Equal pay rise bucks 10-year trend

The uniform offer of 3 percent in pay rises for the civil service bucks a trend for most of the past 10 years that junior civil servants always stood to receive a little more than their senior peers during the annual pay review.

But it is not quite the first time a uniform rate was put forward when Secretary for Civil Service Ingrid Yeung Ho Poi-yan went to the public to promote the offer endorsed by the Executive Council.

The last time a uniform rate was offered was in 2022. Then, the increase of 2.5 percent was followed by two years of pay freezes for all civil servants.

At that time, the city was still reeling from the impacts of Covid.

Except for these special years that Yeung probably had in mind as she sought to justify the uniform proposal, as well as another pay review in 2014, junior civil servants had been receiving offers higher than the senior civil servants since 2012.

It may be interesting to note that the trend prior to 2012 had been the opposite, with senior civil servants getting higher offers most of the time since 2001 - with the exception of 2009 when senior civil servants had a pay cut of 5.38 percent and junior staff had their wages frozen.

A common factor during all these very special years was the economy.

In 2009, the world was suffering from the aftermath of the global financial tsunami triggered by the subprime mortgage meltdown in the US.

And the memory of what happened from 2020 to 2022 is still be bitter for everybody - the pandemic.

Judging from the statistics over the years, the period 2012-2013 was a watershed that reversed a long-standing trend favoring senior staff.

For example, senior civil servants received a pay rise of 6.3 percent in 2008, compared to 5.29 percent for juniors, prior to the eruption of the financial tsunami.

In the absence of special economic conditions, the balance shift from favoring seniors to juniors may reflect the prevailing governing philosophy of that time.

Leung Chun-yin was elected chief executive in 2012 and the reversed trend continued after Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor succeeded him.

Junior staff are likely to be upset by the current offer but will have to accept it as it has been consistent throughout the years that offers endorsed by Exco were also the final packages approved by the finance committee.

Every time either the pay was frozen or a uniform offer was made, the environment was always riddled with special economic conditions.

It is believed to be no exception to the norm this time despite the upbeat outlook maintained by Financial Secretary Paul Chan Mo-po.

The city's employment statistics could be misleading.

While the numbers have remained largely stable, the quality of employment could be changing for the worse as more people were reported to be taking up courses to apply for security guard licenses or switching to driving taxis.

So is 3 percent good or bad?

This seemingly arbitrary figure may have been weighed with a view to pacifying the senior officers while not being too upsetting for junior staff.