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?

Being in a Public Sector job opens you up to all sorts of abuse from “The Public” because “I pay your wages, you know!”

I always respond that I also pay taxes and that I’m therefore paying for myself to work…

We are also not particularly well paid ( I’m a TA) .
As for sickness… it is positively discouraged. Unless you have an actual doctor or hospital certificate.
We have to practically beg for time off to attend appointments. Just this week I was told off for not arranging an appointment in the school holidays…. Yeah, you try doing that … I work from 07:45 to 5:15pm, and can’t be on the phone trying to sort these things out, especially when you can’t book ahead at hospitals or doctors and have to wait for them to send you an appointment. So no, being sick when you work in a school is not an option. You have to be dying.

Annual increments and gold plated pensions are long gone.

I don't think you are in a position to appreciate what public sector front line / face to face jobs are like.

You are not needing unreasonable to point out that private sector workers can have it really bad too or that some key workers went unrecognised unfairly.

However you are being reasonable to expect that for teachers and other public sector workers, knowing you are helping people / making a difference / doing a career you chose to make up for should somehow be enough to 'motivate' them through all the stress.

I'm surw that payroll work isn't easy and that there is a lot I don't understand about it. However, I would be surprised if your role requires the range of skills, the multitasking and the emotional strain and complexity of a job like teaching or of many front-line nhs roles. I also imagine (and please correct me if I'm wrong) that it might be relatively easy to assess someone's performance in a payroll role - you get the work done efficiently and accurately or you don't. In contrast in teaching the pay and progression is generally linked to meeting targets where meeting them is not fully under your own control (eg whatever happens in this kid's life or however unmotivated they are to do any work, they MUST apparently get xyz grade); it is linked to highly subjective and variable assessments of your teaching abilities which can involve managers looking for totally different things based on competing theories and philosophies but presenting their assessments as somehow objective; it is linked to how well you cope with lots of things that are not measurable, such as building good relationships with students and looking out for their wellbeing. This puts people at the mercy of the whims of managers and vulnerable if it is felt their face doesn't fit. It means juggling a huge number of tasks. Teachers are often openly told they are expected to work well beyond their hours and accused of being lazy and not caring scout the kids enough if they attempt any push-back to protect their own family time and wellbeing.

Are there private sector roles like this? Well absolutely there are. I have a friend who is a high-flying lawyer and another who is with a top accountancy firm. The demands on them are extreme and unlike most teachers they seem to be expected to stay very glamorous and poised whilst coping with very long days and extreme pressures, which I couldn't handle personally. On the plus side, they are paid a lot and do not (generally) have people spitting at them / slamming arms in doors / telling them to f off regularly due to their professional status (I'm sure some lawyers and accountants do have to deal with abuse, if course).

I also don't think that one group of workers having it tough means that another group has no right to complain.

Any career relying solely on its members caring about the common good and doing what they do out of self-sacrificing passion is going to face some recruitment and retention problems... Speaking personally, I used to be up for pretty much infinite self-sacrifice on the alter of teaching. Turns out that my mum getting ill and me starting a family of my own put that into perspective - I have other priorities now and no longer live to work (which is a large part of why I left teaching).

There’s plenty of payroll jobs in the public sector if you think it’s that cushy 🤷‍♀️

Do your job. And then do it with people feeling they have a right to shout at you, to slag you off on social media, to threaten you, police your clothes and appearance, criticise how you do your job and then are amazed that you’re striking.

Aw OP, it's so sweet that you think public sector jobs are all about big bucks and big perks!
Reality check- a lot of us work really hard for not much!
Maybe do some proper research before you judge from up there on your high horse!

Agree with that. I currently have Covid and I feel so poorly I could cry. I’m still teaching. I can’t face the stress of the “return to work” interview and disciplinary procedures (only need 10 days in a rolling year to trigger that).

As a chartered accountant married to a teacher, your post is laughable. Your job isn’t hard. Payroll is easy. Are you even qualified as a CA or difficult qualification?

Sitting behind a computer making sure software reconciles is a joke.

Why are you spending your evenings moaning about teachers when you don't even have a child in education? How miserable. Maybe be happy you have a job of your choosing and move on with your day.

I work in the public sector. During lockdown I had to listen to what sounded like all my neighbours enjoying the sun in the their gardens all day on furlough whilst I had to cover the jobs of 4 team members as they were redeployed for Covid response. I had no time off for almost a year. And this was whilst still not getting a pay rise.

I'm a public sector worker (social worker to be excate). High levels of stress and high sick rate. We get no bonuses compared to some private sector jobs. There's no over time pay and our yearly inflation increase isn't as great sometimes compared to the private sector. While pensions might be better, I'm in my 30's so whether I see mine in this generation of retirement who knows given the retirement age is on the increase.

The other side is not always greener.

I hear there is a national shortage of teachers. Sign up?

I’m sure there are MANY working in the public sector who don’t, but far too many imo abuse sick leave. That does impact their colleagues, the people who use the services and also the system itself.

In my experience teachers are the worst for this, but perhaps that’s just my perspective. I do know it’s generally accepted that the public sector generally has a problem with sickness; I don’t actually think it’s even controversial to say that.

Where I am, there is very little public support for another teaching strike, and rightly so.

Salaries can be lower ( although not always) in the public sector but isn’t that the price you pay for the benefits of the public sector? Holidays, sick leave, pension? I am well paid in the private sector but take very few days off and have to pay insurance in case I get sick, and have to contribute to my own pension. That’s how it goes.

@Healingsfall @BalletCat oh my god a million % I had to take a job in Covid as my 3 businesses went under. I did 17 months then was off sick until my contract ended after never had a day sick in 25 years self employed. The bullshit meetings the inertia the nonsense - sanitary products in mens loos anyone you could not make it up. The very very worst for me was the lack of help anyway wanted to give claimants I was DWP and I did some great work with people but everyone who they employed in covid 16000 nearly all left except guess who was left the dead wood who cdnt work anywhere else. It was the cushiest job ever but I couldn’t cope with it

The mere fact you worked during Covid doesn’t make you a key worker btw. You need to get over this.

This is my exact situation too. I am highly qualified with over a decade of experience in a very specialised area. No one was furloughed in our organisation or any related ones. Odd thing to be annoyed about still, many of us worked through. My child was a toddler. The real time effects of austerity on the public sector have meant our pay is almost a third lower than what it would've been. There is no pay progression regardless of experience or performance. We are not lazy or ineffective, we are swamped with far far more work than can ever be done and our resources dwindle further. We stay because we love it and care about our work.

If it’s any consolation I am public sector, no furlough for us and still expected to work in the pandemic, and we were involved in the pandemic, but no key worker status either.

So really stressful job, really stressful time and two kids to homeschool.

I’ve worked in the private sector for 15 years, plenty of people swinging the lead there.

I love my job but the pay isn’t great, the work is hard and stressful as millions of people rely on us.

And guess what, every right wing newspaper thinks we are an inefficient blob. And it seems a lot of people resent us. So lucky I love my job and team.

Both of you sound like you work where I do. I hear you.

Honestly, threads like this are a bit of a kick to people trying to do their best for a lot of people in the country.

I think the public sector is pretty cushty as a whole in many respects, which is why I'm in it, we're always recruiting, come on in.

Hmmm, bit goady, this. I work in private sector and a close family member is a teacher. Whilst I work more hours and don't have the holiday, plus I have work intrusion in my 'private' time, I still think his job is very hard. He always has to be 'on' as he is in effect performing in front of and guiding 30 impressionable minds. He can't skulk behind a computer screen or nip on MN for a sneaky 20 min like I do if I'm having an off day. He has an importan safeguarding role too and does extra curricular stuff for the kids. Parents are much more demanding these days than it seems they were when I was a kid and much more 'involved' with their kids education, so that's effectively another client layer he has to think of.

Yes his job is, I guess, 'safer' and more predictable than mine but I don't think it's easier not be a long shot. Just different.

Come and join us in the public sector then if the pay and conditions are so great. Can’t imagine it’ll be long before you get bored of being up to your elbows in shit, piss, blood and fire for 15 hour shift work, missing Christmas and loved ones birthdays, before you desperately want to get back to working from home with the radio on.

I spent most of 2021 leading a team making the decision looking at ‘war crimes.’ It meant every day I looked at photos and videos of child mutilated, homes destroyed, reading testimonies of raped women and men. I then advised Ministers and worked 12hr days routinely to get the work done as we were chronically understaffed. I earned £56k at the time and no overtime. Meanwhile people on social media chatted shit about how we did nothing to help these people and regularly spouted misinformation about what had happened.

When Russia/Ukraine started I worked in central govt in the response. Everyone worked 13+ hr days. Then I came home and watched more misinformation, read more abuse on how we should do more and how shit the civil service was etc.

Now I work on another big issues and it’s the same. More misinformation, more abuse of the civil servants working on it and more pointless twaddle from people who think they know more than us and that we’re all stooges for some foreign government.

So yeah, I’m unhappy. But not with my job - or even with my pay now as the last two years I’ve had a good increase - but with the thick busybodies who think I have it so easy whilst they slag off policies and work that my team helped write whilst simultaneously preaching crappy propaganda because they have no critical thinking skills. It’s the general public and the news broadcasters who make me miserable and grumpy - not my pay or my conditions or my job.

Full time NHS consultant here - this is EXACTLY what I am dealing with on a daily basis.

That’s not a public sector v private sector arguement though, there are lots of private sector jobs that are long shifts, physically demanding, have to work Christmas etc. there are also lots of public sector jobs that are working from home (civil service, local authority etc)

No thanks. I’m happy with my working arrangements. What amazes me is why public sector workers don’t join the private sector if they are so unhappy.

cost of living rises and salary stagnation don’t only affect public sector workers.

I was a solicitor in private practice and left to start my own business because my salary wasn’t increasing as I expected it to. Now I earn more but get no holidays.