Privatisation of services was sold to the public as producing efficiency – it doesn’t produce efficiency, just a downward pressure on pay.
That’s the message at the core of a new blog at Left Foot Forward, as part of Fair Pay Fortnight.
UNISON senior national officer Sara Gorton argues that, while the continuing pay freeze for the workforce is serious, “just as damaging is the ongoing fragmentation and privatisation of public services and the downward pressure that this exerts on wages, particularly for the low paid”.
The UK has “reached a point where many people simply assume that contracting out improves efficiency and value for money”.
Butm she writes, “basic logic and a growing amount of evidence suggests that where money is saved by outsourcing, it is often at the expense of wages of already low-paid public sector workers.
“Contracting out doesn’t improve efficiency – it just makes it easier to pay people less.”
Outsourcing: the joke has always been on the workers at Left Foot Forward
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