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!

Thinking about it, it's all ironic. Remember GB and his millenium debt forgiveness? He told us how pernicious it was for poor countries to be saddled with paying interest / loans. Now look what he's done to his own country.

Nymphadora, shafted by the bankers that Brown allowed to run rampant so that he could keep spending the extra revenue they brought in, without putting any of it by. It was unsustainable, but Labour didn't seem to care.

Have just read all through the thread and I want splodge to come and work in the public sector for at least 2 years. Preferably on the frontline just so she can see how cushy it is. I have racked up many many unpaid hours in my 25 years of nursing. Overtime has not been paid since the 80s and we are left to take time back in lieu (which I rarely ever managed to do owing to poor staffing levels).

Much of my time as a nurse was spent in caring for the elderly - very rewarding in terms of satisfaction of a job well done but definitely not easy. Personal care invlolves cleaning patients who are incontinent (faeces as well as urine), feeding, washing, dressing and eventually and sadly laying out the dead. That's in addition to all the other stuff. It's rewarding and when the end of the shift comes.... guess what.... a relative needs to speak with you, a patient falls, a medical emergency occurs. Did I then say "oops sorry my shift is over" - no I didn't just as in the same way I did not walk out if the labouring mother I was caring for as a midwife started to birth her baby at the end of my shift.

All these things don't bother me as I am not money driven and I love my job. During the boom years when the private sector employess got bonuses, private health care, gym memberships, luncheon vouchers or whatever we got nothing and didn't begrudge the private sector these things. I understood that having decided to work in the public sector my rewards were different and not material ones. I do feel annoyed that now the private sector is feeling the pinch that they are now howling and sniping about the one bloody good thing I have at the end of my career - a decentish pension.

Oh and I do contribute to my pension as well. It comes from my salary every month and has done throughout my career.

My real ire is reserved for the wretched quangos.

Most of them could go.

Well put Jolly Pirate

I think there's little point in sniping between the private and public sectors. As other people have said, there's too much variation in each to generalise.

The pensions issue is one that is going to have to be approached in terms other than those of us-and-them fairness.

Well said Jolly Pirate. I too am finding it depressing and horrible that public service employees are being targeted for their pensions etc. now, but were ignored by the private sector in the boom years.

I have worked in the public sector for 25 years - out of necessity as I can't do my job anywhere else. I spent years on low pay with no pay rises (frozen) and I have never had a bonus.

I often work extra hours. Sometimes I take time in lieu but more often I just let it go.

It's hard to prove financial worth in many public sector roles, but I can assure you everything we do is evaluated and there is a rigorous project planning process. We are certainly far from over staffed. We have had a recruitment freeze for some time so if people leave they are often not replaced.

Friends from university have all worked in the private sector and enjoyed bonuses, private health care, bigger salaries etc. etc. Only now are they making 'jokes' about how all 'useless' public sector staff do is sit around eating biscuits and waiting until home time. The pensions thing is just envy.

psml at fuckingninkynonk and her 70% of lazy public sector workers? On what authority? I don't deny that there are lazy public sector workers but pulling a ridiculous figure like that out of your backside doesn't do much justice to your arguement. I'm a nurse and I've worked in many different areas during my career. Slackers have been a minority ime.

Well said jollypirate

I want Splodge to go to sea in a nuclear submarine doing 140 hour weeks without a break for two months (what overtime?) or join my db in Afghanistan. I want her to live in some of the housing that is provided for the troops.

I'd like her to fight fires; or experience the abuse handed out drunks as a paramedic in Plymouth on a Saturday night.

HM Forces aren't entitled to any overtime; no union representation; leave cancelled at short notice that never gets taken; no bonuses; have to wait up to two years for compensation if injured in Afghanistan; the public have to contribute to get decent rehab facilities for them; and no redundancy pay at all, as they are not entitled to it. They get to die on your behalf as well...so they may just deserve the pension, if they live long enough to get it!

Sorry TheJollyPirate

You are basically saying. "I work hard and therefore deserve a better pension than you". I also work hard so please explain to me why, when I don't earn more in the private sector do I have to pay your guaranteed pension when no one will guarantee mine.

It's simply not good enough to say I work hard so I deserve it. I might as well say " I work hard so I deserve a Rolls Royce, in fact I could probably buy one if my taxes didn't have to cover public sector pensions for the next 20 yrs'

It's interesting the sense of entitlement in the public sector - as if they all deserve a medal for just doing their jobs

Some do deserve the medals Splodge - Queen's Gallantry Medal; Victoria Cross etc.

Teacher

But tell me why they deserve better pensions than us lot????

Are they morally superior???

The lack of reform in public sector pensions is costing every one of us far more than the banking crisis so to go back to the OP's original point YABU

you are not being unreasonable. For lots of the reaons pirate so well described above.

And yes splodge actually, I do sort of subscribe to the 'added value' of working in the public sector. Working for the greater good of the community, esp. those less able to look after themselves, puts most public servants in a place well apart and above those who's interest is to get people to spend loads of money they may not have for the benefit of a bunch of already-rich shareholders.

I have worked in both the private sector, for the civil service and now I work as IT technican in a state school and I am employed by local governant. I slog my guts out for very little.

Inorder the cut the pay of lowly paid public workers the governant will have to get rid of the minimum wage. Do we really want that?

There is no doult that I earn far less in the public sector than I ever did privately. Yes, there is a final salary pension scheme, but I pay 6% of salary into it it.

Public sector workers like nurses, teachers, dustmen and many people behind the scenes work damm hard to make this country civilised.

I would agree that there are far too many chiefs and not enough indians. The problem is that no manager is going to make themselves unemployed.

LORDPANOFTHEPEAKS

I can't believe you just said that. Do you not understand that if you pay tax you are automatically contributing and the more tax you pay the more you contribute.

where do you think the money for the public sector comes from? The great money tree in the sky?

and ReallyTired

Your arrogance is astounding

You pay 6% into a pension scheme so you deserve it to be final salary and guaranteed????

Why don't I deserve that too?

I sorry I forgot. Lordpan says I just don't contribute

Public sector is a very broad term and undoubtedly under Labour has grown much broader than at any time in the past.

The types of jobs and the pay ranges are vast in the PS - but think its fair that the higher paid workers either have a pay freeze or possibly a small pay cut.

In general (historic) PS pay was lower but other benefits such as protected / higher pension was a way to balance and recruit / get people to stay.

DW works in public sector - has had a few small pay rises over the last few years. I work in private sector had had the first small pay increase in about 3 years and we've had no bonus for at least 3 years as the Company has made no profit.

LordPan, let's just nationalise the means of production and have done with it, why not.

splodge, they don't deserve pensions than are any better or worse than the private sector. Just that public-sector employees can't be immune from pension reform. Steps have been taken, now we need to work out whether they're the right ones/enough.

no need to be so condescending Splodge, dear.( love the double standard in that!)

No it doesn't come from the great money tree in the sky, silly.

I was responding to your inflammatory notion thatwe who working in the Public Sector may consider ourselves 'superior' to provate sector people. And yes, as I express my opinion, I DO consider working as a public servant to have a quality and value which the private sector simply doesn't posses.

exactly Vesela

but they don't accept this. There is a common sense of entitlement in the public sector.

they argue that they deserve a better pension coz they 'work hard'

LordPan - would you in fact want everyone to become public servants? If not, why not?

On the positive side, this conversation is much better than the drivel being spouted on you and yours tight now