To think public sector workers

[firsttimemum77]

Are being 'punished' for mistakes made by bankers / previous government? I work for my LA and at the moment everything around making savings is centred around our jobs and salaries! People think we earn loads, get bonuses etc etc - I certainly don't and I work unsociable hours with no bonuses and a average wage which pays my mortgage and bills...

So AIBU to feel like this or do I deserve it because I work in the public sector!

Splodge - for what it's worth I am told that the pension I will eventually get is not that brilliant. It is based upon the final three years salary and in my case with a disabled son that will not be huge. It will supplement the state pension and going by my parents experience will put me out of reach (just) of any financial help towards rent etc.

The public sector pension was set up to recognise that the employment provided did not pay as well as the private sector - this may well no longer be the case in some areas but not all. In the private sector (and believe it or not there is a private sector for health visitors as well as midwives etc) I could find work in London for a minimum of £40 a hour (what the hell am I doing in the NHS) but I choose not to do that simply because the people employing my services and paying that exhorbitant rate would be the NHS and by default the taxpayer. The private agencies offer a package such as Travelcards, discounted Gym membership to a well known gym chain and private health care - all things I do not get and never have unlike some of my friends who work in the private sector who still get these things from their employers.

I stand by the annoyance I feel that while the private sector had it good they were happy to take all the freebies and extras I didn't get and yet are now whinging because times are hard. It further irritates that all of a sudden my pension (the good bit of my employment) is a problem to them.

Life is not fair but if you want a better pension option then joining the NHS now will give you the same option. Not sure what you do but the NHS employs everyone from Accountants to X-ray technicians (see what I did there ). You might not get such good pay (or perhaps you might I don't know - depends where you are employed). If you are interested (honestly) then check out NHS Jobs website.
FWIW I cannot see the public sector pensions continuing in the same fashion that they do currently but once they are gone we will see a flight to the private sector for the better pay and the extras which would allow a pension to be saved for.

Where will we find all the staff then? Oh yes - from the private agencies who charge a higher rate and will cost you more money in tax!

Life aint fair no matter where you work. In the private sector you are feeling the pinch, in the NHS we have always felt it (especially on the frontline) but extra staff are always welcome.

Public sector
Employee puts in 6%
Employer puts in 16%

You are right it is generous. It is part of the pay packet.

Why don't you come and get a job in the public sector splodge2001? What is stopping you?

I absolutely don't accept that public sector employees earn more than private sector on a like for like basis, yes on a mean average the public sector comes out higher, as I have said earlier in this thread.

There are many people on this thread (myself included) who could earn considerably more for a similar job in the private sector.

And as one PP said one of the reasons we stay in underpaid, overstressed jobs are our pensions, they are part of our benefits package. If you don't think your company pension is sufficient as part of your own benefits package then you have the freedom with your larger salary to make your own provision, and to be fair to the previous government they tried to encourage people to do that with the stakeholder pensions.

Splodge if you would have to put so much in to guarantee a decent pension then I suggest you have left it too late in life to start one It is also the case that pension predictions are lower at the moment due to low interest rates and stock market growth.

Its misleading to keep harping on about final salary schemes in this way, yes the civil service pension is based on final salary but it is also based on length of service. To get the full pension you have to put in 40 years of full time service, difficult for those of us who started their careers later after university, have had time off to have children or work part time.

The pension scheme is already being looked at to provide a scheme which is based on average earnings throughout the person's career.

To say that your tax money pays my pension is also misleading - if I didn't have the pension package but was paid at a market rate then your taxes (and mine) would be paying my salary instead. This is because I provide a public service, i.e. a service to all of you.

I didn't ask whether we had comparable jobs, but whether we had comparable skill-sets. I had to gain a PhD in order to get my job; I'm assuming that you have similar qualifications or work-experience.

Assuming that you do, you are being rewarded much more now for your similar skills. If you saved the difference, I imagine you would build up savings which would far surpass my pension pot.

Anyway, as I've pointed out, mine is a private pension scheme. So its generosity (under threat, don't worry...) is private too.

If, however, you want to take a hefty pay-cut now, and for the rest of your earning life, but want to gain access to the USS, feel free to apply for an academic job.

seth - were you top of your class in an Oxbridge type thing??

LordPan - nope, was not necessary in my field as it was a vocational one so professional experience came into it instead. In dh's though (maths) they nearly all are. My point being that the academic salary is a tiny fraction of what these people could be earning in the private sector (and some I know have walked straight from academic jobs to high-paid banking jobs) so a generous pension provision allied to a lowish academic salary is a pretty cheap way to keep them.

I see - I was just intrigued by the knowing wink, as I interpreted it!

Yes it is sad I used to work for the LA as a community worker and earned peanuts. However its going on in the private sector so of course it will follow into the public sector too. As Liam Burns said in a letter to the new Chancellor of the Exchequar (need to be corrected if i am wrong) that we are broke, there is no money! Whatever government there is would have to make cuts and tax rises anyway.

I still think the quangos could be pruned. The woman who chairs the Electoral Review Commission or whatever it's called, earns 100,000 pounds for a three-day week.

My dh is public sector and pays 11% into his pension. His pension will hopefully be good - if he can manage to work for 30 years in a stressful and physically challenging job to get it in full.

And Splodge - if public sector working is so great why don't you come join us? It's 10 years since I left my private sector post and I still haven't regained the hourly rate I had then.

yeah that was my earlier point - that public sector pensions are a recompense for low wages, poor working conditions and (often) jobs that many people don't actually want to do. I work in a field (Mental Health Nursing) that struggles to recruit good quality staff as it is, and there is a high rate of turnover though I hope the good quality staff move around within the NHS rather than leaving for the private sector. The pension is the only financial perk in nursing and I am sure it helps with recruitment and retention. There is now a drive for all newly qualified nurses to complete a degree prior to registration - that, along with lifelong learning on the job and responsibilities to student nurses on top of caseload. Getting rid of the pension will imo drive a lot of existing staff away and be a barrier to recruiting new staff.

My point about the degree is that there is little scope for increasing salary in nursing, yet educational requirements (which cost students money) are rising.

I worked in NHS fincnce for 10 years and what a shock when I moved to the priovate sector! Managers/administrators are massively overpaid in the public sector compared to people doing an equivalent job in the private sector

Interesting how there is so much variation within the public sector re salary comparisons with private sector

FWIW I have worked in both the private and (more recently) public sectors and I agree with a lot of what is being said here. Firstly that public sector workers are, to a large extent, being 'blamed' along with bankers etc. But secondly, that public sector rewards, particularly pensions, have got out of line with those within the private sector. It used to be the case that public sector pay was a lot lower and the pension made up for that, but now, particularly outside the south-east, working for the public sector (try comparing eg a secretary in say university admin as opposed to a private coy in most regions) can be more lucrative all round. In my own (international orgn) case, we at least agreed on an increase in our retiremt age to 63 (the UK govt pushed hard for us to get 65 - and then turned round and caved in back home!), and I think that is just a sign of the times.

Let us not forget, however, that those 'profiting' from the public sector include not only the council staff 'drones' and NHS administrators so vilified by the DM and traditional, less vilified 'front line' nurses etc, but also, for example the vast army of lawyers that has sprung up over the past 10-15 years (a huge inc in numbers) supported in many cases by public funds, IT and other consultants working mainly for the public sector, albeit from private firms, GPs who manage to be 'self-employed' and enjoy tax breaks on their partnerships and yet get a public sector pension (nice one!), banks getting government contracts, and so on and so on.

YANBU for thinking that you're probably going to get shafted, and it's not your fault. We all are, public and private sector alike.

I think, as bellisima says, that the problem isn't so much in the south east (where public sector workers are probably underpaid) but in the regions, where tbh, a public sector job - certainly in one of the areas under central government control - tends to carry a very much pay and benefits package than the private sector and distorts the jobs market.

And as an aside (sorry, am a pensions geek in real life), 6% of salary or even 11% of salary isn't that much to pay for a final salary pension. The rule of thumb in the good times when annuities were cheaper and investment returns better was that you'd need to pay the equivalent of half your age as a percentage of your salary to get a pension of 1/60 of your salary (or, for some schemes like the local government one, 1/80 plus the 3/80 cash grant) payable at state pension age - so around 66 or 67 for most of us. It's probably worse than that now, plus an awful lot of the public sector pension schemes pay out a lot earlier than state pension age - for every five years earlier than state pension age, you'd need to increase the contribution rate by about a third.

But the real problem (sorry, long post, told you I was a geek) is that the rules are different for public and private sector pension schemes. Private sector schemes needed to make sure that they were well funded, ideally to be able to buy, with an insurance company, all the pensions that had been earned at a given date. That's one of the things that killed private final salary pensions. The same rules don't tend to apply to most public sector schemes - even the ones which are backed by a fund of money don't need to practice the same financial prudence that the private sector ones do, and the real biggies, like the principal civil service scheme, the teachers' scheme, the NHS, police and fire schemes don't have a fund at all. You might contribute, you might think you're paying for it, but in fact the pension is paid out of taxes after you retire and your and your employer's contributions don't come close to paying the real cost.

Could go on for days about this, but kudos to anyone who's already made it this far!

I agree with Jolly Pirate.
Splodge - you want my pension? DO MY JOB!
I am social worker, and everyone knows that's a real piss of piss.

Ha well there's a prime example of what I was saying Martha. I work in a multi-disciplinary team and we cannot recruit permanent social workers because our borough pay less than neighbouring boroughs. Consequently, all our social workers are agency workers. This costs the NHS (and tax payer) more money surely.

Not sure what point people are making when they say 'want my pension, do my job.' Are you saying that all jobs should become public sector jobs, and we should essentially live in a communist society?

Because otherwise somebody does have to do the private sector jobs or none of us would have anything to eat, wear or heat our houses with for a start.

Good point about injuries exhaustednurse

Yeah sure the public sector pays better than the private sector. I've worked in the public sector for 10 years in a professional role after graduating with an excellent degree. I have only just scraped over the average graduate starting salary.

As someone else said, the public sector pension is essentially part of the pay deal.

The green eyed monsters on this thread are looking very ugly just now. When it was the other way around I just used to look at the private sector and thank God I have integrity and an interesting job. Spending my life making money for someone else - what a waste!

milly, I'm saying that if the grass is so much greener re pensions, sick pay, leave, join us. there are many, many social work vacancies. I for one will welcome you all with open arms.

Gerbilmeales is talking sense

I wish I'd have put it so eloquently

The point here is that public sector pensions are massively subsidised by the tax payer (most of whom will get an unsubsidised pension)

A public sector worker on 25K per year will get a pension of around 12k per year whilst a private sector employee on the same salary with the same personal contribution will get about 1K per year.

Going on about how hard you all work is all rather fatuous, we all work hard, we all deserve the same but now working in the public sector on average is more lucrative

Then wouldn't the fairer way be for the Government to give an additional pension to be people with injuries regardless of them being a public sector nurse rather than a private sector builder?

Or are people building houses not doing an important job too?