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New public sector employees won't receive incremental pay increases each year - while any roles left vacant for more than six months could be scrapped, under new rules agreed by deputies as part of the 2025 Budget.
An amendment, proposed by Deputies Mark Helyar and David Mahoney was partially successful yesterday.
While they were unable to get the States to commit to freezing budget committees next year - described by many deputies as budget cuts - the pair were successful in constraining public expenditure in other areas.
A slight majority of deputies backed calls to scrap incremental pay rises for new employees across the public sector workforce.
It was argued by Deputies Helyar and Mahoney that the accepted practice of every employee receiving an incremental pay rise within a pay band had to stop. Deputy Mahoney said that while he was in charge of public sector wage negotiations he had asked to see anonymous appraisals for those employees who received such incremental pay rises but they were not forthcoming, so he could only presume the pay rises had been authorised without an appraisal being carried out.
Deputy Chris Le Tissier was one of those who voted for the change, having been concerned about comments made by Deputy Mahoney and others during the debate.
Pictured: Deputy Chris Le Tissier voted for most of Deputy Mark Helyar's amendment's proposals, except the committee budget cuts.
"..I've never heard of these types of increased increments," he said. "I've never worked for the civil service, but I've worked all my life in business, and it doesn't work like that. It's performance related pay and we should have that in the civil service.
"...yes it might be unpopular to say but I think we should reward handsomely the high performers that work for the States. Yes why not, if they're doing a very good job, then they deserve a big pay rise. But not to the time serving staff that get increments simply by being there and having an average appraisal. It's an outdated practice and I think that needs a shake up."
18 States members voted for this change, with 14 voting against.
The decision to scrap public sector vacancies if they are left unfilled for six months was an even closer vote, with 18 voting for and 17 voting against.
Deputies Helyar and Mahoney suggested that if a job vacancy is unfilled for six months or more, it should be deleted and only reinstated if it can be demonstrated that the role is essential to the continued delivery of front line services.
Deputy Marc Leadbeater queried this - using the example of a current vacancy in adult disability services.
He said that there has been a vacancy in that sector since early this year, and although the "wheels haven't fallen off", it is clear that service users are suffering as a result.
Deputy Helyar sought to reassure him, and others with similar concerns, that roles like that which are demonstrably essential could still be advertised and filled, but others could be deleted after six months.
Pictured: Deputy Marc Leadbeater challenged Deputy Helyar's proposal to cut public sector job vacancies if they are unfilled after 6 months. Ultimately he voted in favour of the proposal after being reassured about how this would work.
Deputy Bob Murray and others raised concerns that the amendment - which comprised five components - will lead to cuts in public services.
He said the public reaction will not be positive when those cuts start biting.
"...please, members, please don't continue to reinforce this trope, this myth, that actually we can just cut civil servants and everything will be fine," he said. "It's ridiculous, and yet it seems to be embedded in the minds of not just some members of this assembly, but certainly in members of the public. And I can understand because they don't know what we know or what we should know about the ramifications of trying to just do that, so please do try to get a grip on the challenges that we've got in front of us. Recognise that, and I think it was Deputy Roffey mentioned before we can cut services, but you can well imagine the reaction we will have from our clients, islanders, when either they're going to have to pay for something that was free before, and that's the other route that you can go, or you can actually not be able to have the service because it's cutting services. It's the only way you're going to get to these sorts of figures in here, cutting services. And if we opt out as government of providing these services, the private sector, or indeed the third sector, are going to have to step in. And if it's the private sector, they also have to make a profit. So it'll cost more money. If it's the third sector, we're probably going to have to help them, and we want to save any money at the end of the day, you need to be realistic about what we're confronted with here.
"And the final thing that I need to say is that the public need to understand that the quality, cost of living that we have may not be possible to continue to go upwards, and that's a Western Hemisphere problem at the end of the day, because of the demographic, and we're particularly affected because we're subscale, so an increasing standard of living is no longer a given. Being better off than your parents is no longer a given. It's very, very unfortunate but that is the reality of the demographic time bomb that we've got, and everybody's struggling with it but we can't print money, like the bigger jurisdictions can, we can't do that.
"We've got to get clever and creative and maximise our opportunities, but just 'cut, cut, cut' is not the way to deal with this. I'd ask you to reject all."
Of the five components of amendment three, just two aspects were passed - with the States by slight majorities backing plans to stop incremental pay increases for new public sector employees, and cutting vacant job roles if they've not been filled after six months.
Efforts to restrict committee budgets next year were solidly defeated 6-27, while an attempt to close the existing Public Servants’ Pension Scheme to new entrants, replacing it with a Defined Contributions scheme, was defeated by just one vote.
A further attempt to restrict committee budgets for 2025 is being made today, led by Deputies John Dyke and Simon Vermeulen.
They want to cut the proposed committee budget expenditure from £650m to £622.2m - compared to Deputies Helyar's and Mahoney's approach which suggested cutting a further £12m off the budgets.
The debate is expected to continue all week, with the amended budget likely to be voted on during Friday.
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