Hogwash is not the title of a new Harry Potter book it’s what I think of all this rhetoric about Big Society, Co operatives and Social Enterprises. It’s an expression of my irritation at the coalition Governments attempts to present a second class offer as a first class choice. Co operatives or Social Enterprises are an inferior job offer for public sector workers. It’s better than redundancy and unemployment, it’s a little better than working for the private sector but it’s nowhere near as good as working for the public sector in terms of pay, holiday entitlement, sick pay, pension and job security. Even in these uncertain times you have a much better chance of redeployment in a large public sector organisation than in a small cooperative.
Social enterprises in health and social care services are not good news for staff because pay and conditions are likely to be inferior to the NHS and Local Authority Social Services and there are no big profits to be made in the care of older people so not much “dividend” to shared amongst the workforce. But will it be better for the customer? Only if you think the not for profit sector is inherently better than the NHS or Social Services and seeing as the governments idea is that the expertise to run these services will come from managers transferring from the NHS and social services I can’t see that there will be much difference. Well who is it better for? The tax payer, it’s cheaper.
The real agenda here is nothing to do with empowering employees, improving services or creating dynamic and innovative organisations free from public sector bureaucracy. It’s about changing the relationship between the state and the individual or you will have to take more responsibility for you and yours because
1. We can’t afford to
2. We don’t want to
3. We think it’s better for people to stand on their own two feet.
Blair McPherson is author of People management in a harsh financial climate and Equipping managers for an uncertain future both published by www.russellhouse.co.uk as part of the Developing managers on a tight budget series.