Introduction

Abstract

Issues of pay and employment have always made news headlines and in this respect recent years have been no exception. The late 1960s and early 1970s do, however, stand out as a period during which an increasing proportion of these issues seem to have concerned public employees. Of the two issues it is perhaps public employment that has attracted most attention in academic debate. The growth in public employment is suggested, on the one hand, to be a cause of Britain’s economic problems (Bacon and Eltis, 1976), while on the other hand, this same phenomenon is seen as a consequence of the poor performance of the economy (Thirlwall, 1978). Yet others have argued that this growth has not been fast enough, and that public expenditure and employment should be expanded to reduce the unemployment which grew rapidly over this period (Holland and Ormerod, 1979).KeywordsPublic SectorPublic EmployeePublic Sector EmployeeIncome PolicyPublic Sector WageThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.