Journal of Public Administration, 2016, No. 1

Liu Xin, professor of Organization and Human Resources Institute of SPAP of Renmin University of China

Dong Ke-Yong, professor of Social Security Institute of SPAP of Renmin University of China

In our existing civil service income, regional fringe benefits accounts for a larger proportion, but limited to the different local fiscal revenue, resulting in widen gap of income level at same position but different regions. In addition, there still exists the debated between civil servants and the public on income level. Actually, two types of arguments generated from civil servant income are related to the internal equity issues and external equity of income level decision. These two issues seem to be different, but closely linked. The key to solving the problem lies in the establishment of comparison mechanism for civil service income and corporate staff income, and indirectly find out the market value of the labour from civil servant.

Due to the special position of Government and special nature of the work of government civil servants in the labour market, the Government cannot decide civil servant's income on their own based on the principle of profit maximization like company. The Government should consider not only civil servant labour value, but also recognition degree of civil servant income from the public and taxpayer. Developed countries all own their income investigation comparison mechanism combining certain common characteristics with their own characteristic between civil servant and business stuff (the similar business jobs in value as government jobs).Overall, the mechanisms of the United States and Japan are the most representative, of which the  American mechanism is based on "work" (that is position or job), while Japanese mechanism is based on "people" (that is education, qualification and work experience).Both are more fine income investigation comparisons. These two mechanisms are consistent to American company's income decision based on position value and Japanese company's income decision based on capability and qualification, thus it is easily to obtain the recognition throughout the community.

While China's situation is more special and complex. On the one hand, Chinese company's income decision lies in the transition process, either based on position value to decide income, or based on worker's personal capability and qualification. In some State-owned companies with greater impact, there exist the manners to decide income either based on position level of leaders and managers, or based on education, qualification and capability of common stuff. On the other hand, the Chinese government has never conducted a large-scale, systematic job analysis and job evaluation on civil service position, and under the existing administrative system and civil service mechanism, to completely change position as a dominant reason or play a decisive role in deciding the civil servant income is unrealistic, and it will take a long time but not overnight to make it come true in the future. Thus, we must find a approach not only suitable for China's condition, the current stage of economic and social development but also relatively reasonable, easy to obtain data and cheap to operate, in order to carry out income investigation comparison between civil servant and company stuff.

Benchmarking position level comparison mechanism not only learns from two representative investigation comparison mechanisms from America and Japan, but also absorbs the reasonable and unique character from Singapore's investigation comparison mechanism to form an income investigation comparison mechanism between civil servant and company stuff to help Government solve the income level decision problem and adjust difficulties. From the current income investigation comparison condition from initially implemented individual capital cities, it shows that relative objectivity and reality of the mechanism get the acceptance from civil servant and company stuff, which should play an important supporting role in income level decision of civil servant.