OPINION: It’s tough at the top... not!

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Deputy Chief Executive Linda Fisher with Chief Executive Jim Taylor

Let me make it clear from the very start; John Hardcastle is not a communist. Got it?

I believe that the labourer is worthy of his hire and that a doctor should be paid more than a plasterer; a nuclear scientist more than a car-park attendant. Now ask me how much more and I will probably be at some pains to deliver a satisfactory answer.

However, the report about the whopping pay rise to RMBC’s CEO and a few very senior council officers has made the Hardcastle hackles rise.

http://www.rochdaleonline.co.uk/news-features/2/news-headlines/82951/massive-payrise-announced-for-council-chief

By all accounts, Jim Taylor is a thoroughly nice chap. A hard worker who is kind to children and small furry animals no doubt. Is he worth £170K per year? Well, in truth, I don’t know that either but this is not about his gross salary. It is about a whopping pay rise of £40,000 per year and the timing thereof. To get this in context, his pay rise comes to more than the salaries of about two and a half full-time council cleaning staff.

OK, I understand that Rochdale is supposed to be bottom of the public sector pay-league if the findings of the Hay Group are to be believed. Well, I’m sorry but someone has to be bottom of the league and if we put Rochdale up a few notches, we will have another town at the foot of the ladder just bursting to get up a few rungs.

You can see what’s happening here. We are heading for an escalating situation where everyone is clamouring to get to the top of the greasy pole like a crowd of demented lap-dancers.

Now I’m sorry to mention it but even the most optimistic economists paint a picture of Britain as just starting to come out of recession. A quick walk up Yorkshire Street and the Wheatsheaf Centre will tell you far more eloquently than your humble scribbler, just how far we need to pull ourselves out of the economic cesspit we find ourselves in.

You can see where I’m going with this one I’m sure. Is this really, honestly, hand on heart, the right time to dole out pay rises like this in a town that has experienced and continues to experience such great hardship?

Have the members of the Hay Group noticed the foodbank, charity shops, boarded-up businesses and the like? Have they not heard of the welfare cuts and the slashing of council budgets by the government?

Still, there is a commonsense way out of this shameful situation. Labour have a massive council majority and most of their councillors are decent, working-class men and women who were elected by a good proportion of public sector workers locked into a 1% pay freeze. Surely, they are not going to betray their principles by putting their hands up meekly at next week’s council meeting and vote these shameful pay rises through?

Jim Taylor came to us from Tameside. Presumably he was happy enough to take the job on at the advertised salary. So what’s changed? OK, by all accounts they’ve added a few ‘nips and tucks’ to his job in the past couple of years. That’s what happens in the great world of work. You adapt, learn to roll with the punches or ask for your P45.

Once again, RMBC is heading for a public relations disaster as sure as eggs is eggs. All so pathetically predictable alas.