To think public sector pensions should be slashed?

Exactly this. It’s basically deferred salary.

People have taken those public sector jobs knowing they are earning less than they could get for an equal responsibility (or often far lesser responsibility) and skill private sector job, for the reason that they get a little bit of that difference made up for in the pension.

”Slash” those pensions and you’ll have far fewer good candidates applying for the jobs - which are pretty important as they keep the country going.

You certainly couldn’t slash the pensions of those already in the public sector.

This post just smacks of a real lack of understanding and a gullibility in swallowing Daily Mail hate-feed while.

Edited a small typo

The public sector have not had regular inflation based pay increases. I’m not sure where you have got that information from. I had no pay rise for several years in a row. My salary is also significantly less than a job in the private sector with a similar amount of responsibility and experience.

There are also very few people left who still have old final salary pensions. They were phased out many years ago.

Ha i work in a field where there's a large private sector & a public sector body

The public sector half are paid so bloody badly its a running joke. Equivalent roles pay about half what you could get with the same experience on the private side. The better pension and flexible working are the only reason they can retain any staff at all.

Pay and conditions in the armed forces are certainly not comparable to the private sector and the pension is the one advantage.

Career average pensions are incredibly lucrative and I think a lot of people under-appreciate their value and how much they’d have to save to buy the same annuity. However, they are of more value to older employees. Eg a 23 year old planning to work for the civil service for 2 years would probably be better on a DC as have 60 years for it to compound. A 50 plus year old would be crazy not too go for the career average as they couldn’t match it in the stock market.

What people also forget when looking at them though is how old people are when they get them. If you take new schemes much before 68 you’ll be pretty heavily penalised

If the government actually wanted to save money they'd cut the state pension and increase pension credit.

They will never do that because pensioners vote.

The entire pensions market should be reevaluated because if they means test the state pension then it will favour government and employees so we’ll end up with yet another winter system rather like the farce that we currently have with child benefit just for different reasons.

Sigh. If you want to attract the best and brightest you have to offer something to incentivise them. If I did my job at the level I do in the private sector I'd be paid triple what I am now - fact. Not me assuming, a fact because multiple of mu colleagues have recently been poached by the private sector on huge packages - and not just higher salaries but private healthcare, sometimes company car - so many benefits that the public sector could ever offer. If you take away the one thing that makes a slight positive difference for public sector workers no one good will ever work in government. And believe you me loads of idiots running the country will not be better for the taxpayer.

If I, with 28 years experience, masters and professional membership, was working in the private sector my salary would be approx. 2.5 - 3.5 times my local government salary.
I chose the lower salary in the knowledge that I would have a decent pension and benefits including flexible working which small children and so on. I provide a public service.

If pensions slashed for public sector, will struggle to recruit qualified and experienced staff (to be honest, we already do, particularly younger people who aren’t as readily able to absorb cost of living as the older folk - who have often paid off mortgages/no student loans etc).

plus we haven’t had a pay rise above 2% in the last 10 years, and for several years was 0%

Our tax payments today are not paying for future public sector pensions though.
They are paying for current pensions being paid out today. You can’t change current pensioners’ workplace pensions, people have relied on those and have accepted lower pay in return.

What we could and perhaps should do, is change future public sector pensions for people being recruited into the public sector now. We could change these future public sector pensions to a defined contribution scheme rather than defined benefit. This would bring the public sector in line with the private.

However, public sector would need to offer higher pay (like the private sector) to compensate and be able to compete for employees. And that higher pay would have to come from today’s taxpayers.

So to make this change - a generation of taxpayers would wind up paying for those currently claiming public sector DB pensions (which are expensive) AND for raised salaries for those currently being recruited into the public sector (if they are going to be offered DC instead of DB). This is too expensive.

I work in law in the public sector and my pay is certainly not equal nor comparable to those in the private sector.

It is extremely difficult for us to recruit because pretty much anyone who joins us would be taking a substantial pay cut (unless they are very recently qualified).

Our flexible working used to be an incentive but most firms have similar flexible rules now. The pension is pretty much the only remaining incentive.

I don't know where you think we're getting all these amazing pay rises from either, we were on a freeze for a decade and have only received rises in the last couple of years which are negligible in monthly pay after tax, NI and pension contributions.

A private sector worker could pay more into theirs to bring their levels up....and probably still take home more pay than a public sector worker!

I assumed my teaching pension would be enough to live off if I was frugal. But after going part time after children it's looking to be around £9K a year which I can access at 60. So not awful but it's not going to enable me to retire so I will still need to work until state pension age of 67. I will get another small pension from an admin role I do once I get to 67. But I don't believe I will have lots of spare money.

I've had people earning double what I do complain about teacher pension & yet they can't see that they have probably more going in. At the end of the day a percentage of a low salary isn't going to be as good as a percentage of a well paid job.

I don't believe it would be possible to fill many positions if there were no benefits whatsoever. I rarely hear young people talk about going to work in public sector roles. So I think currently Gen X are the last generation who can see any benefit. The new teacher pension isn't much of a draw for people in their 20s.

I'm assuming you mean specifically civil service pensions (27%) rather than local authority pensions. When I was at an LA it was matched up to 6% like any private sector pension can be. It was not gold plated like you read in the papers.

A family friend is a business manager for a multi academy trust, she used to be a business manager in the private sector (not education), her yearly wage in the public sector is only slightly higher than her average bonus in the private sector.

If the public sector is the land of milk and honey why do we have staffing crisis in so many branches of the public sector?

Lol. I can't read and your memory doesn't work. We've made a great team.

This post does illustrate the value of DC pensions though, that will be a very meaningful boost in your retirement for the sake of two years' work.

Changes to pensions was one reason I left teaching. After nearly 30 years I will get about £14,000. That plus a low salary, starts to make the profession even less desirable.

It's probably a pretty good percentage of that salary though. Compared to what someone in the private sector would have earned in the same time, you're likely in a much better position. Of course, that doesn't mean your salary wasn't lower than similar private sector roles, or that you didn't miss out on other benefits like private healthcare. But pensions are always linked to salary, and looked at in isolation, yours is probably very generous.

In what world do you think public sector staff got 'regular inflation pay increases' 🙄

Public sector had about 15 years of pay freezes the pay is crap. Terms of pensions were also changed they are nowhere near as generous as they were. Final salary doesn't exist anymore

Oh, I love it.

Hordes of people ‘we earn considerably less than private sector, our lower grades are minimum salary, less than McDonald’s etc etc’

People like me ‘yes joined civil service from private sector, total package inc pension less than HALF of previous package’

Massive, well-documented recruitment holes in nursing, teaching, plunging, essential services because people will. Not. Take. A. Job. With. Such. Crap. Salaries. And. Terms.

Then people like Ladykale ‘yes, yes drone, drone, bloated packages, drone.’

What’s YOUR magical recruitment answer then, ladykale? Come on, you obviously have such economically well informed views, I’m sure we’d all love to know how those ‘bloated’ minimum wage jobs and vacant teacher roles could be more easily filled with worse salaries and benefits?

I have never worked for CS

My last employer paid a maximum of 3% into my work pension. I paid more than 3% in.

My previous employer paid more into my work pension.

I know some people that have never contributed to a work pension, because they could not afford to !

I’m sorry OP but you quite obviously haven’t seen what my pension is going to be, after working in a low grade for the civil service for 30 years 🤣 I’m never going to be a rich pensioner, put it that way!! Off you pop and apply for a civil service job… YABVVU

Lol ok sorry please ignore me it's 1/60 - no idea why I remembered that so wrong will now need to name change in shame. It was final salary not average though I should maybe have stuck it out!

I checked the value at the same time though and it's pretty amazing considering it was 2 years as an admin assistant. Currently showing as an annual payment of £2,350 a year from 60. Worth having.

TBF salaries in the private sector aren't much better than the public sector any more (except in obvious sectors like tech and finance). BUT that's not the point. The fact is that there's a huge pensions black hole that's going to be a real problem in the not-too-distant future, and it makes sense that at least some of the current workforce are getting enough of a pension to live off. It's not 'fair' in any way - including to the tax payer, who'll be picking up the additional costs in benefits anyway - to make sure everyone has shit, unliveable pensions.

My DS is on £30k in public sector (also a school) for a job he'd probably get at least £45k for in the public sector.
He's not getting the pay rises that the teachers get so not all public sector jobs have had good payrises in recent years.
He'll end up leaving because of the low pay - the public sector pension isn't the gold-plated one that OP assumes it is and won't factor into his decision to stay/leave

I think we should take it further and just not pay them a wage. After all I don't want my hard earned taxes to pay for other people's lives!

Obviously (or should be but you never know) sarcasm but as stupid of an argument. Pension is part of the pay packet.