Managers dominate workforce, leaving skilled labour behind |
|
|
Published
:
Wed, 11 May 2005 13:55
|
According to figures published after recent research suggest that the workforce in Britain was saturated with senior managers. As many as one in every seven workers was found to be holding a managerial position, according to the latest study conducted for the GMB union. Conversely, skilled employees constituted only 11 per cent of the working staff.
The union study showed that about 15% of the staff were managers, i.e. a whopping four million managers and senior personnel dominated the country’s labour force. Back in 1981, senior managers were about 12% less than the present number and at that time one in five employees were found to be skilled labour.
GMB union’s acting general secretary, Paul Kenny said, “There has been a perception on the shop floor that the number of ‘generals’ has increased as the number of shop-floor workers has been cut. This analysis bears out this perception. Boards of directors, who in the coming months will be looking to cut back on costs, need to address themselves to this increase in the number of senior managers and in the rising cost of meeting their salaries and perks.”
| He added that such overwhelming numbers of managers were certainly not correct and there was ‘plenty of scope for cutting out several tiers of top-heavy management’. He made it clear that further job cuts should be targeted at the top managerial ranks rather than affecting redundancies for people at the lower levels.
While London City had about 26.5 per cent people working as managers, Westminster reported 24.2 % people in senior positions in its workforce. Other areas having such high levels of managers were Windsor with 22 per cent, Slough having 20 per cent and portions of Berkshire showing more than 19 per cent of managers. Then again, there were parts in Wales, Scotland and the North East that had comparatively lower proportions of people employed as managers, i.e. 12.6%, 12.1% and 11.6 % respectively.
Meanwhile, the employers’ association, CBI commented on the analysis saying that work patterns had changed considerably with the passage of time. There were people who worked independently and thereby called themselves project managers or leaders in spite of not having employees directly under their control. The head of human resources policy at the CBI, Susan Anderson, stated, “It would be surprising if the world of work hadn’t changed since 1981. The way people describe themselves has also changed.”
|
|
|
|
|
|
Print this Story
