Government Advisers: Because they’re worth it redux.

The Sunday Business Post BackRoom column engaged with the issue of Government advisers, which is a neat case of poacher turned gamekeeper, or is the around way around. Either way I was surprised by the line taken. Or at least initially I was surprised.

BackRoom argues that:

…this column has to declare a certain sympathy for those who currently enjoy the ears of ministers. All political parties, whether in govt or in opposition, need professional advisers, and attacks on the pay of this group inevitably reflect badly on all advisers and back room occupants.

S/he notes that ‘all of this exposure is new to the current government Backroom occupants, as previously their relationship with their employers was private and confidential. However, having your gross pay and conditions splashed all over the papers goes with the territory of being paid out of the public purse. You cannot be a zealot for openness and accountability in opposition and then dodge the spotlight in government’

That ‘gross’ pay is an interesting formulation. But the broader point is correct. These are state jobs. I’m on contract to the state myself these days, and my wage is entirely transparent to those who might wish to go looking. Never had a problem with that. In fact quite the opposite, I think all wages, public and private should be open to scrutiny, not least because that would redress the imbalance in many private sector workplaces where secrecy over them is used as a means to keep them lower by playing people off one another.

And the SBP makes an interesting point which some of us have aired previously in relation to media coverage of the economic situation.

Backroom believes that some of the media obsession with the pay of a handful of people attached to government is driven by an element of jealousy.

Actually, hold on, I’m not sure I’d use the term jealousy. Not quite, anyhow. But continue:

Although cone cannot recall seeing them published anywhere, pay rates for journalists in Ireland are reported to be not particularly attractive. Th recession has certainly put as much upward pressure on workloads as it has driven pay rates down. irish journalists work in a fiercely competitive market, with a 24 hour news cycle an everyone looking for the unique story which makes their outlet more appealing to consumers. In these circumstances it is tempting to have a pop at advisers who enjoy decent pay, relative security of tenure (given the government majority) and, above all, access to information which any journalist would give his or her eye teeth for.

I think, jealousy aside, there’s a grain of truth in this. The contemporary media workplace with very high demands, decreasing wages, insecurity of tenure, is just about as different to the majority of workplaces – albeit a decreasing majority – as can be found. The stats speak for themselves as regards wage cuts and so on in the society, and these – however inadequately collated by IBEC et al. The vast majority of workers in the private sector in this state have seen wages frozen, not cut, not increased. That’s the norm. And I certainly think that this has shaped a perception of the public sector as against the private sector from a position in a very specific and not broadly applicable part of the private sector.

Anyhow, interesting that the writer of BackRoom doesn’t make this connection. But then s/he continues…

The source of the current series of controversies about advisers’ pay dos not rest with the media: it lies squarely the government’s own door.

I agree with that. But not, as shall be seen, for the reason BackRoom argues.

Because s/he suggests that Kenny’s administration… ‘made a number of decisions to differentiate the new regime from its predecessor. Ministerial pay was cut… Ministers of state were told they would no longer get advisers (a decision partially reversed since). And a pay scale (equivalent to principle officer) for ministerial advisers was set and published.

That last decision is at the heart of the current negative publicity for the government. The stick being used to beta ministers is one which they carved themselves. Though the number and cost of advisers is hugely down on the previous government… even FF can claim that the government has ‘broken the rules’ when fixing the pay of many of their confidantes.

And Backroom continues:

Why the government fixed on the PO scale is known only to those who sought the decision and those who made it. Backroom does not have access to those papers, but it doesn’t prevent us from having a good guess.

And s/he argues that this was an ‘opportunity’ for civil servants to ‘strike a blow to a group of people whom many civil servants regards as an irritant and at times a serious obstruction to prudent decision making.’ And it argues that civil servants would have tended to more ‘prudent’ decisions than politically attuned ‘advisers’.

And then continues:

These factors may have inspired a senior mandarin or two in the Department of Finance/Public Expenditure to grab the opportunity last March to shackle the new crop of ministerial advisers.

What better way to put advisers in their box than to pitch their job one level down at the PO grade, limit their earning capacity and make the jobs less attractive.

Now this is mischievous. It would have made no sense for FG and the LP after the best part of a decade berating FF and whoever else was in government for spending large sums on advisers to suddenly accept the level of those sums. The two parties had to do something. And that something had to be lower costs. Given that so much attention in the media has in recent times focussed on public sector employees earning over €100,000 it made sense to go for something below that level. Not a lot below it either.

That PO scale is hardly impoverished. The cap at €92,672 is over two and an half times the 2011 average industrial wage [€ 35486.88]. It comes with other benefits too. No one will starve on that wage. And as for making the job less attractive this links straight back into the original argument in the original post. No one is under any compulsion to become a government adviser. This is not a case of a desperate fall back remedy to the alternative of unemployment.

Nor is it as if there is any shortage of people one could choose from given that we have 14 per cent plus unemployment. Got to be a few people in that mix who could fit the bill.

Nor, and this is central, does it make any sense to pull out the line that their wages in the private sector would be higher. It is entirely hypocritical given the tenor of the public/private sector debate to make exceptions for formerly private sector workers entering the public sector when the Government has cheerled calls for the public sector wage structure to be pushed yet lower.

Do I believe advisers should be remunerated at figures above €100,000? I surely don’t. €92,000 seems excessive to my eyes. And there’s a good reason why it seems excessive – note a coincidence in the following figure with that for the cap on advisers. The basic salary of a TD is €92,672.

I think that’s too high too, but the idea that a Ministerial adviser is worth more?

This is crazy stuff, hypocritical on the part of those implementing it, demoralising to anyone in public or private sectors because it just spells out loud and clear that fundamentally nothing has changed.

Mind you, got to admire the spinning on the topic, of which the SBP article is but a piece [and kudos to the person who thought that a dig at the civil service was the way to go].