Government as employer and quasi-employer

Abstract

The government has a direct responsibility for the pay of over 500000 civil servants, some 200 000 members of HM Forces and for over 1 million employees in the NHS. With the removal of negotiating rights of school teachers by the Remuneration of Teachers Act 1987, it is also directly responsible for the pay of nearly 500 000 teachers. In addition, the government has an indirect, but powerful, influence on the pay of some 2 million other local authority employees through its control over a large part of local authority finance. Finally, it has influence over the pay of employees in the public corporations, the largest of which is the Post Office, again because of the large degree of government control over their finances. The size of the public sector, as Table 7.1 shows, is still considerable despite the Conservative Governments’ cutbacks in the civil service, the pressure on the NHS and local authorities to contract out services and the privatisation of most of the public corporations.