Barristers strike over pay

[g3org3y]

BlackWidow13 said:

I wouldn’t bother with Murph. He’s borderline trolling this thread (eg: increasing all public sector pay by 10% doesn’t mean increasing the tax take by 10%, unless, of course, central Govt’s sole expenditure is public sector pay).

The Secret Barrister has an excellent explanation of what’s going on, and why, here: https://thesecretbarrister.com/2022/06/27/the-crim...

It is well worth five minutes of anyone’s time.

I like the Secret Barrister, his books are very eye opening, defo worth a read. Just had delivery of his third.

[Pixelpeep 135]

Electro1980 said:

Pixelpeep 135 said:

Electro1980 said:

Pixelpeep 135 said:

if i feel my work isn't paying me enough i'll put my case forward (example job adverts, history of good work etc) - if they don't agree and i feel strongly enough i will look for a better paid job.

And how exactly do you suggest people being paid by the government put their case forward?

I work for the Government.

In what capacity? The vast majority are on fixed pay scales. I’m guessing you are either senior enough to be not on a scale, or a contractor?

Pay scales, yes. there is a salary bracket, additional supplements depending on responsibilities plus some wiggle room.

Crucial point here is - i was aware of the salary bracket when i applied for the job, no one ever comes in at the top of the bracket. You settle in, make a difference, show your worth and then ask for an adjustment.

If you are already top you either look at further progression or change employer. For what i do, there are plenty of private organisations that would fall over backwards to employ an ex government trained/experienced candidate.

most people deliberately take a cut in wages for a set amount of time to gain experience/qualifications/kudos on the CV. if you take a low wage that you can't live on thinking they will increase it if you strike, you are in for disappointment

[Evanivitch]

Pixelpeep 135 said:

Electro1980 said:

Pixelpeep 135 said:

if i feel my work isn't paying me enough i'll put my case forward (example job adverts, history of good work etc) - if they don't agree and i feel strongly enough i will look for a better paid job.

And how exactly do you suggest people being paid by the government put their case forward?

I work for the Government.

As a cleaner?

[Evanivitch]

Pixelpeep 135 said:

Pay scales, yes. there is a salary bracket, additional supplements depending on responsibilities plus some wiggle room.

Crucial point here is - i was aware of the salary bracket when i applied for the job, no one ever comes in at the top of the bracket. You settle in, make a difference, show your worth and then ask for an adjustment.

If you are already top you either look at further progression or change employer. For what i do, there are plenty of private organisations that would fall over backwards to employ an ex government trained/experienced candidate.

most people deliberately take a cut in wages for a set amount of time to gain experience/qualifications/kudos on the CV. if you take a low wage that you can't live on thinking they will increase it if you strike, you are in for disappointment

So.... All the criminal barristers leave the profession, take a paycut to retrain in more lucrative lines of work, and then we haven't got any criminal barristers to allow the courts to function.

Was it really that difficult to understand?

[Murph7355]

deckster said:

This is nothing to do with inflation. This is a historic and very specific problem that is causing a real, measurable problem with our judicial system. We have a huge backlog of criminal cases in the court system, which is partially (not wholly) caused by a shortage of barristers to allow the cases to go ahead. Let's be clear, these barristers are not simply striking because they want more money. They are striking because they aren't being paid enough to live, which means that people are leaving the profession and also newly qualified barristers are not choosing criminal law, because - well, why would you when you can earn ten times as much in other branches of the law. They are striking because the system as it stands is being catastrophically damaged by lack of funding.

Fixing this will cost peanuts in the grand scheme of things. We are talking about a rounding error in our judicial budget.

Unfortunately, increasing legal aid rates to something approaching reasonable won't be an instant fix, as we already have a shortage of criminal barristers and it takes some time to train up new ones. But we either need to make the criminal bar an attractive career option for young lawyers, or we need to change our entire approach to publicly funded defenders. I'm pretty sure I know which is the cheaper and quicker option.

Apologies - the inflation comment was picking up on a comment by skw...

Yours and Pat H's posts are interesting in terms of framing the issues (blackwidow - I love you too). But we still have the problem of how to pay for it.

You note it would cost peanuts to fix in relation to the judicial budget - are there figures that spell that out? Which bits of the judicial system could be trimmed to allow for the amounts? If the bright ones can earn ten times more doing other law, what multiplier needs to be achieved to prevent the exodus?

FWIW I think there are a lot of public services provided that are in the same boat - creaking at the seams. Like Zedleg, I'd be fine with paying (even) more tax IF there was a sound plan for spending it. But successive govt's over 3 decades or more have failed at this.

The other option is to scale back what is provided for out of the public purse. I'm sure this will have some unsatisfactory consequences. But the option seems to be to simply keep going as is until these services are ground so far into the dirt that there is zero, rather than reduced, public service.

Maybe more needs to be done to reverse crime rates too... and/or raise thresholds for legal aid?

There are going to be no easy answers. I think with people like Patel in charge we are more assured of finding poor ones. But this isn't a new problem as you note.

[Pixelpeep 135]

Evanivitch said:

Pixelpeep 135 said:

Electro1980 said:

Pixelpeep 135 said:

if i feel my work isn't paying me enough i'll put my case forward (example job adverts, history of good work etc) - if they don't agree and i feel strongly enough i will look for a better paid job.

And how exactly do you suggest people being paid by the government put their case forward?

I work for the Government.

As a cleaner?

No.

[Pixelpeep 135]

Evanivitch said:

Pixelpeep 135 said:

Pay scales, yes. there is a salary bracket, additional supplements depending on responsibilities plus some wiggle room.

Crucial point here is - i was aware of the salary bracket when i applied for the job, no one ever comes in at the top of the bracket. You settle in, make a difference, show your worth and then ask for an adjustment.

If you are already top you either look at further progression or change employer. For what i do, there are plenty of private organisations that would fall over backwards to employ an ex government trained/experienced candidate.

most people deliberately take a cut in wages for a set amount of time to gain experience/qualifications/kudos on the CV. if you take a low wage that you can't live on thinking they will increase it if you strike, you are in for disappointment

So.... All the criminal barristers leave the profession, take a paycut to retrain in more lucrative lines of work, and then we haven't got any criminal barristers to allow the courts to function.

Was it really that difficult to understand?

So they're not striking because THEY want more money? they're worried about the court system in general ?

Weird. If they're that worried they should reduce their outgoings and make the pay work. Then there wouldn't be anything to worry about.

[ZedLeg]

Pixelpeep 135 said:

If they're that worried they should reduce their outgoings and make the pay work. Then there wouldn't be anything to worry about.

That old chestnut, you can only reduce your outgoings so far before you end up costing yourself more in time than you save in money.

Unless you think these people are spunking all their money away on sky subscriptions and cigarettes.

[Evanivitch]

Pixelpeep 135 said:

So they're not striking because THEY want more money? they're worried about the court system in general ?

Weird. If they're that worried they should reduce their outgoings and make the pay work. Then there wouldn't be anything to worry about.

That's easy. They'll just turn up completely unprepared for every trial, and then either there'll be swift and effective justice, a complete miscarriage of justice, or repeated miss-trials which further clog the system.

At this point, I'm pretty convinced you're a cleaner.

[Murph7355]

BlackWidow13 said:

I wouldn’t bother with Murph. He’s borderline trolling this thread (eg: increasing all public sector pay by 10% doesn’t mean increasing the tax take by 10%, unless, of course, central Govt’s sole expenditure is public sector pay).

The Secret Barrister has an excellent explanation of what’s going on, and why, here: https://thesecretbarrister.com/2022/06/27/the-crim...

It is well worth five minutes of anyone’s time.

It is a decent read, but again is only looking at one part of the equation.

I've had a quick look to see how many of the criminal cases (~2m annually pre-Covid? Seems high to me but found the figures suggesting it) rely upon legal aid and how many on private funding.

Is that split then evenly distributed amongst all criminal law barristers?

And regardless of these things (and I agree that govt's are always disingenuous with figures... As is anyone with a vested interest, more often than not), how is it to be funded?

(BTW, point noted on the 10%...though a pretty large chunk will be people costs when you chase them down... That or other deserving groups getting more... Eg pensioners getting an inflationary rise. The point is more that increasing wages across the board by the inflation figure doesn't help inflation and thence doesn't help anyone).

[skwdenyer]

Murph7355 said:

Apologies - the inflation comment was picking up on a comment by skw...

Yours and Pat H's posts are interesting in terms of framing the issues (blackwidow - I love you too). But we still have the problem of how to pay for it.

You note it would cost peanuts to fix in relation to the judicial budget - are there figures that spell that out? Which bits of the judicial system could be trimmed to allow for the amounts? If the bright ones can earn ten times more doing other law, what multiplier needs to be achieved to prevent the exodus?

FWIW I think there are a lot of public services provided that are in the same boat - creaking at the seams. Like Zedleg, I'd be fine with paying (even) more tax IF there was a sound plan for spending it. But successive govt's over 3 decades or more have failed at this.

The other option is to scale back what is provided for out of the public purse. I'm sure this will have some unsatisfactory consequences. But the option seems to be to simply keep going as is until these services are ground so far into the dirt that there is zero, rather than reduced, public service.

Maybe more needs to be done to reverse crime rates too... and/or raise thresholds for legal aid?

There are going to be no easy answers. I think with people like Patel in charge we are more assured of finding poor ones. But this isn't a new problem as you note.

The first thing we need to do is understand (a) what the problem is, and (b) what caused it, before moving quickly to (c) how to resolve it.

Real GDP / capita tanked 10% after the GFC and did not recover the lost ground. It didn't recover because (a) we had an economy that wasn't robust enough, and (b) we didn't stimulate recovery properly.

Real wages tanked, too, and did not recover.

Govt deliberately pushed up housing costs, property costs in general (impacting businesses).

Govt deliberately prioritised support banks and institutions over ordinary people.

It attempted to paper over the cracks by cutting back and cutting back and kicking the can down the road. But the inherent leverage in the system means that's a race to the bottom.

So here we are.

We cannot function without healthcare, a legal system, and so on. They must be paid for. You keep posting things that suggest these things are optional, or that we're somehow a profligate state. We're not; we're just a very crap one, governed by the politicians you (statistically speaking) voted for who were very obviously not up to the job, support by an electoral system you (statistically speaking) voted not to change.

Many on PH want this all to be somebody else's fault. It isn't. Your "housing wealth" was paid for by not paying for the things that are now breaking around us.

So we need a reset. We need to get tax levels up to the same levels as our peers - we're way lower. That means taxing stuff properly. And then investing tax receipts in delivering the services and infrastructure and economic context we need.

Or not. That's a choice. But in which case we need to agree that we don't provide legal aid, we don't provide state healthcare, and so on.

We've spent £20bn on help-to-buy loans. As a direct result, house prices have gone up. If we'd spent £20bn on social housing, we'd have 200,000 new homes, less of a housing crisis, and house price inflation would have been saner. After that we could have kept on investing. These are choices, but they were poor ones.

That £20bn also means we've spent way over the odds on housing benefits. Another choice, another cost that could have been avoided.

The list goes on. Governments have to spend where a multiplier will provide benefit. Incentives, tax cuts, and so on do not achieve that.

As I say, we need a proper reset; we need Government that actually serves the interests of the majority of people, shows no favour to those with wealth over those without, and prioritises growth and stability. I see no prospect of that right now. Instead we've got (by some measures) 9m functionally illiterate adults, declining education spend, no proper investment, no chance of the economy out-performing our peers, and so on. It is a real mess. But it is not a mess we can cut our way out of.

[Soir]

Amateurish said:

Soir said:

Worked in a barristers chambers (junior clerk) in the 90’s no-one was earning the figures quoted. One pupil earned £90k in his first year (worked his socks off) and lots earned £m

Senior clerk was on about £150k and this was 25 years ago! A senior clerk from another large Chambers down the road drove a Ferrari

That said, I have no idea what percentage of work was legal aid

Which chambers?

Mine was 18 st John Street in Manchester. Ferrari senior clerk was Deans Court Chambers

[Soir]

Amateurish said:

fblm said:

Amateurish said:

Soir said:

Worked in a barristers chambers (junior clerk) in the 90’s no-one was earning the figures quoted. One pupil earned £90k in his first year (worked his socks off) and lots earned £m

Senior clerk was on about £150k and this was 25 years ago! A senior clerk from another large Chambers down the road drove a Ferrari

That said, I have no idea what percentage of work was legal aid

Which chambers?

+1

Pupil pay at the very top commercial sets just hit a record 75k so a) sounds, um, optimistic and b) lots making millions isn't criminal bar

Also c) yes clerks, like money brokers, have always been very generously paid and that comes out of the barristers pay.

£90k for a pupil in the 90s is clearly nonsense.

When I was applying for pupillage in 2001, most pupillages were unpaid, certainly for criminal work. I think that the top commercial sets were paying £30k or so.

Maybe Soir is thinking of a "junior" rather than a pupil. They could conceivably have made £90k+ at a top set.

Apologies he may well have been a junior. I just remember the senior clerk (my boss) telling me a certain barrister had earned £90k in his first year but also noted he nearly had a breakdown whilst doing so. Utter workaholic


Senior clerks earned a percentage of barristers fee’s. I’d suspect this must have changed by now as the sums were ridiculous just for “negotiating fees” and keeping them happy.

On a side note, I found the older ones very pompous but the younger more recently qualified were great and much more down to earth (only my experience)

[Pixelpeep 135]

Evanivitch said:

Pixelpeep 135 said:

So they're not striking because THEY want more money? they're worried about the court system in general ?

Weird. If they're that worried they should reduce their outgoings and make the pay work. Then there wouldn't be anything to worry about.

That's easy. They'll just turn up completely unprepared for every trial, and then either there'll be swift and effective justice, a complete miscarriage of justice, or repeated miss-trials which further clog the system.

all the time people are prepared to do the job at the money they pay, nothing will change. If they strike, nothing will change. If they all leave, something will change.

people taking the job = nothing wrong with the role
no one applying for the job = we need to think about the package

Evanivitch said:

At this point, I'm pretty convinced you're a cleaner.

ok.

[skwdenyer]

Pixelpeep 135 said:

Evanivitch said:

Pixelpeep 135 said:

So they're not striking because THEY want more money? they're worried about the court system in general ?

Weird. If they're that worried they should reduce their outgoings and make the pay work. Then there wouldn't be anything to worry about.

That's easy. They'll just turn up completely unprepared for every trial, and then either there'll be swift and effective justice, a complete miscarriage of justice, or repeated miss-trials which further clog the system.

all the time people are prepared to do the job at the money they pay, nothing will change. If they strike, nothing will change. If they all leave, something will change.

people taking the job = nothing wrong with the role
no one applying for the job = we need to think about the package

So the role of Govt isn't to make sure the right things are done at the right time, but is instead to wait until the last possible moment and then throw cash at an elastoplast fix?

If enough people think like that, no wonder we've got the Govt we have. You think exploiting people with a social conscience is a reasonabel policy choice?

Govt's role is to provide a stable environment, with proper long-term planning and resource allocation. In that there has been abject failure.

[Murph7355]

skwdenyer said:

...
We cannot function without healthcare, a legal system, and so on. They must be paid for. You keep posting things that suggest these things are optional, or that we're somehow a profligate state. We're not; we're just a very crap one, governed by the politicians you (statistically speaking) voted for who were very obviously not up to the job, support by an electoral system you (statistically speaking) voted not to change.

Many on PH want this all to be somebody else's fault. It isn't. Your "housing wealth" was paid for by not paying for the things that are now breaking around us.

So we need a reset....

Or not. That's a choice. But in which case we need to agree that we don't provide legal aid, we don't provide state healthcare, and so on.
....
As I say, we need a proper reset;....

I'm not suggesting they are optional in a binary sense. There is a very broad range of optionality for all services provided.

On the whole, I agree with you. We may disagree on root causes and what gets spent on what next. But I agree a reset is needed (you won't be surprised to hear my Brexit vote was toward that end... As was my vote for AV ). And I agree that the current muppets are wasting vast amounts of cash on ste that will do no good. I maintain that pretty much all govt's in my politically engaged lifetime have done the same. (I did like the coalition one to a larger degree though ).

The "everything is someone else's fault" applies at both extremes of the spectrum...the "rich" not paying enough tax, those taking more from the system they need etc.

[Evanivitch]

Pixelpeep 135 said:

all the time people are prepared to do the job at the money they pay, nothing will change. If they strike, nothing will change. If they all leave, something will change.

people taking the job = nothing wrong with the role
no one applying for the job = we need to think about the package

There's a backlog of nearly 60,000 cases. Hundreds are cancelled every week because of lack of availability of barristers, before the strikes started.

You actually believe everything is fine

[Pixelpeep 135]

Evanivitch said:

Pixelpeep 135 said:

all the time people are prepared to do the job at the money they pay, nothing will change. If they strike, nothing will change. If they all leave, something will change.

people taking the job = nothing wrong with the role
no one applying for the job = we need to think about the package

There's a backlog of nearly 60,000 cases. Hundreds are cancelled every week because of lack of availability of barristers, before the strikes started.

You actually believe everything is fine

i haven't commented one way or another about how 'fine' i think the system is, or isn't.

[deckster]

Pixelpeep 135 said:

i haven't commented one way or another about how 'fine' i think the system is, or isn't.

Pixelpeep 135 said:

if i feel my work isn't paying me enough i'll put my case forward (example job adverts, history of good work etc) - if they don't agree and i feel strongly enough i will look for a better paid job.

My interpretation of your statement is that they can accept the situation or they can leave, and that therefore you assess the problem to be with the barristers rather than the system.

If that's incorrect, could you clarify what you actually meant?

[Electro1980]

Pixelpeep 135 said:

Electro1980 said:

Pixelpeep 135 said:

Electro1980 said:

Pixelpeep 135 said:

if i feel my work isn't paying me enough i'll put my case forward (example job adverts, history of good work etc) - if they don't agree and i feel strongly enough i will look for a better paid job.

And how exactly do you suggest people being paid by the government put their case forward?

I work for the Government.

In what capacity? The vast majority are on fixed pay scales. I’m guessing you are either senior enough to be not on a scale, or a contractor?

Pay scales, yes. there is a salary bracket, additional supplements depending on responsibilities plus some wiggle room.

Crucial point here is - i was aware of the salary bracket when i applied for the job, no one ever comes in at the top of the bracket. You settle in, make a difference, show your worth and then ask for an adjustment.

If you are already top you either look at further progression or change employer. For what i do, there are plenty of private organisations that would fall over backwards to employ an ex government trained/experienced candidate.

most people deliberately take a cut in wages for a set amount of time to gain experience/qualifications/kudos on the CV. if you take a low wage that you can't live on thinking they will increase it if you strike, you are in for disappointment

So… there isn’t room to negotiate a market rate. There is progression within the band depending on experience but that’s not the same as negotiating a salary. If you think you are worth more simply due to the market the answer is going to be “computer says no”.

As for being aware of the salary and taking a low wage, that’s rather the point. People were aware of the salary and were happy with it. The value of that has now been eroded due to inflation to a point where they are no longer happy. It has reached the point where the pay bands for a job no longer reflect the work. That is why people are threatening to strike, and why many areas have huge shortages. People are taking other jobs. The strikes in the public sector are warning of that. They are taking action short of quitting. If they all quit, what then? Criminal justice, NHS and education all fall apart?

We have shortages as it is in many areas. Governments have thrown money at teaching and healthcare training in the past but failed to have any impact because of the 5-10 years it takes to go from unqualified to useful, independent and productive, and the fact that it’s 10-15 years before you we any real impact because you only have so much capacity to train. Any decent business will tell you that it’s cheaper to retain experienced people at a higher pay than train new ones.

Edited by Electro1980 on Wednesday 29th June 14:16