First Minister Carwyn Jones has said transparency is needed when councils in Wales award difficult to explain pay rises to bosses.
Mr Jones was answering a question put to him during First Minister’s Questions in the Senedd about Caerphilly County Borough Council’s secret decision to award pay rises of up to 30% to its senior management team.
He said: “Of course there must be transparency and fairness. These are ultimately matters for local authorities.
“All will bear in mind at a time when so many public sector workers are having pay frozen, it is very difficult to explain substantial increases for senior officers in any organisation.”
Janet Finch-Saunders, the Conservatives’ shadow minister for local government, asked the First Minister if he would support calls for transparency, accountability and fairness across local authority senior management pay.
Ms Finch-Saunders labelled the pay rises at Caerphilly Council scandalous and her party has called on the Welsh Government to carry out a review.
Councillors are set to discuss how and why the bosses were awarded huge secret pay rises.
A special meeting of Caerphilly County Borough Council will be held at the council offices in Ystrad Mynach on January 17. The meeting is being held after calls from Plaid Cymru councillors.
The decision of the Labour-run authority to award rises of up to £30,000 to 20 senior officers and the chief executive has sparked anger among the public and led to a recent walk-out by council staff.
Difficult to explain? I think inexplicable is the correct word for these ridiculous rises. Carwyn Jones adding his carefully worded, politic comments made me start to wonder about rates of pay at the Cardiff Talking Shop, or Senedd. If admin staff at a fairly minor council such as Caerffili command such handsome remuneration what do their equivalents get paid at the Assembly?
I get the feeling there is scope for pay cuts on a vast scale here. Those dwindling few of us who work in the private sector know how this is achieved. Simply declare the roles performed by the top people redundant and invite them to apply for a new role at a reduced rate of pay. “Outrageous!” will be the cry from the admin elite at the council and Assembly. Well maybe, but I don’t hear any outcry from them or politicians when it happens in private industry.
The Assembly has been run from the beginning by political parties (Labour and Plaid Cymru) who claim to be socialist with a small 's'. It is about time they started acting on behalf of the working people of Wales. A re-distribution of salary from the top dogs to those on lower pay scales would be a good starting point.
The virtue of classic literature is that it tells eternal truths. That is why George Orwell`s Animal Farm is a classic, if you read that it explains politics, all the animals take part in the revolution ( based on the Russian Revoltion but it can, for example, apply to the revolution in Local Government since 1974), but the pigs eventually take control of the farm, and give themselves extra privileges because of the demands of running the farm as a contemporary critic said:
If the fable were addressed generally to dictators and dictatorships at large then publication would be all right, but the fable does follow, as I see now, so completely the progress of the Russian Soviets and their two dictators [Lenin and Stalin], that it can apply only to Russia, to the exclusion of the other dictatorships.
Another thing: it would be less offensive if the predominant caste in the fable were not pigs. I think the choice of pigs as the ruling caste will no doubt give offense to many people.
The parallel with the exponential growth in the salaries demanded by local government can be seen in the phrase. "All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others". An understanding of Animal Farm will explain much of today`s world and the behaviour of the ruling caste be they humans, or in the case of Animal Farm , pigs. Because they are in control they will always demand a greater reward, even if the real work is done by others. But Animal Farm was only a book, in the real world we can change things.