Regionalised pay – an opportunity for the North West

Last night, at the end of Copeland’s Full Council meeting, we debated the issue of regonalised pay.  Needless to say, the Labour Councillors don’t like it, and even some of my Conservative colleagues have reservations as well (for wildly different reasons).  What we all said is neither here nor there, but one point I made needs to be considered in more detail, because it never gets a hearing over the hysterical screams of the Labour party and their assorted hangers on in the unions and Guardian newspaper.

The debate on regionalsied pay up this way usually revolves around, like it did last night, the left complaining that it means pay cuts for public sector workers, and the loss of spending power in the local economy.  These are both wrong.  Firstly, workers in the low cost areas such as the North West wouldn’t see pay reductions, simply smaller rises than their counterparts in the higher cost areas such as the South East.  Secondly, this necessarily disproves the idea that spending power will drop; it will just be a little lower than it otherwise might have been.

The key issue in the debate last night which I raised and which not disputed, but conveniently ignored, by Labour Councillors, was that regionalised pay represents a significant opportunity for areas like Copeland and the many other places in the North which enjoy a lower cost of living than the South.  Regionalised pay, if it did lead to pay which more accurately reflects the local cost of living, would make it cheaper to locate public sector workers in the North.  Would I rather have all public sector workers paid the same, while unemployment is high in the north, or pay differences and people in work?  It’s a straightforward no-brainer. 

Labour Councillors profess to be concerned with jobs, but supporting national pay bargaining is keeping the cost of employment too high in the north and preventing new jobs being created, and keeping wages too low in the south east and trapping people in underpaid jobs.  National collective bargaining benefits only one group of people, the trades’ unionists.  That’s why Labour councillors support it, for short term political gain rather than long term prosperity.  Labour councillors support keeping power with their union baron paymasters in London at the expense of more jobs in the North West and in Copeland.  For shame.