Yesterday, Polly Toynbee used her column in the Guardian to attack the idea that staff in the public sector are now better paid than those in private sector. In that piece, she accused us of "using conveniently deceptive figures" because we cite the Office for National Statistics' Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings which shows public sector staff are paid significantly more.
We've responded on Comment Is Free today setting out the problems with her argument, concluding that:
"The evidence for Toynbee's argument that the gap between average public and private sector pay is down to a great mass of menial workers having been outsourced to the private sector appears extremely dubious. Her case relies upon misleading comparisons between very different jobs and an, at times, extremely selective reading of the evidence.
The true gap in remuneration between the public and private sectors may be even larger than the ONS statistics suggest. The Institute for Fiscal Studies estimate that "relatively generous public sector pensions mean that a public sector worker is on average around 12% better off than a private sector worker on the same basic salary.
There are a number of factors that have contributed to rewards in the public sector leaving those in the private sector behind. Public sector staff are more heavily unionised, public sector organisations are run by politicians who aren't spending their own money, as many private sector managers are. Shareholders, who can take their money elsewhere, are better able to exert control than taxpayers, who sometimes aren't even able to find out how much the most senior staff are paid. Quite how the gap in remuneration between the public and private sectors arose and how it might be tackled is open to question. What is clear though is that the gap is far from a myth."
