The news that Treasury is looking to save 30% of costs and increase productivity in the public sector by centralising back office services may surprise some people. It’s not so long ago since “centralisation” was a dirty word. “Autonomy”, “choice” “competition” were the buzz words of the late 80’s and 90s. The then-State Services Commissioner Rod Deane complained about “over-centralised control mechanisms” in the public sector. Ten of millions of tax payer dollars were wasted across the state sector in the name of “autonomy” and “choice”.

While the PSA is concerned for the interests of individual staff caught up in the process to centralise these functions, there is sense in bringing back a whole of government approach to much of the states activities, including the back office functions. But that does not mean we should be outsourcing or privatising these functions. That will just lead to more fragmentation and waste. Instead Government agencies should be more joined up and share services and/or create hubs that better support those at the front line.

The benefits of a cooperative versus a fragmented and competitive public service are compelling and slowly but surely the shift back to an integrated public service is occurring. The PSA Secretariat asked Bill English last week if he was entertaining the idea of reviewing the State Sector Act in light of the need for a more innovative and modern public service. ‘No’ was his answer. That a pity because the SSA is from another time, a time when ‘choice’, ‘competition’ and ‘autonomy’ reigned supreme. That time has thankfully passed.

Bill English’s speech to a packed public sector audience on Wednesday and his Thursday interview on Morning Report gave welcome signals that the pay freeze for public servants may be off and the government may now be willing to get serious about engaging on issues of pay, productivity and innovation.

English gave several welcome statements in his speech, especially his reference to the need for front line staff to be listened to when it comes to finding practical ways to work more efficiently and effectively. It’s not the first time he’s made this point and public service chief executives would do well to pay heed.

Less welcome was his familiar warning – perhaps an even more gloomy prognosis than usual – that departments would need to do more with the same or less funding for the next 3-5 years. Not surprising that some of the sharper media commentators drew the inference that this meant a 5 year pay freeze. To be fair to English, he didn’t actually say that. And his statements on Morning Report on Thursday gave a very different picture – “We’ll be willing to fund pay rises where we’ve got better ways of working.”

That’s music to our ears. We met with Bill English last month to initiate discussion on “better ways of working” in the public sector. It’s good to hear he’s ready for that discussion.

Any further submissions on the Horn Report into NZ’s health service were due in last week and now the Government will have to decide just what to adopt from the report. Thankfully it appears that much of the more radical aspects of the report were cut out before it was released.

While there is no doubt that our health system needs continual improvement to meet current and future challenges, let’s hope the Government keeps some perspective and remembers that by international standards our health system does very well in terms of value and quality. Further large scale restructuring will only divert much needed time and energy and demoralize staff. And while the policy of involving clinicians more in decision making is very welcome, it is important to remember that health staff are much more than just doctors and nurses.

The strong support being shown right now by the doctors in the South Island for their clerical staff colleagues who are in wage  negotiations just shows how much of a team all of the workforce is, not just the clinicians. The Horn Report attempts to undercut the Ministry of Health. This  is quite unnecessary and only creates further layers of bureaucracy. The other risk is the changes to Primary Health Organisations( PHOs) which could, over time, undermine the ‘public’ in our health service and move more and more into the realms of ‘private’.

The PSA is the main union for social workers so today, Social Workers Day, is a good time for us to join with the Aotearoa NZ Association of Social Workers to acknowledge the work social workers do and the professionalism they bring to what would have to be one of the toughest jobs in the public sector.

The work they do is challenging, demands high levels of judgement and knowledge, has great rewards (in terms of job satisfaction- not pay!) and also carries great risks.  Social workers deal with vulnerable people – children suffering abuse or neglect, young people who are out of control or are offending , adults facing mental health difficulties, or families struggling to cope.  Working with people on the knife-edge means that getting it wrong can carry devastating consequences.  Fortunately, because we have a skilled and committed social work workforce, most interventions help people cope better and get the support they need.  Good social work can turn lives round.

And let’s also acknowledge the work of those who support social workers – the administration support people, the supervisors, the resource staff, co-ordinators, trainers.  Their work is valuable in its own right and is a crucial support for social workers.

The PSA will continue to advocate strongly for social workers to be rewarded fairly and for safe and healthy working environments.  We’re challenging the government to pay social workers fairly, and to close the gender pay gap.

Social work makes a big contribution to New Zealand’s social, human and economic wellbeing.  It’s a good time to celebrate the social workers and those who work with them.

It’s great to see some serious discussion about fixing the way New Zealand organises and invests in its science capability. For all the talk about the desperate need for creativity, innovation and growth there has been a lack of commitment from successive governments to tackle the problems.

There has been insufficient encouragement for the private sector to invest in R & D. There has been insufficient investment by government in crown research institutes (CRIs) and critically there has been a head in the sand attitude to the glaring problems of the CRI model. Science was restructured in exactly the same way as health in the early 90s, leaving CRIs in science and crown health enterprises (CHEs) in health. Simon Upton was the reforming minister of both science and health and he believed in the power of the market mechanism to deliver the best outcomes. It’s taken a lot longer for the government to accept the shortcomings of this model in science than in health.

PSA member scientists warned against the folly of this approach at the time. We identified several issues with this competitive model that mitigated against good science, science careers and job security, cohesion and efficiency. Apart from a bit of tinkering here and there, these concerns have fallen largely on deaf ears ever since. Since the reforms of the early 90s no real effort has been made to change the fundamentals – structures, investment levels, science careers. Let’s hope that time has finally arrived.

Labour MP Sue Moroney’s petition on pay and employment equity was launched at the Beehive yesterday, with nearly 16,000 signatures. Seems the government has got it wrong in thinking this is not an issue that the community cares about. The facts speak for themselves:
- The gender pay gap based on average hourly earnings is 12.2%.
- The gender pay gap based on average weekly earnings is 19%.
- The pay gap in the public service is 15.4%.
.- Reviews in the 36 government departments found gender pay gaps between 3% and 35%.
- Women occupy only 38.3% of public service management positions.

The evidence is there. There is a major gender pay gap in this country and it’s worse in the public sector than in the general economy. It’s a disgrace and this government should be ashamed that they know about this issue yet choose to ignore it.

NZEI and the PSA are both pursuing cases involving pay investigations for groups of workers. The PSA has taken a case to the Human Rights Commission on behalf of CYF social workers. This issue just cannot continue to be ignored – we won’t let it and nor will the other groups involved in The Pay Equity Challenge.

The Labour Party conference at the weekend indicates a party in a rebuilding phase. There is certainly a need for Labour to rethink its state sector policy. Labour has not had any big ideas about the state sector since the disastrous Lange government changes of the late 1980s, which foisted the twin evils of corporatisation and competition on the public service. PSA members protested vigorously, but to no avail, at the time. They rightly predicted that the State Sector Act (and the Public Finance Act) would have deeply negative consequences. And most of it has come to pass – too many small agencies and a resulting lack of connection; added costs through the drive for profit and the replication of functions; loss of institutional knowledge – the list goes on.

Under Helen Clark, the basic model remained. No serious attempt was made to uproot New Public Management thinking out of the NZ public sector.

It’s time for Labour to get serious about a new state sector policy to go into the next election. Luckily, it now has some people in the parliamentary party who understand why a fresh approach is needed. And there are people and organisations in NZ and internationally who are promoting new ideas. It’ll be important that Labour listens to them and draws in the best ideas. The PSA’s Democracy at Work agenda, which is focused on fair employment, high performing workplaces and public value, would be a good starting point.

It’s not the time for an incremental approach. We need to throw out the failed NPM experiment of the Lange-Douglas era and build something that really works for citizens, state sector workers and the government. The PSA looks forward to the debate.

It’s an odd day in politics when the Minister of State Services takes pride in saying that he’s slashed 1400 jobs from the public service. And then suggests that the PSA has been deliberately misinforming people with our estimates of 2000 jobs being cut from the state sector. Ryall’s figures actually confirm the PSA’s data. We keep a running tally of jobs lost from the state sector (not just the public service), whether by attrition, redundancy or restructuring.

Our current figure shows that over 2000 jobs have been cut in the public service, DHBs, SOEs and other crown entities. Ryall knows our figuers are right but is trying to make this huge job loss sound minimal. The Minister has got more spin than Daniel Vettori.

However you look at it, we now have fewer people working in the public service and very few new jobs being created at the so-called front line. National’s policy pledges have been broken. They said they would move resources from the back office to the front line. That hasn’t happened. And they said they would cap, not cut, the public service. That hasn’t happened.

When John Key talked to our annual delegates conference a year ago and said a future government would not cut public service jobs, many who heard him were cynical. Seems they were right to be.

Where’s the fairness when a cabinet minister’s accommodation allowance is more than a year’s salary for an essential health worker?

That’s the situation for the administration and clerical staff working for district health boards in the South Island. They do essential work that enables public hospitals to keep working 24 hours a day seven days a week. Yet the bulk of them earn less in a year than the $37,500 tax free accommodation allowance the government is giving to cabinet ministers.

To add insult to injury these workers have been told they can’t have a pay rise because the government won’t provide the money.

So the government has no trouble finding the money for its ministers to live in Wellington. But says it has no money to pay a living wage to workers who help run our public hospitals in the South Island.

To rub salt in the wound these health workers are paid less than their counterparts – working for district health boards in the North Island – for doing the same work.

This situation is unfair and unacceptable. The government needs to acknowledge this fact and fix it.

It turns out that there is indeed more restructuring in the wind, with the unintended announcement of a possible merger of the Security Intelligence Servcie (SIS) and the Government Communications Security Bureau (GCSB).

I’m sure the Treasury official who dropped his or her notebook in the path of Radio NZ reporter Julian Robins will have suffered plenty of embarrassment. Bad enough to lose your notes. But extra bad luck to have them found by a reporter. Good to see both the Treasury head and the PM acknowledge that this is just human error and that mistakes do happen. Nice to think we might be getting over the “heads must roll” mentality.

The real issue here is why this machinery of government exercise was being conducted under a cloak of secrecy. I know it’s dealing with the spy agencies, but this is about how the service is structured not what they deal with. The SSC shoud be open about any machinery of government reviews and invite input. This is not the only machinery of government review currently underway – another one is also being handled in confidence. But there’s no compelling reason why either of these two reviews should be a secret.

Openness and transparency are good principles to folllow in government. Let’s see a bit more of it.

PS – Well done to TV1 and Radio NZ National for their decision not to publicise the name of the Treasury official. They rightly acknowledged that this would cause undue harm. A very responsible decision by both news agencies.