Pay freeze will stretch loyalty

Our parents informed us that sarcasm was the lowest form of wit. But we hope you will indulge, just a little, while we try to make a point: well done, New Zealand, you magnificent team of five million. Well done to the essential frontline staff who worked so long and hard in the fight against Covid19. Well done to the border workers; the MIQ, customs and immigration staff; also the Defence Force, police and healthcare workers.

Well done all. We offer our thanks but no other reward. In fact, as part of that ongoing struggle against this stultifying pandemic we offer only more pain, and the prospect of no pay rise for four years. You’re welcome.

As part of an ongoing campaign of public service ‘‘restraint’’, the Government has issued new guidelines effectively freezing the pay of those earning above $100,000, and severely restricting the upward mobility of those making more than $60,000. For another three years.

Few are spared, hundreds of thousands of public sector workers are affected, and the reaction has been swift and savage. Healthcare workers call it a ‘‘kick in the teeth’’, police have labelled it a ‘‘bombshell’’, and emails to the Public Service Association (PSA) union from angry workers say it is ‘‘unfair, disrespectful and appalling’’.

In announcing the freeze, Public Service Minister Chris Hipkins said the main impact would fall on those earning more than $100,000. If that was meant to draw an ideological line between those deemed wealthy and an upwardly mobile middle class, then it failed miserably.

Some chief executives’ salaries may appear out of step with those of their employees, but the reality is very different. The 2018 Public Service Workforce Data Report concluded the base salaries of public sector chief executives was 5.8 times greater than those of non-management staff. But that paled in comparison with the salaries of chief executives in New Zealand’s publicly listed companies, who made between 30 and 50 times the average wage of their employees.

Many of the top public sector executives could be forgiven a sly look at their counterparts in the private sector, where wage growth has outstripped that in the public sector for much of the past decade.

Worse still for the Government, the PSA puts the median wage for its 80,000 members at $59,000, meaning the freeze will have a ‘‘chilling effect’’ on a large slice of that public sector, which last year numbered 376,000 people.

Many of these are the teachers, nurses and so many other public servants who would likely have counted themselves in Labour’s camp. The Government leaned hard on these people and many others in its campaign to keep Covid at bay. It was quick to give pats on the back, but now it is severely stretching that loyalty by appearing to put its hands in their back pockets.

This comes just days after a Colmar-Brunton poll highlighted unprecedented faith in our public sector, largely because of its response to Covid-19.

It’s a sector under immense pressure: hospitals are lamenting a dangerous lack of staff, the roar for pay parity is growing louder in education, and many public sector recruiters have noted a chronic shortage of skilled labour.

Those recruiters and the industries they represent are concerned that could be made worse by the opening of the travel bubble with Australia, where an average salary in the public sector is $12,000 higher than that here. When loyalty is not rewarded, even spurned, that’s 12,000 good reasons to consider walking away.

Many are the teachers, nurses and [others] who would likely have counted themselves in Labour’s camp.