Letters to the Editor - It’s time to stop bonuses for these highly-paid managers

Published: 15, April, 2010

• WHILE welcoming the local Labour Party’s call for greater transparency about the pay of senior managers (Labour salaries request rejected by Town Hall, April 8), the key issues for Camden Unison members remains the existence of a bonus scheme alongside the substantial and still widening gap between those atop the council’s hierarchy and the vast majority of its workforce.
To paraphrase the chief executive, the bonus scheme itself is already causing an “employee relations problem”.
The precise details of bonuses paid in 2009 remain unknown to Unison as well but we believe that fewer than 25 chief officers received bonuses equivalent to between 4 per cent and 6 per cent of salaries either close to or already exceeding £100,000.
Meanwhile, the council’s directly employed workforce has shrunk through a combination of job losses and the privatisation of services, such as estate cleaning, community meals, home-care and, most recently, the council’s recruitment function. The vast majority of the Camden’s employees received a rise of just one per cent in 2009-2010 and at present local government workers across England and Wales face the prospect of an absolute pay freeze.
At a time when all three of the main parliamentary parties promise large-scale cuts in public sector jobs and real wages after the general election to pay for the unprecedented bail-out of banks and financial institutions, the continuation of a bonus scheme for chief officers adds insult to injury and gives the lie to the claim that somehow “we are all in this together”.
Against this background Camden Unison calls for an end to bonus payments to the highest paid and the focus of resources to be on low-paid staff and the delivery of front-line services.
GEORGE BINETTE
Camden Unison Branch Secretary