for the next two years could lead to a total pay increase over the four-year period in excess of 30% with no improvement in woeful productivity.
“I am annoyed at the size of the rise, and the clandestine attitude of a public sector run by the current chief executive.
“The public should also be appalled at this attitude, even those who got the pay rise as it makes them look underhand and less than transparent.
“If I had not tweeted, and the media not chased, the public may well have been kept in the dark.”
One of Chief Minister Lyndon Farnham’s key priorities, as laid out in the Common Strategic Policy, is to “curb the growth” in the public sector.
The recent Labour Market Report showed that in the 12 months to December 2023, there was an increase of 380 jobs in the public sector – compared to an increase of 330 jobs in the private sector.
Around 15% of Islanders who work are employed by the government.
How did the JEP calculate the cost of the rise?
The SEB 2023 report showed that there was a headcount of 8,834 across all departments and that the total paid to all government staff in 2023 was £521,222,333.
This means the 8% pay rise amounted to around £41,600,000.
The total income tax paid by individual Islanders is estimated to be £710 million this year, meaning the £41m uplift equates to the tax bill of hundreds of Islanders.
