20th December 2010, 05:16 PM
(This post was last modified: 20th December 2010, 05:17 PM by Milton.)
'Paid bank holidays (or equivalent) are your legal right. If your unit is not giving you bank holidays or equivalent as paid leave then they are in breach of the law. They can tell you when to take the leave but they cannot take away your right to 28 days' annual leave per year (for full-time staff). Regarding sick leave, all of the private companies I have worked for have given paid sick leave. Paid sick leave is best practice and is not the sole prerogative of a council unit. Kel has addressed the issue of deficits. It's true that council units can often have deficits in successive years but that situation leads to uncomfortable talks with councillors and reviews of staffing needs. Council units do lay people off (I have been through that process several times) but it is a pain to do so they try to find ways not to have to, such as redeploying people to other parts of the council instead. This last point is probably your best point about advantages for council units, but the councils I worked for still took their cut from the unit at every possible stage, including charging for admin and IT support.'
I suppose I better clarify my poorly-made point here; I meant that Bank Holidays and sick leave (and possibly even annual leave) were paid directly by the Council, with the unit in question just covering their working days with their charge-out rates. I didn't mean to infer that people shouldn't receive Bank Holiday, sick or annual leave pay or that some units have an advantage over others because of they don't pay that stuff. As I said in my last post I'm not sure if this is still the situation at the Council unit in question, but it did used to be.
'The incentive to get rid of the feckless, idle, work-shy fops and mere incompetents around the unit is still there, because such people negatively affect morale and lead to poorer productivity on all fronts. Managers in council units want efficient digging and reporting machines just as much as managers in private units. It's not the incentive that is the problem. Rather it is the hoops that you have to jump through to get rid of people. That said, it does happen and, as I mentioned earlier, I have seen it happen several times.'
Agreed, although it's the long-term staff that are the problem here. The old lags can hang around for years and be unproductive and can just sit on their pensions. WIth temporary staff it's usually just a question of letting their contract expire.
I suppose I better clarify my poorly-made point here; I meant that Bank Holidays and sick leave (and possibly even annual leave) were paid directly by the Council, with the unit in question just covering their working days with their charge-out rates. I didn't mean to infer that people shouldn't receive Bank Holiday, sick or annual leave pay or that some units have an advantage over others because of they don't pay that stuff. As I said in my last post I'm not sure if this is still the situation at the Council unit in question, but it did used to be.
'The incentive to get rid of the feckless, idle, work-shy fops and mere incompetents around the unit is still there, because such people negatively affect morale and lead to poorer productivity on all fronts. Managers in council units want efficient digging and reporting machines just as much as managers in private units. It's not the incentive that is the problem. Rather it is the hoops that you have to jump through to get rid of people. That said, it does happen and, as I mentioned earlier, I have seen it happen several times.'
Agreed, although it's the long-term staff that are the problem here. The old lags can hang around for years and be unproductive and can just sit on their pensions. WIth temporary staff it's usually just a question of letting their contract expire.