Press Release
TaxPayers' Alliance mix up salary and redundancy pay to erroneously infer that 28,754 council staff 'earned' over £50,000 a year
20 February 2013
Local government laid off 250,000 workers over the past two years so mixing up pay and redundancy settlements as they have done is absolutely stupid and this basic error gives a made up misleading number says GMB
GMB, the union for public sector workers, commented on a report by the right wing pressure group, the Taxpayers Alliance, that 28,754 local authority staff were on a salary of over £50,000 a year in 2011-12.
Brian Strutton, GMB National Secretary for Public Services, said:
"This is another made-up diatribe masquerading as fact just to have a go at the public sector.
The report gives the impression that a large number of local authority staff were on a salary of more than £50,000 but their figures include redundancy payments. It is absolutely stupid to count redundancy payments as if they were salary and try to claim this is somehow evidence of unnecessarily high pay.
Local government has laid off 250,000 workers over the past two years. If you count their pay and redundancy settlement together as they have done is a basic error and leads to a made up misleading assumption. When you wrongly add them together it is no surprise at all that many of these come to more than £50,000. If anything, you might expect more given the massive levels of redundancies we have seen.
The other point is that the report fails to mention too loudly is that even on their own figures the number is down by 12 over last year.
This really is a non-story and it is amazing that it is being taken seriously by anyone."
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