Government as employer and quasi-employer

Abstract

The government is directly responsible for the pay of nearly 600 000 civil servants, some 300 000 members of HM Forces and over 1 million employees of the National Health Service. With the removal of negotiating rights of school teachers by the Remuneration of Teachers Act 1987, it is also directly responsible for the pay of nearly 500 000 teachers. In addition, the government had an indirect but powerful, influence on the pay of some 2 1/2 million other local authority employees through its control over a large part of local authority finance. Finally, it has influence over the pay of employees in the public corporations, again because of the large degree of government control over their finances. The size of the public sector, as Table 7.1 shows, is still considerable despite the government’s cut-backs in the civil service, the pressure on the NHS and local authorities to contract out services and the privatisation of most of the public corporations.