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!

Gaelisheep, that's just nonsense

The public sector is over staffed. It grew massively under Labour as a job creation scheme, supported by increased revenue from the financial services industry, some public sector workers were literally doing 'emperor's new clothes jobs' just coz the country could afford it.

And I keep going back to the pension because for what you put it you get a lot back

as i said I put in £400 per month (i work full time) and can look forward to a return of the equivalent of £4000 per annum which wont go up with inflation, and thats if the fund performs well

There have been jobs shed where I work

Lots of them, across the board

Fair enough, not actual redundancies

The equivalent..."natural wastage" they call it

That is, not replacing posts like-for-like, or even at all

Or replacing posts with one of a lower grade (but still having the same responsibility)

I agree with some of it...it needs to happen, especially in middle management

But someone telling me that public sector workers "have it easy" and articulating it in such an offensive way...how insulting

gaelicsheep, i agree about flexi time, having worked in a flexi-time scheme previously. I don't actually know any LEA staff, or indeed, local government staff who get overtime. I am not a teacher, I am support staff and whilst I and my colleagues, do the extra hours because otherwise the children suffer, it is outrageous that we are put in that situation. And we will be losing staff this year, when temporary contracts come to an end they are not being renewed, so even more work for those of us who are ( at the moment) on permanent contracts.

All this mithering on about 'we didn't cause the crisis' 'bankers should pay' etc is really childish.

That last one particularly annoys me. It ignores the fact that the bankers have paid. The financial services sector makes by far and away the greatest contribution to the tax system that PAYS for the public sector. They paid with their jobs first when the recession started.

This stuff is all built on envy of perceived wealth. But that envy is misguided and simply not backed up by any facts. It's the public sector who have greater job security, better employment conditions, properly funded pensions, and more pay.

I know it's human nature to look around for another culprit or for someone else to carry the can. But really there is no-one else. I agree with Halib that we'll all feel as shit as each other

That's why I think a bit of blitz spirit is called for,

Splodge - says who? Some parts of the public sector maybe. But you try telling someone who's had colleagues leave and their posts frozen, leaving them to pick up all their work as well as their own, that the public sector is overstaffed. There are many many cases of one person trying to do the work of three. The problem is that people tend to just knuckle down, put in gazillions of hours of unpaid overtime and not complain - perhaps if more of us made a fuss something might be done, but I doubt it.

hear, hear quattro

and spouting bile is not the way to go about it

splodge...difficult to accept maybe but your career choices were yours to make

the green-eyed monster is colouring much of your outlook, I feel

LOL

6 months full pay

most of the people I know who have been made redundant in the private sector have got either nothing or the stat minimum which is 1 weeks pay capped at about £350 per week for every year worked

It amazes me how cosseted the public sector is sounding

And I agree with previous posts about sickness in public sector, penalised in exactly the same way if you've had major surgery or cancer (or some similarily awful illness) as if you constantly take days here and there for a cold etc... not really sure what this type of policy achieves other than people who are seriously ill coming into work when they shouldn't or worrying about impact on future pay when they are seriously ill.

I could rant on for a long time about the inefficiencies where I work and the ridiculous policies that are employed but am too tired and need to go to bed! But there are plenty of positive things to be said about the public sector, in particular that it employs a lot of hardworking staff plenty of whom don't earn a alot of money - and the same could be said for much of the private sector as well.

And Splodge - perhaps you could elaborate on which parts of the "public sector" you believe to have been the subject of job creation schemes, because it sure isn't local government! I think I've seen one single job created in about 3 years. Many, on the other hand, have been frozen or deleted indiscriminately, regardless of whether the post is needed or not.

I think it is incredibly misleading to quote statistics showing public sector workers earn more than private sector workers. On average thats bound to be true as most of the lowest paid jobs in the public sector (e.g. cleaners) were contracted out to private providers years ago so don't count as public sector jobs any longer.

I think if you take a like for like view of different jobs then generally public sector workers have less in their pay packets at the end of the month. Some public sector workers, particularly those in local authorities have contributory pension schemes, and the benefits are nothing like as described.

I work in a civil service agency, in a professional role. If I worked in a similar role in the private sector I could earn probably £15K more than I do at the moment. But add to that my really good pension, flexi-time, 30 days holiday a year plus excellent maternity benefits (6 months full pay), and an almost guaranteed right to flexible working patterns then I am happy to stay where I am thanks!

What does frustrate me in this discussion on public sector pay is that many of us have been receiving pay rises that have been substantially under inflation for years (in my case the 12 years I have been a civil servant). Current pay deals are usually multi year deals that were agreed 2 or 3 years ago, and come out now and look generous because the economic situation has changed so drastically. Yes a final salary pension scheme is fantastic, but for a number of my colleagues facing retirement in the next few years they have been at the top of their payscale for 8+ years and have received no consolidated pay increases, so the actual real value of the pension is going down year on year.

Anybody who thinks it has been easy working in the public sector under a labour government for the past 13 years is mistaken. We have had to push for every (rubbish) pay deal we have had, to often be told by the treasury there is just no money to fund a decent pay rise.

Its all very well to pontificate on over paid and over staffed public services, but as with most people we live to our means and the prospect of pay freezes, cuts and job losses is something that is facing real people with real families (as it does every day in the private sector too).

There was an article on the radio the other day by Tim Harford. I've been trying to google to find the hard data, but can't. From memory, he said something like each person in the country's share of the national debt is
a) about 17,000 pounds to cover the (ex)Govt spending more than they raise in tax
b) there is a similar amount, another 17,000 pounds which would be due if we had to, overnight, fund public sector pensions (obviously we don't have to: we will only pay it as it falls due)
c) the cost of the banking bailout was a paltry 300 pounds per person.

I know that it's fun to point the finger at fatcats and blame them for our woes (so much nicer to shift the blame instead of accepting that we, as a country, we living beyond our means), but the bankers didn't cost us that much. So public service workers are not "being punished for the mistakes of bankers", they are being let go because, frankly, they are unaffordable.

I have worked in the local government and public sector since the early 90's. I can't remember many years without redundancies since I began if there weren't redundancies posts were deliberately kept vacant to save money and services suffered as a result.
There has been Compulsory Competitive Tendering, Best Value, Supporting People Funding the latter of which forces services to compete for funding every few years (competition can come from the public and private sectors.)

In this period I have done one job in the private sector, for a charity - I earned 8% more than I do in local government I did 60% of the hours I do now. I still work just as hard and am more qualified and experience than i was previously.
My pension will be about 4.5k per annum (not a huge amount really). The LG scheme is contracted out so, I won't receive a SERPS pension I pay 6% of my salary into the pension and have done since about 1995 with breaks when on maternity leave and the period when I wasn't working in local government
So I for one don't agree that Public Sector workers are over paid - that isn't my experience at all having said that I don't think I am underpaid and I enjoy my job.
OP - YANBU.

Yes I'd love to have my retirement secure

But I don't and I don't believe I should pay for anyone else's whilst no one pays for mine, I'll happily play along if it's equitable but it isn't is it?

Erm, I would point out that the private sector have cleaners too ...

In truth, if you look at the size of our public sector, ralative to the size of the private sector that has to fund the public sector, you'll see that it is overlarge.

I have no particular axe here. DH works in the public sector. I work in the private sector. He pays 4% of his salary into his pension. I pay 20% of my salary into mine for less in the way of benefits. Just an illustration.

Mila I know I get great holidays, that is why I said I don't want to moan. I am not someone who wants to make out that teachers work harder than everyone else. I choose to do my job, I think I am fairly treated and well rewarded.

I don't even want to be paid more, as I said I think my wage is fair. But, I certainly did not opt into the public sector because of the great pay and easy life as is being suggested on here.

Quattro - I have no envy of the higher wages, I could have chosen that life and did not. I agree we have greater job security but it is not guaranteed. In the main we have better working conditions ( in my previous school I worked in a room that leaked, had asbestos problems, dirty toilets and pupil voilence was a daily occurance. We were bullied by senior management and often had to work through the night , in comparison my new place is a walk in the park). I agree we need to be pulling together.

Splodge I am sure there are some parts of the public sector are overstaffed, just not all.

I'm so tired of public sector workers being targetted as having cushy jobs. I've worked in the public sector since I left university in 1985. I knew this would mean I wouldn't earn anything like my peers who graduated at the same time as me, but it was a positive choice based on my principles.
I don't know anyone in the public sector who gets a 2/3 of final salary pension - more common is 50% but that's after 40 years' continuous service, normally in the same place.
Reapplying for your own job because of botched reorganisations is common. Being expected to cover for posts that are vacated and never filled to save money is commmon. Being expected to work "the hours required to get the job done" is also common - in fact it's been in many of my job descriptions - once you go beyond admin/clerical grades. I've never been paid overtime and I regularly work 15 - 20% over my part-time hours because on my grade it's expected.
Focussing on public sector pay is similar to focussing on benefit cheats as opposed to tax avoiders - right-wing bollocks which is concerned only with protecting a privileged (?sp) minority.
Aaaaaand breathe.

Surely it's clear enough from this thread that there is so much diversity in the public sector regarding staffing levels, pension schemes, benefits, etc. that you just cannot generalise "public sector" against "private sector".

A fairer comparison might be blue chip companies/civil service set against other private sector companies/local government.

Hmm. I think the median wage thing might not give the whole picture perhaps. I'm not sure it's a sound enough basis on which to assert that public sector workers are "better paid". There's a whole mess of stuff wrapped up in that assertion. Because surely we are looking on a like-for-like basis? I wonder the mean wages would be. The lower paid jobs are probably indeed private sector now, because they are contracted out. I'm unconvinced that that has been accompanied by a rise in standards and/or performance. School dinners for example have tended to improve when schools take back control from the private sector. Admittedly, that is anecdotal, but we aren't averse to that on this thread.

I agree that we're all in it together though. DH works in the private sector. He earns more than me (pro rata, factoring in my lovely holidays!), has more flexibility than me, but has less security (I hope anyway - we are in deficit and I think some nasty decisions have to be made). It's all crap. And it's time to stop whinging about bankers. Apart from when they say it was because they weren't properly regulated. Because that just reminds me of pupils who say a teacher "can't control them". And I depoly the

The waste in the public sector (to which I belong) is endemic.
Today was a good example. It is 'Walk to School' week. All well and good. Tell 'em why it is a godd idea and let them get on with it.

Oh no, no no no. Each child (I have two in the same school) comes home with expensively printed and designed bookmark and leaflet, listing reasons why it is good to walk to school and incorporating various 'fun' activities.

Any nonce knows that you fall into two camps. You either know why it is a good idea to walk to school or you don;t and no amount of patronising leaflets will persuade you otherwise because you won't bloody read them.

In a similar vein, all these ridiculous PR visits from fireman and policemen and the like and the promotional crap they bring home.

Highly irritating.

Quattro that was partly my point, most of the lowest paid jobs in society are now in the private sector - therefore public sector jobs will look better paid on average.

I absolutely accept that pensions are a lot better, but to me that is one of the reasons I work for a lot less than I would get in the private sector.

My dh works in the private sector (previous public utility company) and his pension scheme is excellent for the contribution he makes, but I suspect thats a hangover from the days of public ownership and has now been closed to new entrants.

Can I point out that public sector workers also pay taxes? So we are all funding the public sector, and its not just our wages and pensions that that funds, its the schools, hospitals etc as well.

Actually my department is largely self funding so you can all feel happy that none of you are paying towards my wages and pension bill

I'm not complaining about my job - it gives me a real buzz - even after all these years!

But I would point out the following

1. No pension
2. No job security AT ALL
3. 60 hour working week. Every week. Finished at 2am this morning.
4. Compulsory to contract out of EU employee protection legislation
5. No representation
6. Maternity leave is 12 weeks
7. Part-time work doesn't exist. At all.
8. 30% reduction in headcount over the last year. All of those people are still unemployed by the way because no-one is hiring. 10% reduction in fees earned. You do the maths.

I completely agree that there is huge waste at every level. Having to translate every blardy thing we produce into Gaelic doesn't help (thanks SNP). It's the personal attacks on sponging public sector workers that really annoy me. Most of us are working damned hard doing as good a job we can on behalf of a general public that can do nothing but complain.

You must have the same statutory maternity leave allowance as everyone else surely Quatt?

I'm a teacher and we get the statutory minimum BTW.

I also received very expensive looking booklet on 'healthy eating' with a long quiz in it which you were invited to send to those who had produced the booklet for 'tailormade' suggestions on improving your children's diets.

Have these peopel really nothing better to do????

The fact that public sector workers even mention overtime is hilarious

I worked 7am sun til 5am this morning on a tender for some bloated gov department who I went to see on friday in Gloucester, who deliberately kept the meeting going til 3pm so they could go home after and was in at work again at 9.00am today

Do you think I will talk about overtime? LOL