to not understand the alck of empthy for people being made redundant from state services?

[ScramVonChubby]

OK so I get many agree with the redundancies but it is not about that really.

I mean empathy for the actual humans involved.

I keep hearing 'oh well they're state paid jobs, hard luck' and that's often followed by a rant about the numbers of unemployed.

Or people brushing off concerns because 'it's just managerial / abckroom people'.

Regardless, they are still humans who have bills and probably a family to support. Even if we have declared their post ended, cannot we feel some empathy for the individuals concerned? They are not people who deliberately harmed any economy but bang on average people in the main who went out, applied for an advertised job as one does, and got on with it like anyone else.

DH lost his job through redundancy from a private employer a while abck and I hate that others are going into this and being treated as some kind of pariahs on top. My own city is badly hit ATM (if you saw QT last night you know why) and I don't get the lack of compassion at all.

yanbu - i haven't had a pay raise over 1.5 percent in 7 years - nothing for the past 2 years ... no staff recruited for 5 years - we are 8 staff short - front line delivery staff - workload doubled pay effectively fallen and i have a degree, post grad, further he diploma and 16 years service - shit it is

In local government even those earning less than 21k a year are not getting the £250 increase.

nope - and it's not pro rata so I earn £16,800 and haven't had a pay raise for 3 years in fact this year my annual salary has gone down from £17,200

I am on redundancy notice at the moment and will be unemployed as of March as the new government abolished the organisation I work for.

I can't say anoyne has said anything sneering to my face about it. It's not bad timing for me though as I'm on maternity leave with my second and will get a payout that means I can stay at home for a while so I'm pretty happy really. Perhaps that's why no one has rubbed salt into the 'wound'?!

nice - I also work for a company that will cease to exist - sadly my profession will also cease to exist making me unemployable

I am a single parent with 3 kids and a mortgage so for me there is a very real wound

Maybe there are places in public sector that have done OK over the last few years, but where I work we've not had a pay rise since 2008 and there have been voluntary and involuntary redundancies ongoing since 2009.

I have friends who have the same misconceptions that Public Sector workers have been somehow living the life of riley while private sector has suffered, but I'd like to know where that has been happening as its certainly not here.

To the original point, though YANBU - someone losing their job is bloody harsh on the individual regardless of how superfluous someone else may think their job is.

Oh, I'll be fucked one the redundancy money is gone too gordy. Just not right yet.

horrible isn't it Diploma x

my ex husbands buiness went under 3 weeks ago - I felt terrible sadness for his staff who lost their jobs as well

Public sector workers are perfectly able to empathise with private sector staff

God that's really bad for all of you gordy. I'm sorry x

bad for him and them more - it's been a rubbish month!

It is a myth that the public sector have sat back smug. I took redundancy about five years ago and know a number of other teachers who have done the same.

Having said that I have not heard anyone showing anything but sympathy for people being made redundant. But I don't hear most of the things that other mumsnetters here. I must live on another planet.

yanbu

I'm a frontline public sector worker and my job isn't under threat (yet). But it is admin and management staff who get the systems running so I can do my job effectivley. Without them I suppose I'll be doing even more paperwork and have less time for the job I'm supposed to be doing. People will soon start complaining when we go back to interminable waiting lists for services.

I'm so sorry for everyone losing jobs.

btw I am also wondering about this 3% figure seeing as I had 0.5% last year and 0% this year.

I looked it up. I had put it on the thread about what do people earn.

I think it depends what this sentence means

"The difference between the median level of full-time earnings in the public sector (£554 per week) and the private sector (£473 per week) widened over the year to April 2010, following annual increases of 3.0 per cent and 2.0 per cent respectively."

I took that to mean 3% increase in the public sector pay - year to April 2010 before the cuts bit and also it includes the high paid . There have been very large sums paid and bonuses for the very high paid in the public sector and BBC as we've all been reading day after day. jobs for the boys, bonuses when most of us work without getting bonuses and they aren't needed to recruit people and now we can get people easily as loads are out of work the argument that if you want monkeys you pay peanuts just doesn't wash any more.

"Office of National Statistics

Intersting that public sector pay was increased more than public sector and that our earnings tend to decline once over 50.

"Results from the 2010 ASHE (Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings) show that median weekly pay for full-time employees in the UK grew by 2.1 per cent in the year to April 2010, to reach £499. Median earnings of full-time male employees were £538 per week in April 2010; for women the median was £439.

Ten per cent of full-time employees earned more than £984 per week, while 10 per cent earned less than £276. Between April 2009 and April 2010 the distribution of gross weekly pay narrowed, with a 2.0 per cent increase at the bottom decile and a 1.3 per cent increase at the top decile.

Median gross weekly earnings for full-time employees were highest for 40 to 49-year-olds at £560. Male employees reached their highest earnings in this age group at £614, whereas women reached their highest earnings for 30 to 39-year-olds at £508. Earnings increased until employees reached these age groups and steadily decreased thereafter.

The difference between the median level of full-time earnings in the public sector (£554 per week) and the private sector (£473 per week) widened over the year to April 2010, following annual increases of 3.0 per cent and 2.0 per cent respectively.

Median full-time weekly earnings in London were £642, significantly higher than in other regions, where they ranged from £441 in Northern Ireland to £524 in the South East.

The full-time occupations with the highest earnings in 2010 were ?Health professionals' (median pay of full-time employees of £1,067 a week); followed by ?Corporate managers? (£757); and ?Science and technology professionals? (£704). The lowest paid of all full-time employees were those in ?Sales occupations?, at £287 a week."

If 49% of public sector workers got an increase of 0% and 51% got an increase of 3% then the median increase is 3%. Statistics can be misleading.

The bigger issue for me is the public sector being treated as a homogeneous group when pay, terms and conditions vary so widely between different services.

There has been a lack of empathy for both private sector and public sector workers. As Tyler80 said, this is to do with not looking at how varied the jobs are.

Some posters on MN were very unpleasant when private sector workers were being made redundant - 'they got us into this mess, bankers and so on.' People chose not to notice that many private sector workers are cleaners, hairdressers and so on. Even within banks, many employees who lost their jobs were counter staff, IT people and so on, who were not responsible for the financial crisis. I suspect many people will be similarly mean-spirited about public sector workers. I feel most sorry for all of the young people who cannot find work at all, or are going into jobs far below their skill set, as they are attempting to enter the job market during a recession.

YANBU - it's awful and personally, I don't think that making thousands of unemployed people is the best way to usher in economic recovery, is it?
My poor DM - works in a school where it would appear that the local LEA is doing some serious budget cuts. So, first of all they went through some pretty rough inspections, kept on getting terrible ratings and then eventually the head resigned (presumably not from choice). They've now announced that the school is going to be merged with two others in the area (so another head was given the chop) - therefore they have saved two heads' salaries. They've all had a pay freeze, no new hires and no free periods. DM is freaking out - she's in her mid 60s, so it's only with the school's agreement that she can continue working (otherwise she's forced to retire as she's past the age). She loves her job - it keeps her active, out of my hair mischief and she's making a valuable contribution to children's lives. Really, really sucks.

Oh yes, and don't get me started on uneducated morons some people blaming "the banks" and "bankers" for every bloody problem this country has.
IME (working in banks), yes - there were a small group of idiots who did some ridiculously risky things, but actually most of them had been fired by the start of 2008/2009 with everyone else stepping in to clean up the mess.
the City of London contributed £53.4bn in tax revenues 2009/2010 tax year. and, when people blather on about bonuses, these are some of the common options for banks (and in fact any company) could do with any profits:

• retain as profits (taxed at 18%)
• dividend (withholding tax, generally 10%) or
• pay to staff (taxed at anything between 20 and 50%)

so ... out of those options, which is the best for HMRC I wonder?

I think it's awful when anyone, private or public, has to face redundancy.
The thing that annoys me most is the short-sightedness of some of these cuts. I'm in a health profession that delivers a net gain to the UK economy of £765 million a year in improved life outcomes and yet, despite government pledges that front line staff won't be affected, redundancies are happening. I know the country needs to save money but surely this is a false economy! And I'm sure it's not restricted to my sector, either.

I just hope that I still get my bins emptied every two weeks.

That's all it amounts to as an end service user i'm afraid.

Hymie just out of interest, what do you think is an acceptable amount to pay per week to have your bins collected?

Yes, you just cannot generalise. Cameron's rule that no one is appointed in the public sector at a salary higher than his without his approval or whatever it is is a good idea though and I am sure loads of councils are chopping front line services and leaving highly paid middle managers in place.

Whilst I think that a lot of chief execs are overpaid I think the comparison to the PM's salary is unfair when it doesn't consider the extras that go with the role, e.g. Number 10

tyler80
Hymie just out of interest, what do you think is an acceptable amount to pay per week to have your bins collected?

_

One bin?

Considering that the bin is part of a bulk of bins shipped in one cart..I don't know how many bins a cart would take.

Probably £3 at most.

In the district I live in, bin collection works out at £1.14 a week per household, i think it's fairly good value for money.

Our system of government and taxation means you also pay for services you don't use. Although I find it hard to believe that you don't use the roads or you wouldn't rely on the police or fire brigade if needed, but nevertheless, that is the system. Complaints of paying £1500 a year and only getting a bin emptied once a fortnight just makes people sound a little bit uninformed.