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‘Low’ public salaries cloak issues of perks, wage gap and make-work
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It’s hard to believe, but some of our pampered civil servants turn out to be less wealthy than expected.
This is the observation that shocked many people following the accidental leak of income information of public employees in Lengshuijiang City, Hunan Province.
It is reported that some hackers broke into the website of Lengshuijiang’s fiscal authority by cracking its access code. They came upon the income details of every public employee in the city, including civil servants, public institutions employees, teachers, sanitation workers and so on. To their great surprise, a large majority of the employees had a monthly salary ranging from 2,000 yuan (US$330) to 4,000 yuan for December last year.
The numbers are so low they contradict the popular belief that civil servants are a privileged group that receives better pay than most people, as well as extra money or benefits off the books. Hence, the leaked income figures are just a fraction of the actual amount, some asserted. In response, the city authorities said on Wednesday that the employees are strictly paid according to the divulged income structure.
The official announcement caused quite a sensation, prompting some vigilantes to rethink their somewhat biased stereotypes of civil servants as overpaid fat cats. But others remain skeptical.
The reality is much more complex than meets the eye. To begin with, it is too sweeping and arbitrary to say the overall pay is high or low merely by looking at the figures.
To residents of metropolises like Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou, the pay levels in Lengshuijiang do appear too low. But such comparison doesn’t mean much unless we examine the numbers relative to average wages and local living costs, especially home prices.
Wide income gap
Lengshuijiang residents’ salaries averaged 2,167 yuan last year. Which means public employees’ pay is more or less about average. But according to a Mr Huang, a civil servant quoted by the Xiaoxiang Morning Post, his monthly salary is enough to buy one square meter of floor space — making him an object of envy of his counterparts in larger cities, where home prices are considerably higher. Thus, the assertion that Lengshuijiang’s public employees are poorly paid is a bit exaggerated. Their pay is modest, but not necessarily low.
In fact, the discussion about income levels in this city of 370,000 inhabitants is not just methodologically unsound, but also completely off the mark.
Beyond the myth of common low wages, the bigger question is one of income disparity in Lengshuijiang.
On the surface, the gap is huge — the highest take-home salary is 3,038 yuan and the lowest little more than 1,000, statistics show. But the gap may be even wider than reported.
For instance, despite official promises, it’s hard for outsiders to know if higher-ranking officials in Lengshuijiang secretly receive prepaid gift cards or other forms of “gray income” — a perquisite often denied to grassroots officials. Unlike petty officials, they don’t rely on salaries to live a decent life.
Besides, it is common knowledge that civil servants enjoy intangible benefits such as better access to health care and pension. And the general rule is that the higher your rank, the more social resources you get.
Over the past year, civil servants of all ages have complained about life being made harder by curbs on their privileges and perks as part of a national crackdown on official excesses. But the fact that many choose to stay put in their jobs indicates that there must be something still alluring about civil service.
In fact, the leak in Lengshuijiang of income information and the ensuing furor is a microcosm of a national debate on whether civil servants are invariably corrupted or unfairly vilified, and whether their high pay is pure imagination, meaning a raise is justified.
Redundancy
The superficial inquiry about seemingly low wages distracted us from a real issue. In Lengshuijiang, a county-level city, there is a staggering total of 227 government agencies, commissions and offices, some of which are barely heard of elsewhere.
One wonders, naturally, about the scale of redundancy and make-work. What really matters, other than public obsession with salary levels, is the need for Lengshuijiang to embrace transparency. This entails an honest admission of how many people are feeding at the public trough, to be followed by job cuts for efficiency. Lengshuijiang authorities did just the opposite. After the expose, they changed the access code of the website to avoid further public scrutiny.
Civil service is indeed less coveted than before, so much so that some insiders revealed that before the past Spring Festival, they had to buy apples themselves, instead of receiving cartons as holiday benefits.
The ongoing frugality campaign has made politics cleaner than before. It might also have the added benefit of creating a more efficient government.
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