Huge bonuses an affront when so many families still have no permanent home – and council response adds insult to injury
News has emerged that Tory-controlled Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea (RBKC) bosses – whose borough includes Grenfell Tower – received bonuses of over £90,000 in the year following the terrible 2017 charity.
Even now, seventy families remain without a permanent home. The bonuses work out at almost £8,000 per senior officer.
The council’s response?
No-one got a bonus specifically for helping respond to the fire.
Other staff involved in housing also received bonuses totalling over £130,000.
SKWAWKBOX comment:
Survivors’ and supporters’ complaints that Tory councillors and senior staff are out of touch ring truer than ever.
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The Tories giving us the old one fingered salute.(you aren’t worth the other one)
Utterly disgusting but typical. No chance of this being even mentioned in the MSM though so thanks Skwawkbox for highlighting this.
Too many public service employees are paid too much; too many are paid too little. The ave. working wage is circa £26K
You have to wonder what the bonuses were paid for if they were not for “helping to respond to the fire” Assisting with rehousing some of the traumatised residents perhaps? Helping them access furniture/ benefits/ documents etc? If the bonuses related in ANY WAY whatsoever to the Grenfell tragedy then shame on all concerned.
“Too many public service employees are paid too much”
How many? The sort of salaries and bonuses quoted here are massively atypical in my experience. It’s low pay which is the major problem.
I totally agree about the importation of private sector scams into the public sector, but don’t fall for the Daily Mail envy trope about public service that distorts the real picture – it feeds the Tories and doesn’t actually redress any fundamentals.
For instance – What is all this ‘bonus’ crap? Why does any organisation have it? Does it serve any function? What is reasonable reward? How is relative ‘value’ determined – and by what criteria?
In my experience, this sort of abuse is political in origin, and so is the solution. I have ingrained in my memory the experience of the incorporation of Further Education colleges. What happened immediately? Was it a burst of educational creativity based on the new ‘freedoms’? No prizes – it was college principals and senior management bidding up their salaries to a fantastic degree – and bending the rules – *and* bidding *down* the conditions and salaries of other staff. The framework shapes the outcome.
Of course – precisely the same syndrome occurred when ‘academy chains’ replaced democratic frameworks in the school sector.
Meanwhile, following these disasters, the country is absorbed in, and distracted by, the minor problem of the EU – which wasn’t at all responsible for either of these neoliberal disasters.
Murdered by Tory National and Local Neo- Liberal policy and practice so why should we be surprised by this, they are Tory Neo- Liberal Barbarians.
The New Left Review argues Neo- Liberalism in the US is in structural decline so hopefully their moment in the sun will soon be over.
Solidarity to diverse working people in every country!
Absolutely stinks.
Tories are evil ; will always be evil ! They are nasty self-serving parasites , that are rapped -up in their grandiose sense of self importance! Neoliberalisam at its absoloute worst ! Time these reptiles where sent packing back down the hole they crawled out from !