It's the public sector that takes the hit from the Chancellor

If anyone has come off worse following the Chancellor Autumn statement this afternoon,it appears to be the public sector.

Besides announcing a 1 per cent pay increase for next year,he also revealed that he will also look at "localised" public sector wage agreements,which in theory could seen those in this part of the country earning less than their counterparts in the south.

Local Labour MP Andrew Gwynne has hit out at the proposal.

In a statement just released he said:

“The Chancellor is wrong to say that there should be legal regional pay differentials. It is clearly unfair for someone who does a job in my constituency to be paid less than someone doing the same job in another region. People in my constituency already suffer from lower than average wages and shouldn't’t have to pay the price for the government’s failed economic policies by having even more money taken out their wage packet.”

The proposal is a large change.Public sector pay has always been calculated on a national basis although there is a London weighting.

The move may be seen as trying to get the public wage bill down and will surely add anger to the picket lines tomorrow.

Meanwhile reading the fine print of the forecasts from the office of budgetary responsibility,it appears that over 300,000 more public sector jobs than originally forecast could be gone by the time we get to 2017.

The OBR reached the figure based on the government's plans for further cuts in public spending, combined with data showing that average pay per head has increased more than it expected in March when it was forecasting 400,000 job losses.Today the figure is 710,000.

Tory Co-op's a challenge to the left?

Cooperation may have been born in the Northern town of Rochdale but the Tories are determined it seems to claim it as their own in 2010.

They announced yesterday that they will give public sector workers the power to take over their organisations and run them as co-operatives.

It's a strange one.Surely the basis of cooperation strikes at the heart of Tory doctrine so could this be a rouse to bring out some on the traditional left to support a Tory measure.

Very interestingly Left Foot forward wrote

if the Left truly wants to put progressive politics above partisan politics, then this morning’s Tory policy on public sector co-ops should be cheered, not attacked.

So is this simply no more than a gimmick?

Power to the public sector workers was the call from David Cameron yesterday.

I know that there are millions of public sector workers who work in our public services and who frankly today feel demoralised, disrespected and unrecognised.We will not only get rid of the targets and bureaucracy that drive you so mad.We will give you power in a way that is as radical as the right to buy your council house.We will give you the chance to set up employee-owned co-operatives to take over the services so you can be your own boss and offer the public a better service......the way you think it should be done, not the way some distant bureaucrat thinks it should be done.So instead of government controlling every aspect of public service in our country, we would say to people who work in Job Centres, in the NHS, in social work, in call centres, right across our public sector......“here is your budget, deliver this service, and if you do it more efficiently and more effectively, you can keep some of the savings that you make.”

he said

He knows the sector has been under pressure,he knows that its workers are frustrated.This may well be a good move