To think public sector pensions should be slashed?

And exactly how do you think they would be affected by "slashing public sector pensions"?

As others have said, those pensions no longer exist, and those who had access to final salary pensions with a lower retirement age for any part of their earlier career make up a smaller and smaller part of the workforce.

Yep, I can. DH is an IT strategist (advises companies on changes to make to their online banking systems, car onboard computers, etc). Works for a media agency, earns £95k.

His former boss does the exact same job, but has jumped ship to the Department of Justice (explicitly for the pension and job security as she is in her 50s and ageism is a real problem for women in IT). Earns £65k, so took a big pay cut.

Because public sector pensions are paid for by the tax payer.

You do realise public sector workers pay into their pension? I was paying 15% into mine

Op, I am a child protection social worker of nearly 20 years. I think my reply to your original post has already been covered and to your credit, you acknowledged a while back the responses to your post had made you see things differently. My job does not really exist in the private sector, but other social work roles do in independent agencies. I feel very strongly about private agencies profiting from our most vulnerable young people but the care system has basically been privitised by stealth to the extent that the companies that accommodate our most vulnerable young children make such huge profits. They are incredibly attractive to investors and there has recently been aome media attention around thisnissue. Staff in these homes will not be earning much but it is not uncommon for a placement to cost upwards of £10 000 a week and then 'therapy and in house schooling' is added on top.

Local authorities have a statutory obligation to fund these placements. My LA is having to make cuts of nearly 200 million over the next 5 years on top of the shit show that was the Tory austerity policy over the last 14 years. We have more people in need due to poverty, early help services have had to be slashed (remember Sure Start), less staff doing more with no money. Kinship placements are not properly supported due to lack of money so break down, at which point the young person is so dysregulated finding a placement is almost impossible. We are competing with every other LA meaning providers can basically name their price. I could go on, but basically the money saving measures of austerity have caused a perfect storm and tax payers are funding it.

No service exists within a vacuum. Education, CAMHS, SENSAP, etc housing are all in the same place and meetings are increasingly about who funds provisions to protect tiny budgets and not about the interests of the child and their family.

So if you want to explore and get angry about a waste of tax payers money then this would be my focus. A lack of investment in statutory services and LAs having to fund this from unrealistic and depleted budgets impacts on us all. I think most reasonable people agree these services have to be paid for so we have a functioning society which benefits everyone. The probelm is people are not seeing value for money and this is not because of public sector wages or pensions.

Honestly, if I took back the time I am currently owed (no overtime payments in the public sector) I could probably retire at 60 rather than 67. Most public services have been running on good will for over a decade which is why there were strikes at the end of the last government's term. This cost the economy megabucks but the Tory's loved to paint public sector workers as villains whilst they had pay rises we could only dream of, a heavily subsidied bar and restaurants in the HOC and can claim expenses. it is depressing that so many peopel bought into their retoric.

In contrast, as a cost cutting measure, tea and coffee is no longer available during training sessions and meetings in my LA and away days have to take place yearly for teams but have had a budget of £0 for over a decade. Pretty sure the same could be said for adult services. In contrast, MPs have had huge wage increases during this time (which I am not necessarily against. There are many back bench MPs who do amazing work for their constituents and do not have second jobs, take backhanders from their wealthy mates). Having a subsidied bar and restaurants and being able to claim expenses, parking and chauffeurs, travel 1st class by rail etc just seems so out of touch in contrast to the rest of the public sector. Undertaking our jobs and the costs involved of having to travel (essential car users often now non-existentent, travel to a placement over 200 miles away and back within a day so no accomodation costs or food allowance) is a stark contrast.

Caseloads make taking time back impossible and I can no longer expenses taking a young person out for an ice cream etc so most social workers just fund this themselves. This is before they leave, retention is a huge. Amazing young social workers are not supported so they leave. Whilst I love my job I would not encourage my DC to enter the profession, or work in the public sector.

@katypp the legal work at a large local authority is in no way comparable to a small firm conveyancer. Multi million pound commercial contracts, large scale projects. The lawyers on other side are senior or partners with high charge out rates. Lots of public scrutiny and potential for judicial review/appeals. Staff also managing teams of junior unqualified staff but pay not reflecting this. The paralegals who do work similar to domestic conveyancing get paid £13.50 hr gross.

No way! Pensions have already been downgraded. The public sector pay freeze has eroded my wage by over 20%! Changes to pensions would be incredibly unfair.

The pensions they have are not the same ones that are offered today. For example, the civil service pension used to be final salary and now it’s career average, it’s also now tied to the state pension age so you get it from whenever that is. For anyone under 45-50ish that’s 68.

Yes, because of course everyone in the private sector gets all those things 🙄

Public sector workers don't get bonuses. Most don't get Christmas parties (that are funded). Heck, loads literally don't even get tea bags.

Let alone no company cars, private health insurance or even competitive salaries.

The pension is literally what keeps people in the roles that you and everyone else needs most.

Absolutely they deserve the pension and public services would suffer greatly without them.

Depends on whether you want anybody actually working in those public sector posts or not - wages are already so low that people were striking last year. The pension is practically the only thing keeping a lot of us here.

Speaking for myself, if my pension is cut, I’m moving straight back to Canada, where my salary will be triple what I am earning now, in a far less dysfunctional healthcare system. I am deadly serious, I would start putting applications in the same day it was announced and I’d be off. Many of my colleagues feel similarly. Lots of us have worked overseas and would have no trouble finding a job. There is no goodwill left after ten years of pay freezes and a pandemic.

This simply isn't the case anymore. After years of frozen pay or meagre 1 or 2% pay increases in much of the private sector versus mainly regular inflation based pay increases in the public sector, this gap has been reduced if not closed completely. However, public sector pensions are still getting contributions of the high 20% figures while private sector pensions range from 4% -10%.

What regular inflation based pay rises were they? I must have been misreading my payslip and bank statement for 10 years...
I got 0.5-1% "inflation" payrise from about 2008-2018, and the final salary part of my pension stopped in 2014.

Monwmum · Today 11:22

I'm not advocating a race to the bottom but this is tax payers money being used ....we seem to lose sight of that? At a time when pensioners have had the winter fuel payment removed should public sector pensions really be more than double those of the private sector?.

No, it's not always tax payers money. We put in 14% of our salaries to fund the current pensioners pots. Hth

I've posted on here before about my neighbours, all of whom are ex public sector and all of who retired at 57 years old max - that's 10 years earlier than state retirement age.
As none of them have retired for medical reasons and all of them have pretty much the same standard of living as they did before, I can only presume they have generous pensions.
I think it's a disgrace tbh

If you want to attract the best people there has to be a reasonable offer. On average public sector pay is much lower than the private sector. People know that they may be paid less but accept that because the pensions are good although not as good as they were.
Public sector jobs are important, society relies on them . Why should there be a rush to the bottom for their terms and conditions.

did you learn something? I suspect not though. Economic illiteracy is not easy to correct. But keep trying.

You can’t slash the pensions without increasing salaries dramatically and no government will pay more money now to save a future government money.

Spoken like a true daily Mail reader.

Look at how much an accountant or solicitor gets paid in the private sector compared to the public sector. The public sector pay is no where near as high as the private sector. We are already struggling to recruit decent candidates into professional roles where I work because we can’t compete with the pay that the private sector offers.

The magic money tree is shedding g leaves like crazy.

UK public spending is at catastrophically high levels. The country borrows almost £20b a month just to pay welfare and debt interest.

The debt levels are over 100% of annual GDP.

More than half the country are net takers with less than half paying for everyone else.

The public sector has never been bigger, or more ineffective and useless.

This country will soon be the new Greece. If you feel the pinch now, wait until what’s coming.

Because private businesses put their own money into pension schemes, I (rightly) have no say in how that money is spent.

I absolutely have an opinion on how my taxes are spent, hence I think the general haemorrhaging of cash in the public sector should be stemmed.

Given our new chancellor’s propensity for spending other people’s money like there’s no tomorrow, I doubt it’s going to happen though.

I was recently contacted about a legal job at a small private practice firm. I am almost 20 years qualified and they were paying up to £45k!

1. but they are on whe whole still defined benefit, which is still like winning the lottery compared to the defined contribution schemes we have in the private sector.
2. No one has had inflationary pay rises in the past 20 years or so. No one. Stop thinking the grass is greener. It isn’t.
3. and yet pensions are still massive. That’s how bad private sector pensions are.
4. interesting. A public sector body not funded by the public sector. The whole definition of public sector is that it is funded by the public.
5. out of money paid into the state by tax payers. Public sector employees introduce no new money into the economy, and yet there’s more than ever before and making them redundant is really very hard even tho productivity is on the floor.

The future NHS pensions liability alone will eventually crash the UK economy. Something has to change

I'm currently working for minimum wage and for most of next year, while the unions negotiate, I'll be working for less than minimum wage

We already have a recruitment crisis at all levels of the NHS and especially at the lower bands

Slash the pensions and there will be no one left - the pay is shit, the conditions are shit, many of the patients treat us like shit and trashing our pensions would be the final straw for most of us

The likes of the Daily Fail highlight a tiny portion of the fattest of the fat cats, the 'Sir Humphrey Appleby' types, but the majority of state workers have nothing like that income and will have nothing at all like their pensions

@katypp The NHS consultant that was on this thread earlier is a good start....