Public Sector Employment
by Philip
As readers may know, as a firm we act for employers and employees. Many employment law firms and departments act either for employers or employees but not for both. We think as a niche firm we should service both. We have recently conducted an audit of our employee matters, which account for 35% of our business, and were struck by how few public sector employees instruct us. Less than 1% of our employee client base has had a public sector employer. Given that 1 in 5 jobs are in the public sector (according to government statistics) then on a normal distribution you would have expected approximately 10 to 20% of our employee client base to have a public sector employer. Why do we have so few public sector employees as clients?
There are a number of possible reasons:
1. Public sector employees use their unions rather than a private solicitor. Possible but private sector employee clients have unions but they choose to use solicitors.
2. Many private sector jobs are labour intensive (eg nursing) and you cannot wring further efficiency gains from them. For example it takes as long to change a dressing now than it did in Florence Nightingale’s time. Therefore such jobs are immune from redundancy.
3. The public sector is better managed and more efficient than the private sector, therefore fewer people need to be dismissed. Possible but using an a and e department as I had to a couple of weekends ago, as an example, well managed and efficient were not the adjectives I would have used to describe the experience.
4. My instinct is that public sector employment is more secure therefore there is less demand for employment law services from employees. Regardless of performance, efficiency or productivity, you’re immune from dismissal. Having worked in local government many years ago, Managers set the tone. Come in at 8.00am. Guardian crossword until 9.00am. Meetings. Pub 12-1.30. Snooze at desk until 3.00pm. Off at 4.30pm. Retire at 50 on full package. One guy was given a final written warning for running a business during work time.
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