UK NEWS

QUEEN’S STAFF VOTE OVER 2% PAY RISE

GENEROUS: Queen gives 2% pay rise

Friday July 3,2009

By Richard Palmer

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THE Queen has offered her staff an inflation-busting two per cent pay rise.

But staff at Buckingham Palace are understood to be divided over whether to accept the offer.

They will make their response today in a ballot which could ultimately lead to votes on strike action if they reject it.

The offer comes amid surveys showing that at least one in three employers has imposed a wage freeze, while many more have delayed their pay reviews and are expected to follow suit.

The Retail Prices Index, used by many employers and trade unions as a measuring stick for pay awards, is currently at minus 1.1 per cent amid falling costs.

The Queen’s offer is also more generous than the rises many civil servants have received in the past year. The Queen, who took on six extra staff in the financial year to March 31, has regularly improved pay and conditions for her employees in the past decade, after complaints that they were hugely underpaid.

Her taxpayer-funded salary bill for 420 staff already stands at £15.2million.

Prince Charles, who funds his operations mainly from his £16.4million income from the Duchy of Cornwall estate, has been even more generous in the recession. He gave his staff a 2.5 per cent rise in January, following a 3 per cent increase last year.

It is not clear whether staff at Buckingham Palace will accept the offer but a strike remains unlikely. The pay controversy comes as the Queen’s senior aides start to prepare a case for an increase in her £7.9million Civil List payment, which has been frozen for 20 years after an over-generous settlement from John Major allowed her to build up a £35million reserve.

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ROYAL STAFF PAY RISES

03.07.09, 11:36am

If the queen paid her staff the going rate out of her own money fine, But us tax payers foot the royal wages.The queen should be the only royal living on milk and honey supplied by the tax payers. all the other hanger ons should finance themselves.

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