Fighters and Exciters,
Consider this one of the fights closest to our hearts.
When Lehmann Brothers collapsed it became clear to every honest economist that free market fundametalism, Adam Smith's invisible hand, Neoliberalism, was a bankrupt ideology. The last time free markets had reigned supreme coincided with Britannia ruling the waves and ended with the first world war. This may all seem a tad removed from the struggles of the BFI but don't be so optimistic. From Thatcher's reforms of the 80s Neoliberalism had a foot hold, from the fall of the berlin wall it had a global ambition... We'll slow this down before we get too carried away but to finish, from the end of the cold war onwards Neoliberalism has been the dominant socio-economic ideology in the western world and socio-economic ideologies (unlike wages) do trickle down.
Which brings us to the BFI.
When market forces dictate every decision in an economy executives get more money. They get more money and they keep their mouths shut. In the public sector they do what the government tells them (they meet targets) and they keep their mouths shut. You might think the various directors of the arts sector might be willing to fight on all fronts for the good of the sector but stop -- don't bite the hand that feeds!
And boy, don't that hand feed well...
Staff numbers (as Full-time Equivalents) over the last decade peaked in 2003 and shortly after the appointment of a new Director declined over the next five years. The target was to get the number below 400, but that was not achieved. In the last two years the numbers have started to climb again.
The salaries bill initially follows the trend, rising in line with the numbers but is more or less flat afterwards, following the revised Pay and Grading scheme introduced in 2007.
The new P&G scheme is itself of interest: it was brought in to replace a system described by management as “not fit for purpose”. The old scheme consisted of 5 grades with ten steps of 4% increments with a 6% increase on moving from on grade to the next.
The new scheme has 5 grades, subdivided into two parts with 5 steps of 4% increments and an increase of 6% on moving from one grade to the next. Except that the top grade has spot pay and no increments; it applies only to senior managers. The challenge is to spot the difference between the old and the new.
This graph shows the comparison between the BFI average salary (total salary bill/FTE numbers) and the Director’s salary. 2003 is an anomaly as it represents the sum of the new Director’s salary for a part year and the Acting Director’s salary for a part year.
The blue line graph shows the number of staff earning more than £50000 pa (referred to as senior managers and the executive), excluding the Director, rising from 8 in 2001 to 30 in 2010.
The pink line shows the same numbers expressed as a percentage of the total staff (FTEs) over the same period, from less than 2% to more than 6%.
Although labelled Exec-Level pay this graph shows Executive and Senior Management level pay (£50000 p.a. and above). At that level, pay is shown as lying between two levels e.g. £50000- £59999, £60000-£69999, so the blue line shows the lower limit, the pink, the upper limit.
As the graph shows, the Executive and Senior Managers’ pay has risen from about 4% of the total salaries bill to about 17% of the total salaries bill over 10 years.
...The tragic contradiction (aside from getting more neoliberal fundamentalists in power after the crash) is that there is not much room for the public sector in neoliberal philosophy. Neoliberals like to CUT. Check out Greece, Ireland, Chile, Argentina, for a taster (but don't check out Iceland because it's unfair to let banks fail, they should be bailed out by the taxpayer right?).
Anyway that's enough macro-economic nonsense for one day. Use the comments below to voice your dissent.
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