UK Coastguard Pay

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Have a look at vacancies in the coastguard service - there are very very few

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Currently 19 vacancies for Watch Officers at seven stations, including Thames (3) Solent (2) and Dover (7) Whether this is "very, very few" is debatable. Maximum pay around £23,400

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Is there a shortage of skills and professionalism now? - I would say no.

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So would I, but that may be changing. I know some coastguards - not going to say from which stations - and they tell me that quite a few highly experienced people with good maritime backgrounds are leaving and they now see far fewer such people applying for posts. I have chapter and verse but cannot post details here because I do not have permission of from people who gave me this information.
 
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Coastguard personnel are currently
undertaking selected industrial action in a bid to persuade the Government
to bring their pay in line with other Emergency Services such as Police, Fire and
Ambulance staff. The Coastguard are dedicated teams of staff that work twelve hour
shifts, often dealing with peoples lives when a Mayday or 999 call is
received.


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Absolutely no way in my view that the desk jobs of HMCG can be compared withpolice and firemen risking their lives or the ambulance staff saving them. Now if you were talking about comparative pay for the RNLI that would be different.

Sure I appreciate the work of the CG but they are little more than clerks in my view
 
The old school CG were far from clerks but those today seem to be. I could give many examples but the worst was in July 2005 when I made a passage from Chichester to Dartmouth in zero viz all the way. Glassy sea. Thick fog. Overnight passage. Most of the time I could not see the anchor windlass.

During the entire passage the CG were giving Wx of fresh SW winds and good/fair viz. I called up Solent who said they could only give the official met. Same with Brixham. There was a zero viz condition along the entire south coast of England at the time, the CG had received many reports of that, yet they still put out a totally misleading and dangerous forecast of good/fair.

Yes, "clerks" sums them up.

I have that passage fully logged and will be happy to post times and dates should any CG wish to take issue. They won't as it is pretty commonplace and they will recognise it as 'typical' rather than 'unusual', I suspect. Clerks, and dangerous clerks at times.

Isn't it time that every CG officer held some kind of recognised sea-going practical experience?

edit: double wording removed
 
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Absolutely no way in my view that the desk jobs of HMCG can be compared withpolice and firemen risking their lives or the ambulance staff saving them.

[/ QUOTE ] Don't you bother to read anything before posting? The CG are looking for parity with the people doing similar jobs in the operations rooms of the other emergency services, not parity with paramedics and firemen.

- W
 
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Absolutely no way in my view that the desk jobs of HMCG can be compared withpolice and firemen risking their lives or the ambulance staff saving them. Now if you were talking about comparative pay for the RNLI that would be different.

Sure I appreciate the work of the CG but they are little more than clerks in my view

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You miss the point - an independent report compared the roles of HMCG Ops staff with their comparative colleagues in the fire and ambulance CONTROL ROOMS, not out on the street.
It is this report, commissioned by the MCA, which has now been totally ignored by the MCA management.

And as to the point of them being clerks, to an extent I'd agree with that - because MCA management have consistently dumbed down the role and lowered the pay, having the effect of driving away experienced mariners.
At a starting salary of £18k for someone with either OOW >500GRT or similar qualification, you're not going to get good staff, that type of person being able to earn £30k + in the private sector. As a comparison, an equal grade in France is paid around 43000 Euro (with a lower cost of living as well).
Given theat HMCG now no longer pay a housing allowance, can you imagine an experienced mariner working for £18k and needing to fund a house in, say, Falmouth or Brixham?
 
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Yes, "clerks" sums them up.

[/ QUOTE ] So you choose to blame the CG for the weather and deny them a decent wage because the Met Office gave the wrong forecast for the day you went sailing. Do you think that is reasonable?

Come on now, I am sure you know the difference between current weather conditions and a forecast. The CG broadcast a forecast made by professional meteorologists, not a traffic report on the current weather conditions as reported by Joe Soap in his little boat. I would imagine the Met Office might have something to say if the CG started making up their own forecasts.

- W
 
The CG guys on the VHF could not possibly modify the weather forecast - as 'issued by the Met Office on behalf of the MCGA'.

I have heard the Solent CG describe current weather conditions at Lee on Solent - ie what they can see. I have also been asked by the CG what the vis is south of the Isle of Wight, so they do take an interest.
 
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I would imagine the Met Office might have something to say if the CG started making up their own forecasts.

[/ QUOTE ]If you re-read my post you'll see that I was talking about 'actuals' not 'forecasts'. If the CG cannot and will not modify 'forecasts' in line with reported 'actuals' then someone needs to get back to the drawing board. Pretty damn quick. Dangerous, like so much other CG activity I have seen over the years.

Maybe a lack of any 'boaty' background in the CG ranks?
 
Don\'t let the facts get in the way...

I've stayed out of this so far, but the amount of "union spin" in this debate has finally got to me. Firstly, anyone who's vaguely interested in the real facts ought to have a look at this old thread for starters. Secondly, anyone who believes the emotive claims that coastguards are paid substantially less than ambulance staff needs to look at this page from the NHS website, which shows that emergency medical dispatchers are paid on Band 2 - look at this page of the the NHS website to see that Band 2 salaries start at £12922.

Above all, remember that these low salaries being quoted by the PCS union are the starting salaries for basically unqualified new recruits. In most workplaces, starting salaries are low. But they're only starting salaries.

If the salary-to-workload ratio was really bad, coastguards would be leaving in droves. In fact, only 77 resigned in 06/07, and only 91 resigned in 07/08.

And take a look at this blog - especially the bit about the expensively-equipped truck which is "used so rarely that we’ve been told by our Sector Officer that we’re to take it out for regular runs to put some mileage on it, otherwise we’ll lose it".

There are two sides to every story....
 
Re: Don\'t let the facts get in the way...

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If the salary-to-workload ratio was really bad, coastguards would be leaving in droves.

[/ QUOTE ] To go where precisely???

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the expensively-equipped truck which is "used so rarely that we’ve been told by our Sector Officer that we’re to take it out for regular runs to put some mileage on it, otherwise we’ll lose it

[/ QUOTE ] And you resent that do you? Let's get rid of it then and hope you never need to get rescued from the bottom of a cliff . . . and while we are at it we might as well take all the expensive firefighting appliances away from the country's volunteer fire brigades as well, because most of them are hardly ever used either.

I presume you are an accountant?


- W
 
Re: Don\'t let the facts get in the way...

Good to see the unions are well-supported here. /forums/images/graemlins/smile.gif
 
Re: Don\'t let the facts get in the way...

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If the salary-to-workload ratio was really bad, coastguards would be leaving in droves. In fact, only 77 resigned in 06/07, and only 91 resigned in 07/08.

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That does look minor, until you realise there's only around 600 ops room Coastguards in the UK. That makes resignations 13% in 06/07, and 15% in 07/08. Not good turnover when experience is a key factor in coordinating rescues.

As Webcraft says (not often he and I agree!) perhaps we'll take away all the "underused" mobiles around the country, I assume when you're hanging off a cliff you'll be happy to wait for the team to respond from Coventry. If the mobile is that underused, then the local team aren't doing enough patrols and preventive work - but that's another issue around the country as HMCG slowly falls apart.

The fact remains that when even independent reports (by accountaty types) says pay is 25% below where it should be, and experienced officers ARE leaving in droves, something is wrong. And this dispute isn't just about money - MRCC manning levels and skills levels are dangerously low, it's only a matter of time before an error by a junior officer having to act up a grade costs life.

But then perhaps you're happy with that risk?
 
Re: Don\'t let the facts get in the way...

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That does look minor, until you realise there's only around 600 ops room Coastguards in the UK. That makes resignations 13% in 06/07, and 15% in 07/08. Not good turnover when experience is a key factor in coordinating rescues.

[/ QUOTE ]Oh dear, when will you people realise that you might get more sympathy if you tell the truth? You're using false statements here! We've already heard the old chestnuts such as "other emergency staff are paid far more" which, as I've shown, isn't necessarily true. Now you're inventing false statistics. The resignation figures I quoted (which came from the MCA Annual Reports) are for the entire MCA staff of 1160, not just the 600 ops room people (your figure), so you can't just invent percentages unless you know where the resignations came from. For all I know, the resignations might all have been from senior managers and marine surveyors.
 
Re: Don\'t let the facts get in the way...

Oh I see, so when you quote the resignation figures without quantifying them thats OK then?

I was working on the figures you gave - which you were using to support low CG pay. Surveyors, HR, PR, diversity managers, etc are all paid far more than ops room staff, so should be kept out of the equation.

Perhaps if you had stated the figures you were quoted were of no relevance to your argument other people might not have picked up on them!
 
Re: Don\'t let the facts get in the way...

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when will you people realise that you might get more sympathy if you tell the truth?

[/ QUOTE ] Who, pray tell, are 'you people'?????

Anyone who disagrees with you I presume. As channelyacht has pointed out, you feel free to put forward misleading statistics that are irrelevant to your argument, so I don't think you are in a position to take the high ground here.

- W
 
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