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Wages are higher and jobs are more secure.
And as time goes by, things get better. In the last year alone, the wages of people who work for the state have risen by 13 percent, and everyone else by 10.6. And new increases are announced for the next one.
At the same time, layoffs are expected in the private sector, from which public sector workers will also be spared, while the wages of those who keep jobs will rise “in line with productivity.” Read: Minimal.
With this scenario, it is not surprising that public animosity towards public sector employees is increasing, although this homogenizing view is wrong, because the public sector is municipal officials and secretaries in EPS, but also doctors in kovid hospitals and teachers in schools. .
However, can increasing civil service salaries be justified at a time when the economy is bankrupt by a pandemic, incomes are falling and jobs are falling, and not just the salaries of workers in the economy? , they are in danger? Ultimately, that public sector received all its salaries from the income it made private.
This last statement is the most disputed in the public sector, but in all practical senses, it is true. That is, if the public and private sectors mean the economy and the non-economy (if we do not count public companies in the public sector), then it is clear that all material value or money is earned by the economy. The economy creates products and services that it sells in the market, which the state then levies and fills the budget with that tax. Workers in the non-economy, that is, in the public sector, receive their wages from that budget, that is, from the money that was taken from the economy in the form of taxes. The objection that taxes are also collected from citizens, that is, from workers, including public sector workers, is wasteful because in the case of public sector workers it is a merged court system: the private sector (and private sector workers) pay taxes to the budget. salary payments to public sector workers who then return part of the money they received from the budget, that is, from the private sector, in the form of budget taxes, from where they are paid the money again next month, and then back and so on.
If we hypothetically abolished the entire economy today, public sector workers would have nowhere to receive a salary, because all their work would not generate a single dinar. If we abolished all non-economic, private sector workers would receive their wages properly. Precisely for this reason, the idea that public sector workers will receive raises the moment private sector workers are laid off and do not even think of a thicker wallet causes so much consternation in this second field.
However, here it is forgotten that in our ideal case, in which the public sector would cease to exist, there would be a small unintended consequence: the entire society would fall apart. There would be no police to call when someone robs us, a doctor to treat us about this ordeal or a broken leg, a judge to decide where the border is in a neighbor’s dispute, and a teacher to teach our children to read and write. There would be no firefighters or army, which could be inconvenient for everyone. In the long run, the entire economy would shut down, because without the public sector, we would no longer have educated workers, engineers, metal turners, and bakers. We would no longer have new doctors and nurses, so we would soon run out of medical care, even if we had the money to pay for it (so we don’t get into the possibility of privatizing all health care and education). Therefore, the public sector in terms of non-economic activities is as important in a society as the private sector. The public sector is not made up of parasites, but a key and productive part of a functioning state system, without which the economy could not exist. So, in the long run, they also create material value or, more precisely, create a basis on which the economy will be able to produce material goods. Therefore, their wages are not a gift from the private sector, but a well-deserved wage.
The public sector, in theory, is not backed by the private sector. In practice, however, it is a bit different. Because, if both sectors are interconnected, then it is difficult to justify the growth of wages in one at the time of the fall of wages in the other. Especially when the private sector creating “real money” stumbles. This, of course, does not apply to doctors at the time of the pandemic, but doctors should not be a shield for those who have not had the burden of this business in any way.
And right now, and not just now, we have exactly the situation that lately the public sector has regularly received higher increases than the private sector. Has the public sector really made so much progress in providing services to the citizens of Serbia that it deserves such increases? Is the public sector the “most productive” part of our society, while the economy is “sitting on its laurels”?
Here are the numbers. Ten years ago, wages in the public sector were 33 percent higher than in the private sector, and today they are 20 percent higher, which should indicate that in the last decade, wages in the public sector in In reality, they have grown more slowly than in the private sector, that is, all contrary to what is being said. And that is true. But those statistics mask the fact that in the first years after the crisis we did have austerity in the public sector, but that in the last five years public sector wages have practically galloped.
Let’s look at 2015. At that time, salaries in the public sector were “only” 11 percent higher than in the private sector, and today, in September 2020, the difference is 20 percent in favor of the public sector. This means that for at least five years, public sector workers have been receiving higher increases, which, remember, are paid with the taxes that arise in the economy.
And if we can see a very positive trend in that growth, and that is the growth in five years of salaries in health and education by 62 and 52 percent nominally, how can we justify the fact that the state administration, for example , practically increased their wages by 42 percent, while have the wages of workers in the economy increased only by 35 percent?
At a time when our ability to make money with which to cover the budget is so violently reduced, there can be no reason why no one, except doctors so burdened by this virus, should receive more money from that budget. This is not only unreasonable. That is unfair.
