To think public sector pensions should be slashed?

Yes & AA grade is only £1k less, it's hardly worth all the work to get promoted. Civil Service salaries are absolutely rubbish for the amount of work expected & all the crap you are expected to take. Anyone on AO grade would struggle to be able to get a big enough mortgage to buy a home, there are Civil Servants having to use foodbanks. A full time job should pay enough so you can afford a roof over your head, all the bills & have enough left to have some pleasure or life isn't worth living. AO grade pay in 2011 when I finished was just under £21k so in 14 years has only risen £2k, with inflation everything you need to live has gone up around 20% in that time, how are you supposed to afford to live? It's no wonder so many are either leaving or taking second jobs, you could work in Aldi & probably be better paid & less hassle.

Our council has cut their employers contribution supposedly for x years. I doubt we'll see it again going back up.

We get no benefits like my husband gets of health care, bonuses, Christmas gifts.

This. Give me the going rate of an accountant at the same level in the private sector and then come back to me and ask me about slashing my pension.

You are welcome to withhold my public sector pension but I will require:

• The return of all of the compulsory pension contributions which were taken out of my salary

• The return of all the employer pension contributions made on my behalf which said employer repeatedly used to justify the lower salary I earned in the public sector than the private sector (it was less than that differential)

• Compound interest on both these sums to compensate for the effect of inflation

OP: Waaah it's not fair that the public sector get pay rises in line with inflation and final-salary based pensions
Public sector workers: Um...we haven't had either of those things for years.
OP: ...I think everyone is missing my point.

The perception that all private employees have cushy pay rises and perks is a massive misconception. Current role multi national company avg about 2% pay rise and a bonus of 3% if we hit certain targets. Private health care have to pay for through salary sacrifice and it’s not really worth it for what you get and match up to 7% on pension. Old company one of the UKs biggest retailers and no pay rises unless someone was leaving or you made noises, no bonus, the basic pension employers have to give, got a discount but only really helpful if you want to buy branded clothes. My friend does a similar role both in facilities in public sector and is on way more money and a 25% pension

Senior civil servants earn less than plumbers.

There are civil service roles for advertised for middle managers to lead institutional investor relationships on multi billion pound projects to be paid £53k at the moment. An electrician earns more. Builders in the SE earn more.

The pay is generally crap.

The problem with the public sector is a lot of the jobs are for doing things which are not required or are inefficient and could be removed if the system was reorganized and reorganization is expensive and difficult.

Let them have their pensions but be transparent about the cost.

This post reminds me of the comments that pop up regularly of the Daily Mail comments section, where posters regularly like to rage against ‘lazy public sector workers’ and their ‘gold plated pensions’. They never seem to acknowledge how much lower the pay is compared to what you would get for the same roles in the private sector. I get paid just under £50k as an accountant (with management responsibilities) in the public sector. That is nowhere near what would get in the private sector. I work well above my contracted hours. Despite having young children, there have been numerous times when I have worked late into the evening, have got up at 4am to get deadlines done, worked weekends. Posts like this really p1ss me off to be honest. Maybe that was the intention.

i also think they will make pension changes. they are going to have to be very careful with it though. if you have severe staff shortages already, then pension changes are going to discourage newly qualified people from joining, and prompt existing staff to consider moving as there's no reason to hang on.

saw this at one of my first office jobs. they closed the final salary scheme to new joiners just before i started, so i missed it. then a couple of years later they changed it for existing staff. which caused a big flurry of resignations of middle aged staff who had only stayed because of the pension. that firm was known for lower pay but good benefits, so when the benefits were chipped away they upped and left to work for competitors for more money.

Most public sector pensions were changed to career average in 2015 and these are much less generous. Also public sector employees typically pay a higher percentage of salary into a pension [6-9%] compared to private sector [4%]

@Monwmum

You do realise that public sector workers also pay tax?

I’m sorry, have you seen public sector salary increases? On average they are below inflation increases and a real terms decrease. The private sector pays significantly more with bonuses and pay increased IME. Although I’m not comparing my post to a retail worker, for example, which may be the issue here - comparisons should be like for like.

You also misunderstand the public sector pension schemes if you think 20-30% is the real contribution to my pension, it isn’t. I pay significantly more for a 2.32% pension yearly addition. It’s peanuts. I also lose it all if I die early, my family don’t get a payout to the same I’ve put in.

No, you're missing the point - final salary pensions are a thing of the past and have been for 20 years at least.

Social worker here, who's had a pay freeze for years. My understanding has always been we have a lower rate of pay than the private sector but the trade of is we get a half decent pension IF WE MAKE IT! YABU OP

It’s got to be done at some point. If I were PM I’d try to do it. I’d offer higher salaries now to get workers on side. I remember reading that something like 20% NHS workers aren’t even in the pension as they can’t afford to make the contributions. So I’d move everyone to DC pensions and raise salaries now. Politically this is very hard to swallow as it would put up near time costs but reduce long term liabilities. I’d also make state pension means tested, something like no state pension for those with other income exceeding higher rate tax threshold

Regardless of the debate as to whether public sector pensions are too generous, is OP really suggesting that the government should cut the pensions that are being paid right now to retired public sector workers? Because that seems to be the implication of phrases such as "to start saving some of our tax money" and "At a time when pensioners have had the winter fuel payment removed" and "we apparently have a huge black hole to fill".

If so, give your head a very big wobble, OP. Why would anyone ever take a public sector job if their future pension was not guaranteed? And what would be to stop a future government — say, one from a party that thinks that most public sector workers are woke lazy good-for-nothings only one step up from benefit scroungers — taking another chunk? And then another?

Politicians definitely need to think about how pension entitlements are funded with a shrinking working-age population, but reneging on pretty much the most fundamental promise that the state can make as an employer would be a complete disaster.

I'm public sector (NHS), husband private sector.

Appreciate this is just one anecdote/case, but my pay reduced in real terms by 25% between 2010 - 2023 due to constant pay freezes or pay rises below inflation. My husband, by contrast, has annual pay rises. The OP's assertion that public sector pay increases with inflation is completely misguided.

Our pension scheme was reformed a decade ago - my pension will be based on average salary rather than final salary. Even though my husband's pension may on paper look like a worse deal, his pension will still exceed mine due to his higher earnings. He also gets perks I don't get, like annual bonuses and complimentary health insurance.

The OP refers to "our taxes" - the taxes we all pay for healthcare, education, social care, roads etc. etc. etc. Not sure if you've noticed recently how hard it is to get a GP appointment? How many teachers are leaving the profession early? How nursing and midwifery numbers have fallen since their bursary was removed? When I had my first baby in 2018 there were NO midwives able to see me for the first three hours of active labour. There was NO anaesthetic availability for the entire duration of labour in the entire hospital. When my child was severely ill in A&E with bronchiolitis I had to lie on a trolley with him for 24 hours because there were NO paediatric beds in the major teaching hospital where we were.

The public sector is crying out for more staff to deliver your services. Making the job even less attractive by "slashing" pensions sounds like a real smart move OP... Even if you saved some of "our taxes" get ready to fork out more money on private healthcare/insurance and private schooling when state services aren't there for you (as is already happening).

Sorry if this comes across as angry or bitter but it always baffles me how people can complain about the NHS/state schools/council and then in the next breath talk about reducing spending on staff because the money comes from "their taxes".

I think a good example to demonstrate just how poorly paid the public sector is compared to the private, is to look at the recently advertised role of head of the civil service to replace Simon Case.

it was for 200k, which at first glance might sound like a lot. But imagine how much a CEO of a company with 90k+ staff likely makes (I bet their annual bonus is more than that) and you see just how wide the disparity truly is.

That's a amazing. They must be adjusting your final salary by RPI or CPI and it has compounded massively. 2/60. 1/30 * £2350 = £70,500. AAs (not that many exist any more) are on about a third of that now.

The public sector did away with final salary pension years ago.

public sector jobs used to be seen as solid places for long term employment. the lower salary was offset by the security of tenure and a good pension.

round after round of cuts, years of being asked to do more with less, and being treated like crap...not surprising that people are no longer interested in working there. the pension is the one thing left and it's not as good as it was. take it away and you'd turn a staffing crisis into a terminal catastrophe.

In fact I think this thread is so offensive I don’t think it can be real.

Exactly.

Yes it’s tax payers money but it’s also a service to tax payers. Do we really want our country served just by people who couldn’t get any other job or do we want to attract talent?

Only when we are paid the going rate for the equivalent roles in the private sector. If you look at what a solicitor or accountant gets paid in the public sector compared to private, the salaries paid in the public sector are vastly lower. If public sector pensions were ‘slashed’ then I guarantee you will see a mass exodus of people working professional roles. We are already finding it hard to recruit decent candidates into these roles because we cannot compete with the private sector. I already cover more than I should because of funding cuts, work above and beyond, into the evening. Have got up in the early hours of the morning when the rest of the family is in bed to get a head start some days to complete deadlines.

if my pension gets slashed then I will leave.

I would get paid two or three times my salary in the private sector and would walk into this role essentially, many vacancies there. I don't have a final salary pension and small benefits such as decent pension provision are one of the things that keep me in my job. If I resigned, my job would be unfilled and the public essentially would suffer.