AIBU Public sector workers generally

[Privatesectorworkers]

I’ve changed user names for this…..

I read a post today regarding public sector workers & how hard done by they feel. This instance its Teachers (just an example). I feel increasingly frustrated how these workers (general, not just teachers) harp on about how hard done by they are.

I appreciate it’s a hard job but you couldn’t get away with it in our sector.

I do also know that a lot of my hostility lies over being an unrecognised key worker during covid so perhaps this is tainting my view.

I don’t understand how much they get away with. In terms of absence, pay etc.

Some people work unfortunately in not so well paid, qualified positions (as I do) but there are other factors that keep me in my place of work. I am lucky to have good colleagues, work close to home etc.

Can they not just find some consolidation that they are in the career of their choosing, I would hope they wanted to have a positive impact in the education & enjoy the caring nature of this role?

I don’t understand what has changed so much AIBU?

OP… are you bitter you weren’t furloughed? Lots of us weren’t

I can honestly say that I never gave it a thought. I don’t think I saw the montage you’re referring to. My brother is a nurse in A&E, my brother in law is a funeral director and his wife (who died from Covid related pulmonary embolism) was a nurse. What they dealt with in comparison to my administrative job or my DH as a postal worker aren’t comparable in my opinion.

@LondonPapa . You are correct, we're not indentured servants or slaves. I did six years in public service, it was chaotic and I was bored I did get seconded to other departments at busy because of my skills and the fact at times there was nothing to do because we were overstaffed.

Luckily I had two babies 2.5 years apart. No nurseries for babies, toddlers but there was a local college. I'd always been interested in marketing because of school friends who had gone into the field. Got my degree, both boys at school. I started at a conference centre marketing for conferences including catering and hotel accommodation. Was head hunted by a hotel group so joined them.

Husband decided to buy a very run down business needed my help so I put my love of marketing away, rolled my sleeves up and started all over again.

I had to learn book keeping, payroll, god bless our accountant at that time. I then used marketing skills to build the business. After 14 years husband was bored and neglectful so we sold out. He just wanted to fish and cycle.

So I started again, this time with charities. Had a decade of it. Which I really enjoyed.

Guess what I'm trying to say is if you're young or youngish, don't stay in a job you hate, retrain, do another degree. Your experience will be valued somewhere.

My son was in such a rut very depressed, mentioned that there was a job in Bermuda.

We both said go for it. Blow me he got it.
We were quietly heartbroken that he would be so far away. He did five years out there.

So don't rule out upping sticks if you can.

This indicates the problem.

I have to say, I do find the delayed pay rises and paying for my own Christmas party annoying when colleagues in the City get very nice Christmas parties and Thursday drinks provided by the company.

I do disagree with the abuse part though. But I’m not facing the general public, maybe that is the difference? Operations is hell as I understand it! Policy is so much better 😄

God yes delayed pay rises. We are still waiting to hear what and when our April 2024 pay rise will be. Our best guess is around 2% and if we're lucky we'll get it either December or January!

So not a key worker at all? 🫠

As I described in my post there were some areas that met keyworker description during COVID that weren't what most of us would consider as meeting that description.

IIRC there was a category of keyworker along the lines of staff needed for essential financial services provision. Examples they gave weren't exhaustive but you might argue ensuring people get paid was a key job at the time.

Certainly my organisation treated those of us directly helping clients and the payroll department as falling under that heading and we all continued working.

I think we could have, if it had been necessary, all stayed in the office and the office remain open but as we can work remotely that's the way we did it and the only person who still worked in the closed office was our payroll service.

Charity sector here, albeit delivering contracts for NHS or Adult Social Care.

No-one got furloughed, everyone worked from home save for those working in residential settings, who worked as normal. The latter had the toughest job imo, trying to explain to adults with learning disabilities why very few of their normal activities could go ahead and that they all had to stay indoors, and dealing with the fallout from that.

I just looked up postmen's pay. Even at the top of the scale, it works out at a princely £12.99 ph, a whole £1.50ph above NMW, over a 37 hour week, and the hours given are 30-43 pw.

I don't think that's a massive amount for doing a job that's physical, involves unsocial hours (very early starts) and being out of doors in all weathers.

YAWN!

No you are incorrect they could be furloughed it’s just that the employer couldn’t claim furlough from the government, that is two different things. That is because for most public sector employers their income didn’t go down, they still received the same funding they always did so could afford to pay their employees 100% or could have chosen to have them not working and pay them 80%. If it was a public sector employee that was receiving most of their income from 3rd parties ie. Not public money then they could still claim furlough, if the grant a school is receiving isn’t going down why would they need extra furlough money to pay furlough they can meet it out of existing income. Compare to say a hairdressers who income is completely gone, they have no income to pay their employees so would have had to lay them off, furlough was designed so as people weren’t layed off permanently

Even when they existed, increments stopped when you reached the top of the scale for the job. I think the max number of increments in any single pay scale when I worked in local government, so 5 years of increments, max, unless you changed jobs.

We liken going to work for our LA as retirement on full pay.

My late DP was a payroll manager, and he was deemed a keyworker.

He worked for a police force though, and they were all working, so the employees were still working and had to be paid.

@Privatesectorworkers aren't you a joy?

you do realise there are hundreds of people doing accounts and payroll in the public sector too? Who also weren't furloughed during covid.

You're talking about "public sector workers generally" as if they are one homogenous mass. Someone doing payroll for their council is going to have a far closer job to you than they would to a social worker. An admin assistant in the NHS is going to have a very different job to a police officer. A rubbish collector is going to have a very different job to a nurse. etc.

what do you actually mean by "I don’t understand how much they get away with. In terms of absence, pay etc." What do "they" get away with (and who are "they?")
"Can they not just find some consolidation that they are in the career of their choosing" - I assume you mean 'consolation,' but same back at you? You clearly chose your job, if you feel you're allowed to moan about it why can't anyone working for the public sector?

Number pushing in the private sector is hardly a demanding job compared to being a teacher or nurse.

Not RTFT, but I'm another council worker who's somewhat bemused by this post.

Both the public and the private sector are wide ranging. Public sector jobs, as countless others have said range from very practical, public facing jobs, to highly technical professional jobs. Exactly as is the case in the private sector. So I don't ever think sweeping generalisations are helpful!

From my own perspective, none of our team were furloughed, we all just moved to working from home and carried on exactly as before. Apart from that, like so many other people, I had two kids at home. And whilst I could have claimed key worker status to get them into school, I didn't, as I didn't think I really needed to do so.

Like many others doing similar jobs, Ive got a first degree and a masters, got 20 plus years experience with both the private and public sector and have years of project and service planning experience. I earn less than comparable roles in the private sector, but I like the public sector because I like delivering for the public.

Yet, i still get told by members of the public that I'm an idiot and I don't know what I'm doing, because everyone thinks they know better! Welcome to public service! 😵‍💫🤦🏼‍♀️🤣

Oh, great-another thinly-veiled teacher-bashing thread! The last one has only just been deleted for breaking guidelines.

If it’s such a piece of cake, why don’t you become one, @Privatesectorworkers ?

Your post makes no sense as I can’t think of any public sector workers that were furloughed?

I’m a public sector worker and our caseloads are 50+ when they’re meant to me a maximum of 35… we just keep getting more and more piled on us and all that for £26k a year!

Postal workers were included in the montage - to clarify, it is frontline key workers who were excluded rather than back office people which is the thing that still grates.

My late husband was a local government officer too, and once received a freedom of information request asking how much money the local authority had spent on Christmas parties in the last 10 years. He sent a very brief response saying that the sum of zero pounds had been spent in that period. He also told the writer that any celebration was out of office hours, off the premises and paid for by employees.

@Morph22010 furlough was a term co-opted by the government for their scheme to provide funding towards staff who were laid off as their companies could not operate due to Covid restrictions. Public sector organisations were specifically excluded from being able to claim under this scheme, so it is correct under this use of the term public sector employees could not be furloughed.

It is true that public sector organisations still continued to receive funding to pay their employees. It is also true that any organisation is in theory free to pay their employees to sit at home on full pay. However, I wouldn't class that as furlough, it is called paid leave.

Public sector organisations were, however, specifically prohibited from allowing staff to be laid off on full pay as this would have been classed as misuse of public funds. They had to carry on working in some capacity and this is why staff were redeployed when their job function could not carry on due to Covid restrictions. I work in finance in the public sector and this information was given to me by our Head of Financial Reporting.

I wasn't aware that this was a key worker position. Happy to be enlightened...
It's roles like carers who are massively underpaid, and often in insecure working conditions.

I work in HE, and our pay has totally stagnated, but there are other things which have kept me in the sector. Job satisfaction for one. I can pay my bills, and I like my colleagues, and see the value of the work I do.

Maybe think about it as ensuring we have the best people in important jobs. It's not a race to the bottom.....