Mind the pay gap

The point of last week's post about Labour's Dundee Holyrood candidate Richard McCready and his seeming one-trick campaign pony of paying public sector workers a 'Living Wage' of £7.15 per hour was underlined by a subsequent article in the Courier.

It should be recalled that the post argued that this emphasis on the public sector perhaps wouldn't go down well with the masses more generally, and this point was arguably driven home by the headline 'Public sector wages soar ahead during recession' in Dundee's morning newspaper a couple of days later. The article emphasised that working in the public sector can make you almost £10k per annum better off as compared to the private sector, this based on figures for women, with less of a differential for men, but still a significant £4k worse off in the private sector.

Which, of course, hardly seems likely to endear the private sector majority to Mr McCready's pitch, particularly considering the healthy public sector pensions and the likes of the no compulsory redundancy policies of many councils and others, and notwithstanding that those who would benefit from the Living Wage won't be particularly well paid anyway, even by the worst private sector standards.

But to that extent it was perhaps slightly puzzling that the figures were obtained by Labour MSP Marlyn Glen, who might not be the most obvious person to bash the public sector, particularly if her party wants to portray those therein as impoverished.

However, a check on Maz's website seems to indicate that she intended using the figures to make a point about the gender pay gap being "set to widen again", whereas Courier reporter David Clegg has niftily exploited the numbers to emphasise the public/private pay gap, presumably because of the paltry salaries earned by those journos.

Of course, and as alluded in Tuesday's post, in view of the likely turnout in May Mr McCready could probably be home and hosed with the support of less than a quarter of the electorate. And since a quarter of Scots work in the public sector then clearly enthusing that group has its advantages, irrespective of how those working elsewhere might view his stance.

And, more importantly, check out this pic of Ms Glen sporting a somewhat, er, windswept look, while Iain Gray has not a hair out of place. Curious.