Nutloose, I don't know what its like for the civvies in the services but with the police support staff it was not quite the pay rise every year that a lot of folk think it is.
For my role, and others were similar, we had a set scale for the job which was three pay scales. Within each of these pay scales were two other increments.
So when I started I was on the bottom. For that I took emergency calls and I got a small increase for two years then they stopped until I passed various courses, became a radio operator and so moved up to the next scale. Again I did more courses to operate more kit and moved up to the final pay scale. Once I got to the top of that scale I stayed there for 19 years and the only increases I got were for inflation. Each pay increase was about 2k per pay scale with the yearly steps around 700 pounds
Indeed we got clobbered before not long after I started when we got a below inflation rise for three years with a promise it would be made up later, that bit never happened and over the 24 years I did the job we never got to keep up with price indexes.
My last salary before I retired was less than a Flying Officer on level 10 and that was with 20 per cent extra for working 24/7 shifts.
Last edited by clicker; 26th Jun 2013 at 23:16.