Drs' payrise should be funded by cutting 23.7% govt pension contribution

Join a union, raise your bar, don't try to lower it for everyone else.

Maybe we could save a few billion, enough to fund pensions, by cutting the vast transfers to the military industry, instead? Invest in health, not death & suffering?

A radical thought in these days of brainwashed militarism.

I guess junior doctors just don’t have the access to politicians, and influence over them, that the senior executives of huge ‘defence’ industries do. For some obscure reason.

But the very low earners do very well out of pensions. They get 2/3 final salary PLUS full state pension, which is often a lot more than they were earning when they were working, particularly the likes of "assistants" in the NHS and schools etc especially if working part time. Ie if they were on £12k when they retired, they could be on £9k occupational pension AND £12k state pension! I know rules have changed so later joiners won't get the same, but I've had loads of clients over the years whose combined public sector and state pensions have exceeded their wages when working. Then people wonder why we have a massive deficit and we pay more on interest than education! It's simply not sustainable.

Unfortunately all too many private sector companies which used to provide (fairly) decent pensions went bust because they simply cost too much.

If you aren’t happy with your private sector pension join the public sector then instead of having a fit about it or are you just sticking around to moan and whinge about others because you are too lazy to do anything about it.

FYI public sector employees are tax payers

If you are not happy, get another job, or are you just sticking around for your massive tax payer funded pension…

I didn't realise you could opt put, and have the money instead, that's good.
I agree total remuneration should be looked at for comparing. And also t&c, working hours, job security etc. Its not realistic to say private sector employees should get defined benefit schemes - they are so unbelievably expensive in some years depending on how investments perform.

Here we go again with the gold plated public sector pensions stuff. I won’t get mine till I’m state pension age (so god knows when as I expect it to increase beyond 67 way before I reach that age). It also won’t be particularly big as I’m not very well paid. It’s also very likely that I’ll need to leave the NHS before I reach pension age as I will not be able to do my job until I’m 70, reducing my pension even further.
I know plenty of people in the private sector who have excellent pensions and who are planning to retire before they are 60. I could only dream of that.

But sure, cut my pension, it’s fine.

State employees should not be allowed to strike, I’m sick of it, just go back to work and do your job and stop complaining like staff in the private sector do.

It doesn’t make up for dealing with the general public either!

Private sector workers are welcome to come and join us Public sector workers, my working life would be a trillion times less stressful if I had adequate staff to run my service. The pension really is not that good when you are a lower earner, certainly does not make up for the many many years of slog working in many public sector roles.

Or maybe private sector employees should get off their arses and demand proper pensions or join unions instead of forcing other people to have shit pensions because they can’t be arsed to fight for a decent pension.

You can in the public sector, you can opt out but are auto enrolled again 3 years later so have to opt out again.

But most of them won’t I remember having this conversation with a British doctor in Australia who was happy to give it a go for two years but there was no way it was a long-term move for them
Far too many times to the UK and enjoyed a much better standard of living in the UK places like Australia are expensive to establish yourself in if you don’t have family money and assets
I don’t know if you’ve ever seen the price of a desirable suburb in Sydney, Melbourne or Perth, but it’s not cheap

Good idea. People seem to value pension far less than salary, even when the cost is equivalent.

Paying a large pension rather than more cash seems really inefficient.

The usual argument for pension is to ensure people don’t fall into poverty after retirement. Is there evidence that doctors are especially prone to this? Or especially unable to understand or weather market risks (so needing a DB scheme)?

Let people decide what to pay into a pension scheme, as is the case in private sector. It's ridiculous that public sector salaries include a pension contribution that is ignored by loads of employees who would probably prefer to have increased salaries now to pay for eg housing.

Or maybe the private sector should unionise and get their companies to pay into decent pensions

The 3% private pension contribution is a minimum. All the professional level private sector pensions i have come across matched employee contributions up to a minimum of 8%, but often more.

I do think that public sector employees often forget the value of the pension they have. But would I swap my private sector pay and conditions, for a public sector job? Not a chance.

All state employees should have the same pensions as the rest of us.

Tbh I think the doctors have had a big enough raise already BUT wages should continue to rise every year to a more steady rate.
I also think that they shouldn't have to incur fees for exams.
It's wrong to strike now, when the government have made some concessions.

That would be one way to cause more strikes.

The torygraph is a joke

Well it makes some sort of sense.

someone earning £30k with a 23.7% pension costs their employer £37,130 a year, compared to a standard private pension of 3%, which means total cost is £30,900.

So if you reduced pensions, you could pay a lot more.

Maybe the public sector should consider advertising their jobs as ‘total cost of role’ to highlight how attractive it is, so people don’t think they’ve got the short straw! Or offer up the choice of either higher salary lower pension or how it is now, would cost them the same. They can’t take pensions away though.

The strike is less about pay and more about the fact that we are training doctors who then go and work abroad due to the difficulties of getting a job here!

No Government would ever do this because it would be way way more expensive for the first few decades. That 25% doesn't actually exist, it's just the theoretical value. That 5-12% that the employee puts in is then used to pay the current pensions. If the got rid of DB that money would be put in a pot for the employee and the government/NHS would have to make it up.

If they public sector pensions they will have to increase wages. People in the public sector are underpaid as the pension makes up a large part of their compensation package.