blog.jobsgopublic.com

For every depressing bit of news relating to the public sector (and anywhere of course, but the public sector is what we’re interested in here) there is always – by the Law of Mindless Optimism – an encouraging news story close by. Yes, this would also work the other way around, but why would you actively look for bad news? Being politically aware doesn’t have to be doom and gloom. Nor does it mean ignoring the bad stuff and living in a finger-in-ear vacuum of positivity. It’s about seeing the bigger picture, rather than focusing in on just the bad bits and feeling apathetic as a result.

Take this week for instance. The civil servants strike is big in the news at the moment. A 48-hour mass walk out is currently underway over proposed cuts in redundancy pay, which would see civil service workers lose ‘tens of thousands’ in redundancy money, according to The Guardian.

Whilst Government ministers insist that at least 85% of civil servants have not taken part in the strike, the Public and Commercial Services Union, PCS put the figure at more than 200,000 who are currently striking. Services within the Courts have been reduced, job centres up and down the country are struggling with minimal staff, and The Guardian says that 2,000 driving tests have been postponed. Even museums are affected, as are Revenue and Customs, some aspects of the Metropolitan Police and even House of Commons security.

Yet, at the same time, Housing Minister, John Healey has released £83 million in funding to build thousands of affordable homes, creating 1,700 jobs. Crucially, these jobs will be available in the form of apprenticeships and will provide opportunities to local workers. Whitehallpages.net say the funding will mean that 99 young people will be given the chance to work in the building trade.

As reported on Whitehallpages.net, John Healey said: “I’m allocating £83 million to get 87 stalled developments across the country up and running again, creating 1,700 jobs and giving more than 2,200 first-time buyers the chance to take an affordable step onto the property ladder. In this recession, the Government has not stepped back and left the homes and jobs we need to the market. We’re using public funding to keep Britain building through the downturn.”

And so there you have it: the bad news and then the good news. The Law of Mindless Optimism.

To further illustrate this, all future blogs will be divided into The Bad News and The Good News sections, where possible. So, if you’re feeling particularly brave one day, you can keep yourself up-to-date with the bad news hitting the public sector, or, if you need a lift and want some positivity, you can just focus on the good news. Alternatively, you read the whole lot.

In the meantime, keep job hunting. Our society needs you.

And so the job-cutting speculation has officially started. Will they? Won’t they? Will it be thousands? or, as some economists warn, could figures reach hundreds of thousands? Tension is growing in the lead up to the General Election (which may even be called earlier than May if the polls continue to show close party leads).

The Guardian warns that 170,000 jobs are likely to be cut in the next few years. Birmingham Council is set to axe 2,000 jobs and Nottinghamshire Council plans to cut 1,500 jobs. Job cuts are deemed ‘necessary’ if councils are to adapt to significant budget decreases in the coming years. For some councils, job losses have almost become a knee-jerk reaction to maximising on savings. Such blinkered attitudes are clearly not helpful and simply making thousands redundant could be a false economy: redundancy is expensive, and rightfully so.

Yet there is another way. It may not be the knight in shining armour that saves the public sector from its debt deficit, but it could save local councils millions, if not more. And if adopted across the board, jobs could actually be preserved rather than lost.

Total Place

Thought up by London Councils, the organisation that produced The Manifesto for Londoners, Total Place emphasises the importance of sharing within local authorities. By sharing a wide range of services, process and back-office systems, duplication within local government is radically reduced. The Total Place approach looks at the bigger picture, encompassing all aspects of local government including PCTs and housing authorities rather than looking at different aspects in isolation. Local authorities, notorious for their duplicated and beaurocratic processes, resulting in huge wastes in time and resources, will be therefore much improved.

Total Place is a necessary step in public sector reform and a huge leap towards the London Councils own proposal as set out in their Manifesto for Londoners. In terms of widespread approval, the scheme championed by Whitehall is embraced by all political parties.   Currently, it is being piloted in thirteen London areas, where it assesses the needs of local people, how public money is spent in these areas and which services can be shared and integrated to maximise on efficiency.

Scaremongering

And whilst some claim that the recent job cut speculation is just meaningless ‘scaremongering’ fuelled by the Conservatives, job losses are going to take place, and unless schemes like Total Place are implemented and soon, redundancy figures are going to rocket to unprecedented heights. Alternative cost-saving initiatives are definitely the way forward: job losses are not.

How many of you watched The day the Immigrants left on BBC One last night? It was a poignant experiment, of interest to job seekers everywhere. Regardless of where you are from, and what language your mother tongue is in, immigration is rather a taboo subject on both sides of the coin: for those who have come to Britain in search of a better standard of living and for those already residing here. Competition for jobs is fierce: everyone needs to earn a living to survive.

In a televised response to complaints of some British natives, where some believe that immigrants are ‘stealing’ so-called ‘low-level’ British jobs, The day the Immigrants left asked: if these jobs were vacant, would the native Brits actually take them?

The Experiment

Located in Wisbech in Cambridgeshire where 2,000 of the market town’s local residents are currently unemployed, many of the residents blame their unemployment on the growing immigrant population.

Twelve unemployed British residents from Wisbech were given the opportunity to work for two days in place of migrant workers in a potato packing factory, an Indian restaurant, an asparagus farm and a building site.

Those working at the Indian restaurant would receive on-the-job training whilst those working in the potato packing factory would be required to fill 85 bags per minute during their twelve-hour shift. According to the BBC, factory work is the most common occupation for EU workers, employing approximately 270,180 of registered EU workers between 2004 and 2006.

The outcome

Of the twelve volunteers, one assigned work at the factory texted in sick the night before, three due to work at the Indian Restaurant called in sick and the fourth (and only) volunteer left at the restaurant was found to be sampling the food whilst the permanent staff worked around him.

In summary, nearly half of the volunteers were unable to commit to just two days work. This begs the question, why are some Brits so work shy?  Professor of Sociology, Richard Sennett believes this is due to the British work culture (breadth of career opportunity, financial incentives, promises of promotion etc) rather than just individual attitudes. Yet it’s made Britain into a nation of picky job-seekers. Almost.

In this era of job shortages, more people are willing to take what they can get and work longer hours than ever before. What this documentary taught us apart from highlighting some culture differences in work ethic, is the importance of questioning our own work ethic. Are we putting enough into our jobs once we gain employment? Do we believe ourselves to be hard working, or do we just like to think we are? We all have different experiences in the world of work, but a job is as much as what you put in to it as what you get out of it.

It’s fast becoming the latest public sector trend. A quick fix way to maximise on efficiency, save money and free up time to concentrate on more pressing tasks. But is private sector outsourcing really the way forward?

On the surface, it’s the ideal solution for any local government organisation. Staff workloads can be drastically reduced by delegating various administrative functions to private companies for competitive fees. More and more private companies are setting up shop, aware of the growing demand for their services. It’s an easy formula after all: tired, overworked public sector staff drawn in by the confident sales pitch of a new start-up outsourcing company. Fixed fees, competitive prices, delegated workloads, the responsibility handed over to someone else. In this results-driven era, the lure for outside help is all too tempting. And perhaps this set up is no bad thing if confined to back-office systems and behind-the-scenes administration.  Why not invest in small-scale outsourcing if it means that low-key administrative tasks can be done without utilising an already overworked public sector work force?

But the real danger of private sector outsourcing is when outsourcing moves to the front line, dealing with highly confidential and personal data about vulnerable people.

Only last week, The Guardian ran a story following a tip off from a social worker about a well-known outsourcing company which was contracted to run a young people’s service in the public sector. According to the newspaper, the company mislaid highly sensitive information, employed staff to work directly with young people without up-to-date CRB checks and failed to recruit key positions in order to boost profits. At a time when many children’s services up and down the country have been steeped in scandal in recent years (Doncaster, Haringey, Calderdale, to name but a few) this is deeply worrying. It is possible that with the growing popularity in outsourcing, instances of incompetence and blatant private sector profiteering will only worsen.

But in the short term at least, the pressing argument against regular outsourcing is the radically different ways in which the private and public sectors operate. It would be a mammoth task – if not impossible – for a private company to properly grasp and understand the inner workings of a public sector client before starting the outsourcing contract. To do so in a relatively short space of time would be to leave a lot of gaps in the public sector jigsaw.

Paradoxically, this difference of culture can also serve as a means of boosting efficiency too. Consider a public sector employee who sends out a late NHS appointment letter to a patient, or a letter from the council sent to the wrong address. This is seen as ‘typical’, and as such, no one complains. Yet any private sector employee would be hauled over the coals for doing much the same. So in this way, outsourcing to private sector companies could also mean a change in attitude (albeit slight) and a clearer accountability line for all employees.

Clearly, it’s swings and roundabouts. But in a climate where virgin outsourcing companies are as common as the bus you weren’t waiting for (and then three come at once) how will public sector organisations know which companies to work with? There isn’t yet a Which? guide to private sector outsourcing companies. It’s a risky business.

Yet, outsourcing to the private sector can work, if time is on your side, if the right questions are asked and if the correct research is conducted. But it’s a minefield out there, and the reality is that few people will even have the time to carry out such necessary checks. One thing is certain: we are going to hear a lot more about the outsourcing debate in years to come – it’s only just picking up speed.

Public sector budget deficit. Cutbacks. Pay freezes. Public sector debt.  These are all terms that are set to sum up 2010 and beyond. Rather a depressing forecast for the next few years you might think, and you’d be right. And to top it all, no one seems to know when the public sector recession will recover, if at all. Votes are cast, predictions are in, but we are rather lacking in definitive answers. We may as well give up now and move in our thousands to the private sector. Sell our public service souls and transcend to the Other Side.

Perhaps this won’t be necessary (unless you really, really want to, of course). We at Jobsgopublic believe there is another way. London Councils have just launched a ground-breaking manifesto which should (if it lands on the right desk and in the right e-mail boxes) move mountains.

Devolution, devolution, devolution

Forget the devolution of the late 90s. This time, it means business. Public sector business, at that.

In The Manifesto for Londoners, London Councils propose a new system of power centred round local government which collaborates with local public bodies and organisations in order to deliver efficient services which directly meet the needs of local residents. The proposals put forward in the Manifesto are designed to simplify processes and bring clearer accountability within London boroughs. It is not intended solely for London. In the future, if these proposals are adopted by Whitehall (and therefore, handed over to local councils), London will be the flagship of a successful system of devolution. Other boroughs throughout England will follow suit.

Depending on this potential power shift, residents throughout England will see vast improvements in local services. It will give local residents a voice in shaping decisions affecting their local area and solution-based services will be better tailored specific to an individual’s needs (for example, health care, specialist education, etc.) In short, devolution will work because it will allow greater collaboration and an increased use of joined-up services.

Why London?

According to the Manifesto for Londoners, London was an obvious choice for this proposal because of its economy, diversity and willingness to change. The Manifesto states that London “is vital to the success of the UK.” It reports that London’s economy brings in £251billion and consists of 400,000 businesses, 1 in 5 of which has a turnover of £5 million. 300 languages are spoken in the capital, and it is home to over 40 per cent of British Ethnic Minorities. As a result, “London local government is ideally placed to bring all public services together… integrating…secure services designed to fit public expectations.”

The Manifesto proposes:

• To increase accountability of PCT non-acute care budgets within their borough
• To bring together back-to-work schemes through a joint London board
• To promote good practice in reducing crime and re-offending
• To promote the London Safeguarding Children Board as the flagship body
• To transfer overground rail responsibility to Transport for London
• To bring together specialist disability transport services (dial-a-ride, Taxicard etc.)
• To invest more efficiently in housing and infrastructure improvements
• To allow all boroughs to keep council tax increases
• To dissolve the Government Office for London (the role of Elected London Mayor duplicates many of the roles of the GOL) and transfer the remaining functions between the Mayor of London and London Boroughs.

As London Councils acknowledge, public finance is in a precarious situation that will only worsen in the coming years. But by implementing this necessary power shift from central to local government, it is believed that savings of £1.2 billion will be delivered within five years. And if this process of devolution is to be accepted, it is London that must embrace it first. The Manifesto concludes:

“By delivering the first wave of devolution we can chart a path for better public service and more value for money in England as a whole.”

Viva La devolution revolution!