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Crocodile tears

A Labour council’s chief executive has been sacked after being paid more than £800,000 over six years while he was suspended.

Anthony O’Sullivan, 60, was suspended from his office in 2013 over claims he gave himself a pay rise when other staff had a wage freeze.

But Mr O’Sullivan continued getting his £137,000 annual salary despite not actually working for six-and-a-half years.

Gotta be union rules insisting on that, right?

Jess Turner, of the union Unison Cymru, said the saga should have been sorted “years ago”.

She said: “Staff are absolutely sick of it and the council needs to move on. “Since 2010, severe spending cuts driven from Westminster have cost the jobs of 746 Caerphilly council workers, yet as much as £6m pounds has been ploughed into a single issue.”

Hmm

11 thoughts on “Crocodile tears”

  1. “Chief Executive”=jumped up Town Clerk who should be on £40 grand a year MAX.

    Countless ordinary financially hard-pressed people are ripped off by Council Tax thieving every year to pay for such scum.

    NO BREXIT–NO COUNCIL TAX.

  2. You couldn’t make it up!

    Suspended for unilaterally giving himself a pay rise. That means not having to work for 6 years whilst still on full pay, and (icing on cake) presumably full pay being that increased, self awarded pay…

    Top man – what an inspiration to the rest of the troops….

  3. Criminal charges were dropped in 2015 and the two other men agreed payouts worth £300,000 between them.

    Are these payouts to go (i.e. redundancy) or are they payouts because the Council were legally at fault in some way?

    Surely it cannot be that hard to work out if they did give themselves a pay rise or not.

  4. Mr Ecks – several of the council jobs I have applied for in the past year have been a higher pay than £40k.
    And considerably less responsibility than chief executive.

    Who should decide what pay a post should receive? Because we know that guy cannot do it well and we know you cannot have come up with a figure based on reality.

    So how much is chief exec of a multi million pound a year organisation worth paying?
    How much do similar roles outside councils get paid?

  5. So how much is chief exec of a multi million pound a year organisation worth paying?

    We’re continually told that if we pay peanuts, we get monkeys. Cases like this show time and time again that even if we pay a king’s ransom, all we get are very expensive monkeys.

  6. Martin–private entities can pay what their structures dictate–ie shareholders might have a say etc etc. And of course –in a free market (which we don’t have right now) if you hire shite then you go out of business–or at least risk it.

    I don’t care what they pay the useless fucking council scumbags–so long as they are not putting their thieving hands in our pockets.Which of course they are.

    There is NO clerking job in the public sector–and that is what their jobs are,fuck the grand titles–worth more than 40 grand PA. NONE. Including the NHS. Non-clerking jobs like “skilled” –ha-ha –medico or brain surgeon ie something useful–that is different. But clerking –40 MAX and pay cuts for Council boss class on even one penny more.

    Is that clear enough ?

  7. Person I know told me he’d recently been invited to a lunch at which he sat next to the head honcho of our local council. Neither knew each other.
    During conversation, honcho tells him that council tax rates were about to be raised. When person queried this and objected, honcho tells him that something has to be done to protect the council salaries. It was evidently said in a serious, non-jokey fashion. I will refrain from mentioning the council’s name.

  8. Martin,

    I think John Wilkinson has just explained to you why the comparison between private and public sector salaries don’t hold up. Spelling it out:

    1) in the private sector the CEO needs to worry about revenues and costs. In the public sector they do not have responsibility for revenues and comparably little cost pressure
    2) private sector organisations go out of business if they don’t perform

  9. So the council didn’t have a chief executive for 6 years and Caerphilly didn’t burn to the ground nor was swallowed by a black hole. Tell me again why the council needs a chief executive.

  10. Wouldn’t surprise me they were paying someone to cover the job, possibly at a premium as it was a short term temporary position.
    During a local referendum on tax increases to increase spending on transit programmes they sacked the chief executive as it was clear public confidence was low in the transit organisation, then they had to keep him on for 6 months in an advisory role due to his contract while paying someone an even higher salary as an interim CEO. Amusingly turns out the job also included an car and driver with option to forgo and receive an allowance instead. They lost the referendum not surprisingly

  11. Staff are absolutely sick of it and the council needs to move on

    I quite agree, as long as they move on to the gallows.

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