Town Hall skiving: worse than the private sector?
Posted on Thursday 19 August, 2010
Filed Under Society
COUNCIL staff twiddle their thumbs for two-thirds of their working day, according to a survey by some firm of management consultants I have never heard of, which has predictably been bigged up by the Daily Telegraph.
I did google to try to find the original report, so that I could at least run my eye over the definitions and the methodology, but have not been able to find the document. Even so, the claim – coming at the time that it does – strikes me as potentially ideologically motivated.
The chief contention is that council staff are only productive 32% of the time, while the comparison figure for private firms is 44%. That means that hundreds of thousands of pen-pushing town hall idlers could easily be given the boot, and nobody would even notice so long as the rest of ‘em got their rear in gear.
Oddly enough, none of the media coverage I have been able to find answers the first question I would pose about this research, which is ‘who paid for it?’
But the findings very obviously dovetail with a certain set of prejudices associated with the free market right, many of whom believe that public sector workers are unproductive 100% of the time, full stop.
So when bin men are employed by the council, they are parasites leeching off the public purse. When the same bin men are employed by contractors to do exactly the same tasks, they are wealth creators. Don’t ask. That’s how the right wing thinks.
Despite all the stereotypes about lefties, I have never actually worked for the public sector. That said, I have from time to time covered local government as a journalist, and have not formed the impression that those who do are any more (or less) given to lead swinging, unnecessary water cooler conversation, spending work time on Facebook, slacking or bunking off early than their private sector counterparts.
Sure, I know that on average they take more sickies. But I have always put that down to the fact that many private sector workers stupidly come into work when they frankly should be tucked up under the duvet and not coughing and sneezing over the rest of us.
Skiving has a long and honourable tradition in the British workplace, of course. My dad passed on to me a number of stories illustrating the prevalence of such practices both before the second world war and in the decades thereafter, and I have at times had the privilege of trying out some of the old man’s tip for myself. They work. Or rather, they don’t work, if you get my drift.
But can it really be the case that there is a qualitative difference in the pace of graft between a local government call centre and, say, a newspaper office? I am open to reader opinions on this one.
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23 Responses to “Town Hall skiving: worse than the private sector?”
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“sure, I know that on average they take more sickies.”
Of course, it might be all the sick people those working in the NHS, the UK’s largest employer, work with.
Just sayin’.
That sort of analysis requires Taylor like analysis. Someone literally shadowing a number employees in bith sectors and then finding some average, in which case the employee being shadowed is likely to remain productive more than usual!!
I doubt this kind of analysis has taken place. It would also be interesting to see how productive is defined.
So this seems like pure unadulterated ideology timed to aid the attack on public services, the sort of information aimed at the weak minded. So it should prove popular!!
I use to do contract work for the old British rail, and then Rail track, we arrived on a short term contract six weeks, we put up the sheds ready to repair a British rail Bridge. We needed four linesmen to control the trains make sure we were safe.
The first week only one lineman turned up and he refused to allow us to start, the second week two turned up refused to allow us to start, one of the linesman brought a football saying oh do not worry we play football.
Now the company did not mind because we were paid waiting time, in the end the six week contract took six months, the cost of repairing the bridge was £250,000 ended up costing 980,000 for the time the equipment and tools were idle.
I moved from that contract to a small job repairing council houses in Southampton, we had to wait until they emptied a house they we repair it and another house would be moved, six months contract we had to have three council officials on site the contract was worth a million, it took us eighteen months not the six months and was Worth well over two million but nobody gave a dam, the official would only work five hours and go home and we have to stop.
And to be honest most of my work was like this for railways and councils.
I reckon this survey was probably based on bullshit testimony similar to treborcs. I.e. without any foundation at all.
If we imagine for a second this report is by accident accurate it is interesting that ‘productive time’ is less than 50% for both public and private, if this were true then it would lend weight to the argument that the working week should be reduced significantly and pay can remain the same. Less hours should mean greater productivity. That downtime can be used for a mixture of leisure activity and/or meetings. This report is actually a fantastic argument for workers cooperatives, where productivity would outstrip a capitalist firm and more time would be available for talking through ideas and strategic goals etc.
Shame we have no way of veryfying this data, it would be a great indictment of capitalist production and human waste.
does anyone at all read these comments and go away thinking — yeah — that’s right — my mind is changed — i will now change the werlD.
fugging hell.
I think i remember reading Gramsci on about something similar. i will try and dig it oot for you all. At some point.
[quotation]“Mr Galloway is a coward and no element of the left wing in this or any other country should have anything else to do with him. He represents a perversion of politics based upon befriending those who his enemies distrust, and no sensible political theory or action can rest upon this.”[end quotation]
http://thoughcowardsflinch.com/2010/08/19/4175/
gerra post on it
“I think i remember reading Gramsci on about something similar. i will try and dig it oot for you all. At some point”
Well he should know!!
Interesting that Will should use this thread to post an hysterical dishonest quote about someone on the left. Solidarity comrade, solidarity!! Luckily most on the left will ignore you and continue to regard the AWL as a bunch of cretinous fuckwits.
treborc: Did you work for contractors or for the direct labour of the council?
Anyone else see the brilliant series ‘Getting On’ with jo Brand that was screened on Thursday nights, 10pm on BBC2? It’s finished now but it certainly was an antidote to all the stupid hospital drams such as Holby City and Casualty. Had the ring of truth.
Directly employed by a main contractor, we were sub contractors, the main contractor were always British rail or rail track, and the same goes for the council, we were the sub contractors, but the company I worked for was massive. But the rules would say we could not work without the officals of the main contractors or it’s agents on site, for safety.
Luckily most petting zoo third worldists will ignore you and continue to regard the AWL as a bunch of dangerously egalitarian socialists after our inheritances.
Amended for accuracy.
So you were employed by a private comapany? Were theere no penalty clauses in the contracts? (I rest my case m’lud.)
@treborc
I’m guessing your contract work experience occurred 15-25 years ago (given you refer to British Rail) and was under the last Conservative Government.
Not sure how relevant this is to the public sector now given the time that has passed since then and the fact Railtrack was a private sector company whose poor productivity cannot be ascribed to poor public sector management.
The stuff about public sector employees taking more sickies is actually largely mythological if you do proper research and analysis:
http://www.hse.gov.uk/press/2006/e06073.htm
Survey results question difference in public/private sector sick leave
The popular view that public sector workers take more sick leave than their private sector counterparts is misleading says an HSE report. The results of a recent HSE survey suggest that there is evidence of higher rates of employer under-recording of employee absence within the private sector, this being concentrated within smaller businesses.
The Survey on Workplace Absence, Sickness and (ill) Health (SWASH) 2005 also indicates that differences in public and private sector sickness absence rates are small, an average of approximately 0.3 days per employee, when account is taken of the size of an organisation; and differences in the age and gender profiles.
The survey, based on 10,000 interviews with employees, confirmed that levels of absence were higher in organisations with more than 250 employees. Almost all public sector organisations employ more than 250 employees. The majority of private sector employees work in small or medium sized organisations.
The average number of days absence per employee in small private businesses is 4 days, compared with 7 days in large (250+) private sector organisations.
On average, women have more sickness absence than men and the public sector employs a higher proportion of female workers.
Older employees take more days sickness absence in total than their younger counterparts. However, young people have more spells of short-term absence than older employees. The age profile of the public sector is older than the private sector.
The survey also found that public sector workers are more likely to work when they are ill than those in the private sector.
Reports of work related stress are more prevalent amongst people who work face to face with the public. Stress was reported more widely amongst public than private sector respondents. More public sector workers work face to face with the public than their private sector counterparts.
There appear to be notable differences in sick pay arrangements between the private and public sectors, with over one-fifth of private sector respondents reporting that they received no pay for the first three days of continuous absence.
Will, I have it on very good authority – the old bloke in the shaving mirror is rarely wrong – that my rigorous analyses of current events have “a tremendous effect” upon my readers. True, he hasn’t specified exactly the nature of the effect but surely it can be nothing other than beneficent. By the way, where’s your blog these days?
As for the sermon of the day, my private contractor dustmen (and dustwomen) do the job almost at a run, a sight unseen by me in 71 years during which it was local authorities who employed them. In the development in which I live, they empty 14 owners’ multiple bins – food waste, tin cans, paper and bottles (and yes, I do test them a bit on the last item) and they complete the job and on their way in under 5 minutes.
More compelling testimony, this time from that great neutral, Duff!
It should be noted that we have wheelie bins these days, that are parked by residents on the side of the road. In the old days didn’t binmen have to carry the full bin from every house to every wagon?
You don’t need any surveys, ideologically-timed procapitalist or not, to tell you that something is very wrong in large parts of the public sector: the level of idleness, resource waste, failures of co-odination and pointless replication of effort is high. The structures, both management and union, militate against change, even when it is for the better, in part because people have very little stake in improving things. This is a real issue for socialists, because if socialism is going to work like most councils, then we are barking up the wrong tree. Better we face it square on and try to come up with practical solutions than the other side does. Denying that there is a problem makes the second case more likely.
Can you imagine if, under socialism, we could get most people to work 50% of the time: on average, productivity versus capitalism (on these figures at least) would go through the roof—which, after all , is one of the main arguments for socialism: motivation embedded by the social structure as a way of producing more for less.
“You don’t need any surveys, ideologically-timed procapitalist or not, to tell you that something is very wrong in large parts of the public sector: the level of idleness, resource waste, failures of co-odination and pointless replication of effort is high.”
So you don’t need to gather the actual facts, just rely on blind faith and a gut feeling!! Such astonishing ignorance of the real conditions in todays public services and from a so called socialist. I mean ‘level of idleness’, what the hell are you on about.
“Denying that there is a problem makes the second case more likely.”
How do you know if there is a problem if you reject gathering data?
“Can you imagine if, under socialism, we could get most people to work 50% of the time: on average, productivity versus capitalism”
By your definition of productivity I guess socialism would be similar to slavery, bring back the whips!
Typical Torygraph shite. It is little wonder public sector workers throw more sickies. They are subject to daily abuse and assault in certain sectors. The public like to take out their silly petty frustrations out on someone. I worked with the public for decades and witnessed some shit in that time. There was a time when you could tell the idiots to fuck off. Now its all PC hold your water and take the shit. People go on the sick to keep their sanity.
I looked up the consultants cited and (from their website at least) they don’t have a lot to say. They seem mainly to be aimed at the manufacturing sector. and whilst they say that they can cover local and central government their client list show no-one from those sectors. One client listed is AMEC who do do some outsourcing, but little else that seems to be relevant.
Since I make part of my living by gathering facts and carrying out analyses, it would be foolish for me to reject this strategy out of hand—as you seem to do, Dean, with the study in question, on the not necessarily very scientific basis of its being published at the “wrong” time.
Have you worked at a town hall? I can tell you, that, without accepting or rejecting any analysis I haven’t read, that it’s often very poorly organised, that it creaks along like a badly damaged tank, that lots of money is wasted, and that lots of people working there have nothing much useful to do (this applies not only to the secretaries, say, but also to highly paid, incompetent IT contractors and consultants). The system fiercely resists (and often punishes) initiative and militates against improvement. One of the reasons for this, in my view, is a kind of sentimental leftish mentality that automatically balks at any criticism of the public sector.
I’m not saying that the council doesn’t deliver useful goods and services, often ones that the market would not supply. But what’s the point in fibbing to ourselves? In wearing rose-tinted spectacles? In retreating back to the safety of comfortable old slogans and styles of thought? That’s seems unMarxist to me.
For instance, the unions shouldn’t just be resisting management changes—many of which are bad ideas and need to be resisted—they should be actively proposing their own, better ones. How else are the working class to take over? What else is the withering away of the state? I’m not sure if you are familiar with the theories of Marx and Engel’s, but very high productivity has often been thought of, by them and their followers, as a prerequisite for exiting the “realm of necessity”. Also, rising productivity under socialism comes with and from a rise in interest and attention, since the producers have greater direct involvement and a greater say. If there was a whip, at least we will only be whipping ourselves.
And so who did pay for the research? You asked but didn’t answer.
Personally I would be shocked if they did not do it off their own bat. The market opportunities within the public sector for consultants offering the alchemist’s stone that will deliver cuts with minimum impact on performance must be growing by the minute – in their minds at least.
No, I think a more appropriate question is: what was the methodology?
And, if you want to get a little smarter: are they measuring effectiveness or efficiency? Given that there is little benefit in doing something efficiently if it has no value.
As I see it that implied criticism probably applies more to the private than the public sector. But I’m a bit of a eco-lefty so I guess it would.