SALARY DRIFT: THE CASE OF LOCAL GOVERNMENT*
| Author | ALAN McGREGOR |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-0084.1977.mp39003002.x |
| Date | 01 August 1977 |
| Published date | 01 August 1977 |
SALARY DRIFT: THE CASE OF LOCAL GOVERNMENT*
By ALAN MCGREGOR
1. INTRODUCTION
Recent years have seen increasing concern over the level and rate of growth of
salaries in the public sector. Local government has borne its share of criticism,
particularly following the reorganization of the service. In this paper we look at
salary changes in Scottish local government in the period 1966 to 1971, prior to this
re-organization, and consider, in particular, the tendency for the pay of salaried
staff to rise at a rate in excess of that generated by nationally negotiated changes in
the salary system.
The study can be located within the context of the many investigations of wage
drift carried out in the 1960's and 1970's.1 These studies attempted to measure
the extent to which earnings moved ahead of rates and explain variations in wage
drift through time and across groups at a point in time. Their major shortcoming
was the tendency to focus almost exclusively on manual workers despite the growth
in importance of white-collar and professional employees.
Local government appears to be a particularly appropriate area of study for a
number of reasons. First, this sector has experienced a massive growth in man-
power and is now one of the major employers in the economy.2 Second, although
national bargaining over salary scales has been taking place for several decades the
employers' side opposed its introduction3 and individual authorities have main-
tained a considerable degree of autonomy since its introduction. The degree to
which this autonomy was exercised was set out in a report of the National Board
for Prices and Incomes.4 Third, local government employs a wide range of pro-
fessional and technical skills reflecting the variety of services it is called upon to
provide. As a consequence employers face the problem of managing a complex set
of occupational differentials.
In the next section, we discuss in more detail the characteristics of the local
government sector. In section 3 we present some descriptive statistics on the
growth of salaries in the local authorities in our sample. Section 4 analyses in
detail salary change in two local authorities. The final section discusses the con-
clusions and implications of the study.
* This research was conducted with the aid of a grant from the Social Science Research
Council. He1pful criticisms of an earlier draft of this paper were made by Steve Engleman,
Professor L. C. Hunter and an anonymous referee. Any remaining errors are the author's
responsibility.
The literature on wage drift is comprehensively reviewed in Office of Manpower Economics,
Wage Drift, HMSO, 1973.
2 Between June 1966 and June 1971 the number of employees in local government expanded
by around 10 per cent. Over the same period the number of employees in all sectors fell. See
Ministry of Labour Gazette, October 1967 and Department of Employmént Gazette, February 1972.
The historical development of the national negotiating machinery is described in detail in
A. Spoor, White Collar Union, Heinemann, 1967.
National Board for Prices and Incomes, Pay of Chief and Senior Officers in Local Govern-
ment Service and in the Greater London Council, Report No. 45, HMSO, November 1967. The
Board found that around 20 per cent of the staff covered by the report were paid in excess of the
agreed scales.
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