Friday 3 June 2011

Cut Your Cloth According To Circumstances

Zoe Williams is banging the drum for those poor, hard-done-by charities:
In the public sector, employees are battling a pay freeze, along with those "back-office redundancies" that Cameron always talks about as if it were mice and woodlice who would end up jobless, rather than human beings.
So we owe all human beings a job, now, do we? Regardless of whether that job actually needs to be done?
In the private sector it's business as usual
Yes, and isn’t it nice to see the public sector finally getting a taste of that reality?
But in the voluntary sector, workers are seeing their salaries massacred. Everybody's doing it and nobody will talk about it; it's like going back to Victorian times.
Oh, noes!

You mean, back to the times when the state didn’t see fit to run everyone’s lives for them, directly or indirectly via fakecharities? Bring it on!
… it is clear that people who work for charities are facing what is annoyingly known as a perfect storm.
Really?
First, not-for-profit organisations were harder hit than any other sector by the financial crash, as they saw their reserves – which often weren't large to start with – dwindle.
Since they’re ‘not-for-profit’, why did they need reserves?
Second, there is more demand for their services, as hardship grows generally.
What sort of ‘services’? Are we talking about the likes of Alcohol Concern? Because they seem to be manufacturing their ‘demand for services’ out of whole cloth…
Third, the front-loaded local authority cuts mean councils are asking to pay less for the services they'd contracted out to charities.
Well, yes. That’s the budget crisis for you. Why should charities – especially those run as businesses – be exempt?
Fourth, these organisations are structured differently from the private and public sectors, tending to be smaller – almost a third have fewer than 10 employees, and only 4% have more than 500.
Then they should be more efficient and cheaper, shouldn’t they?
Fifth, donations are going down.
Yes, because, again, budget crisis. And if the public decide they can’t afford to support this particular cause, that’s something you’ll have to live with.
And sixth, just as a sideswipe, lottery funding is falling as well.
Same reason – budget crisis. You see, New Labour spent all the money, as the outgoing Chancellor was quick to point out. That was so funny, wasn’t it?

But who’s laughing now?
What the unions are worried about, and this anxiety appears very well-founded, is that in many cases the takeover institution won't even be in the third sector, it will be Serco or Capita, or another private sector giant. Their firmer financial footing allows them to be more competitive but, in the long run, they will be no substitute for a sector that, in the unemotive words of the Work Foundation report, "is characterised not only by distinct legal formations, but by an ethos that puts social and environmental interests above economic imperatives".
To translate, they waste money hand over fist on pie-in-the-sky schemes and social engineering….
This government's policies – specifically its massive cuts at local level – amount to a sustained attack on civil society. If charity were an industry – any industry, from fashion to financial services – someone in government would point out it contributes £116bn to the economy and employs 634,000 people, and so should be considered valuable even outside the respect that is due to its ethos.
Something isn’t ‘valuable’ simply because it employs people. If that were the case, we’d be better off employing people to dig holes, and other people to fill them in…

15 comments:

Anonymous said...

"But in the voluntary sector, workers are seeing their salaries massacred."

Forgive my stupidity here, but doesn't the nature of being a volunteer mean that you forego a salary? That one volunteers for a charity out of the goodness of one's own heart or because one believes passionately in the aims of said charity? That the volunteer work is its own reward?

PT said...

"is characterised not only by distinct legal formations"
Is this code for something I'm not bright enough to work out, or is it just bollocks?
"If charity were an industry – any industry"
... but the whole tenor of the article strives to characterise 'charity' as being just that - an industry, whose workers' livelihoods are at risk. And if it is an industry, then we can buy or not buy its products and services, just like any other industry.

Rob said...

Yes, receiving a salary for 'voluntary work' paid for by compulsory taxation does stretch the tetm 'voluntary' somewhat.

I suspect 'voluntary' means not private business and not State entity, but something in-between. Certainly not 'voluntary' in the way a normal British person would define it.

Anonymous said...

I really do think that the whole public sector cuts thing should be done by exernal consultants because the senior staff (earning the most) will never sack themselves. The more cynical ones will invite the press in to see baby incubators turned off because of the "cuts" whilst ignoring their own directorship salaries in six figures.

Bucko said...

""In the private sector it's business as usual …""

The private sector is not bloated and wasteful because they are not spending other peoples money.

Chuckles said...

'it will be Serco or Capita, or another private sector giant. Their firmer financial footing allows them to be more competitive'

Bit like Southern Cross then?

KenS said...

... it [charity] contributes £116bn to the economy ...

Does it? Or does it re-distribute £116 that is already in the economy.

Gordo said...

The Third Sector is a bit of a scam.

Blue pencil said...

"amount to a sustained attack on civil society"

So, not quite a real attack then, but more a nearly attack. Gosh, that's almost worrying.

If we took the time and trouble to go through the Guardian and other left wing sheets and remove the 'possibly,' 'maybe,' 'might,' 'could be,' and eliminate the excessive use of 'danger,' 'risk of,' 'warning,' 'threat,' and my all time favourite, 'experts predict' then the whole paper would be a lot smaller.

Saves on felling trees!

Brian, follower of Deornoth said...

Last year I had a year unemployed, and now have a new job at about 30% lower pay than the old. When the same happens to Public Sector and "Voluntary" Sector employees, my give-a-fuck-ometer might start registering something.

English Viking said...

Julia,

I think you might be onto something with the hole-digging thing.

Someone digs the hole, THEN we throw in a charidee 'worker'/MP/Councillor, THEN someone else fills it in.

Worth ten-bob of anybody's money!

Cobblers said...

The jobs for jobs sake...

I think it was P J O'Rourke who detailed what happened at the end of old Soviet Russia. A shoemaking factory would be required to meet a monthly quota of boots, so they made hundreds of pairs of size seven. It didn't matter to them that there were people who might need other sizes, nor for that matter want a certain style in preference to another.

The quota was duly met, and everyone was officially happy.

I am sure that in the brave new world of socialism everyone will have a job making things that no one wants or can use, but it will be official:

Production targets met, workers content, Marx vindicated, paradise reached.

Zaphod said...

"Something isn’t ‘valuable’ simply because it employs people. If that were the case, we’d be better off employing people to dig holes, and other people to fill them in…"

Politicians should be made to write that out 500 times, in neat handwriting.

JuliaM said...

"Forgive my stupidity here, but doesn't the nature of being a volunteer mean that you forego a salary? "

Perish the thought! That'd the old-style volunteering, clearly...

".. but the whole tenor of the article strives to characterise 'charity' as being just that - an industry, whose workers' livelihoods are at risk. "

Don't these people have editors?

"The more cynical ones will invite the press in to see baby incubators turned off because of the "cuts" whilst ignoring their own directorship salaries in six figures."

Spot on! But on the bright side, the Equalities Commission is going on strike. For a whole one hour... :/

"When the same happens to Public Sector and "Voluntary" Sector employees, my give-a-fuck-ometer might start registering something."

You's still works? *shakes own give-a-fuck-ometer* Think mine's been broken for...well, forever!

"Someone digs the hole, THEN we throw in a charidee 'worker'/MP/Councillor, THEN someone else fills it in."

Excellent idea! And it's green! We're just recycling, after all... :)

"The quota was duly met, and everyone was officially happy."

Blimey, that sounds a bit like my job! Maybe the private sector isn't so different after all?

patently said...

the Equalities Commission is going on strike. For a whole one hour... :/

We do that in the private sector, too. We call it "lunch".

councils are asking to pay less for the services they'd contracted out to charities.

Ooh, reality check needed. If you're "contracted" to do something and you're paid to do it, then you're a business not a charity.

But imaging how awful it would be if a "more competitive" organisation did the contract work instead? We'd see the, err, same work being done at a lower cost? Awful...