Police pay—contested and contestable

• Published date: 01 May 2016
• Date: 01 May 2016
• Author: Kim Mather,Roger Seifert
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/irj.12140

Police pay—contested and contestable

Kim Mather and Roger Seifert

ABSTRACT

This article provides an analysis of developments in the determination of police pay

since 1919. It reveals the contested nature of public sector pay setting where the gov-

ernment of the day pursues short-term economic goals rather than taking a long-term

approach to staffing issues in essential public services. In the case of the police, the Po-

lice Federation of England and Wales (PFEW) has traditionally used both industrial

and political methods to put pressure on key government decision makers. Develop-

ments reveal increasingly fraught relations between the police and the government,

with the 2008 pay dispute in particular marking a new low point. Once it became clear

after the 2010 general election that the government would ignore industrial pressure,

then the Police Federation of England and Wales felt driven to increase the activities

of its political arm. This ultimately backfired with the Plebgate scandal leaving them

naked in the negotiating chamber.

1 INTRODUCTION

In 2008 and again in 2012, police officers belonging to the Police Federation of

England and Wales (PFEW) marched through the streets of London in protest at

government interference with their pay levels, pensions and pay setting system. Their

anger and sense of betrayal was clear. The protests were part of an organised

campaign by the Federation, which included a series of local campaigns against cuts,

civilianisation and privatisation. It culminated in an indicative ballot of Federation

members in early 2013 concerning the restoration of the right to strike, the Plebgate

affair (Normington 2014) and the government’s decision to set up a Police

Remuneration Review Body (PRRB) late in 2014 (Home Office, 2013).

Our aim is to show how these developments provide a clear example of public

sector pay setting problems when the government of the day pursues short-term

economic goals at the expense of any longer-term planned approach to staffing public

services. This has resulted in times of inflation with a typical shark-tooth outcome

when pay falls steadily behind others and then has a sudden catch-up deal, to be

followed by another gradual decline in relative pay. When inflation is low, as since

2010, then public sector pay is clamped and the preferred mechanisms for pay

determination have little to distinguish themselves from each other—indexation,

Whitley, pay review, and ‘free’collective bargaining. Thus, workers fight back using

industrial action or pressure groups tactics. In the case of the police, the latter prevails

through the use of propaganda, demonstrations, threats of corruption to come and

public protection risks.

❒Correspondence should be addressed to Kim Mather, HRM and IR Group, Keele Management School

Keele Staffs Keele ST5 5BG, UK; email: k.mather@keele.ac.uk

Industrial Relations Journal 47:3, 204–219

ISSN 0019-8692

© 2016 John Wiley & Sons Ltd

The article provides a schematic history of Whitley-style national pay setting for

the police from the 1919 strike to its crisis in 1977. Thereafter, a system of indexation

and national bargaining prevailed until that too broke down in 2005 when both the

index itself and the government’s approach to arbitration collapsed. That presaged

a major dispute in 2008 followed by five years of uncertainty and ‘bad faith’negotiations.

Our argument is that the 2008 dispute over police pay in England and Wales was a

major turning point, with the decision to phase a pay settlement agreed by the main

parties and ratified by the Police Negotiating Board (PNB) thereby thwarting the

custom and practice of limited direct government interference. This, we suggest,

weakened an already fraught trust relationship between rank-and-file officers in

the PFEW and SPF

1

and the government and was made much worse by the

recommendations of the 2011/12 Winsor report alongside the Hutton changes to

pensions (2011). By 2013, the government had re-calibrated its position and opted

for setting up the PRRB.

Some of the key elements of the debate include the historic decision to prevent the

police from striking and therefore from being involved in ‘normalised’collective

bargaining,and this is further compoundedby not being allowed to join an independent

trade union. This link between not being able to strike, and therefore only being

involved in a stunted form of collective bargaining, and the need for a secure arbitral

system has been taken very seriously by the Federations and their members. Any

breach of that trust in arbitration raises a question mark over the whole pay setting

regime, while casting further doubts on the mutual gains nature of the outcomes

(Kochan and Osterman, 1994).

As the article argues, in all of this, the representatives of the police

2

and the

government have between them devised a series of mechanisms to decide pay and

related matters, regularly reformed, but now coming under immense pressure. The

point is that the special employment situation of sworn warranted officers (constables)

and the ban on police officers from belonging to a trade union and going on strike

(Judge, 1994) has not fundamentally altered police attitudes to their pay as workers.

The issues on pay determination when the state is the main employer of specialist

labour are familiar from the perspective of the workforce, namely, concerns with

the basic rate for the job allied with overtime, increments, allowances and pensions.

The main research methods used for this article involved interviews with PFEW

and SPF national and local leaders and activists; participative observation at

meetings including PFEW National Executive; PFEW and SPF national annual

conferences; PNB staff side; and other sectional meetings as with the sergeants

groups’and the West Midlands joint group. The analysis of government, employers’

and federation documents also formed part of the research programme.

The case is made that, ceteris paribus, the state, acting as the sole employer

(monopsony) for the police, will push down wages (and pensions and other associated

costs of employment) when it can (in a recession), creating a crisis (Hall and

Vanderporten, 1977). The crisis manifests itself in a breakdown of trust as between

the police and the representatives of government, and this in turn might reflexively

become part of a further breakdown as between the police and the citizens.

1

Scottish Police Federation

2

PFEW and SPF

205Police pay

© 2016 John Wiley & Sons Ltd