Teachers to strike - 30 June

[meditrina]

breaking now on SKY

Overwhelming vote by 2 teachers' unions (92%)

In that case are you happy for your taxes to rise by up to 5% because the money has to come from somewhere.
Gordon Brown was happy to keep running up deficits (otherwise known as borrowing from our children and leaving them to pick up the mess) The current government arrived to find the coffers empty. Regardless of the politics of it, there is no money left. The UK is in hock up to its eyeballs.
Other people who do a good job have had their pensions cut, why should teachers be immune?

Other people don't have the responsibility of educating the nation's children.
I know the money has to come from somewhere. But where? I will have to admit I don't have the answer to that.

Actually, parents have the responsibility. Many choose to use a school but the responsibility for educating lies with the parents.

Riveninside,
I agree with that wholehearted, though alot of people wouldn't. However, I would hate to home educate my children but that's a personal choice. For secondary school children I don't feel I have the expertise to cover all the areas they would need to cover indepth. So I am happy for the experts to have that job and be compensated for it.

As someone mentioned on the news this morning, raising the retirement age might mean that the government has to pay out more money for disability benefits as exhausted people will get ill more frequently. Then instead of being able to enjoy their retirement, they will spend their last years dependent on ... the care system. Funded by ... the tax payer.

A very interesting suggestion was mooted. As some workers live longer than others - there is an 11-year gap in life expectancy between some manual workers and some white-collar workers - the government should simplify the system and say that you get your pension after 45 years' work. This would mean that a low-skilled worker who started work at 16 would be able to retire at 61 (life expectancy 72 or 3) and a professional who started work after graduating at 21 or 22 would retire at 66 or 67 (life expectancy 83 or 4). This would still mean that the professional would live longer post-retirement, but wouldn't be quite so unfair. (And I don't think that would stop people wanting to go to uni, because nothing except for high tuition fees would do that).

Different arrangements would be made for parents/carers who take career breaks, people who are disabled, etc, so this would probably apply mostly to able-bodied single men and women as things are at the moment.

I'm not sure what to make of this idea, but one thing it shows is that there are other possibilities of more creative solutions. And I'm sorry I can't remember whose idea it was.

I do think is that we should stop letting the government set us against each other: public v private sector, teachers v non-teachers, etc. As with everything relating to employment law, why don't they make the same laws apply to everyone, whether in the private or public sector? Same holidays, same leave entitlement, same maternity benefits, same pensionable age/no of years worked for a pension ...? This wouldn't mean that private companies would be forced to give people six weeks in the summer, because they could give them higher pay in lieu. Nor would it mean that teachers' holidays would be reduced if it was decided that everyone should have four weeks in the summer, as it could be assumed that two of those six weeks were spent on work-related activities at home, which is the situation as it is now.

I don't know. Is it really beyond them to sort this out? What a mess they are making of everything, and what bad feeling they are creating. Instead of a Big Society, this is becoming No Society at all. Everyone looking over their shoulder to see who's getting more than they are.

I heard that too, Mellow. Interesting.

I do think it is ridiculous to have a set age of retirement. It depends so much on how long you work and what kind of job you do. Mine is currently very physical & emotionally challenging and I am not sure I can see myself doing this job til I am 38 let alone 68. If I were still doing my nice comfy desk job, it'd be different.

Grockle,
and there is the utter daftness in the system - the white collar managers give themselves and their mates early retirement and make the people who actually get their hands dirty work to the pension age!

The main point is that we are IN the mess and must now get out.
There is no space for wishing we were not in it.
And striking seems to not accept that we are in the mess.

No, striking is the only way we can show this government that we don't like what they are doing, in education, in health - and it might help to stop them from ever getting elected again.

(And I don't actually see it as the end of the world if they raise the retirement age, although I am anxious that older people should not sit in jobs that young people desperately need).

Yes, we need to get out of this mess. It's clear that this government is not at all interested in creating jobs, protecting education and health and looking after the most vulnerable people in society. We need a more sensible, much fairer approach that everyone can agree with, instead of targeting one section of the population each time and getting everyone to gang up on each other. A society cannot exist like that. We have to have common cause and mutual respect. We won't get it from this government.

I don't wish for public sector workers pensions to be taken away from them, but I think that there will be gross unfairness when our generation comes to retire with a two tier pensioner society, with the public sector workers being vastly better off than private sector workers.

Ideally what should happen is that private sector workers should have guaranteed income in retirement too, rather than being forced to gamble on the stockmarket. That is never going to happen sadly.

Grockle, actually people who are sedentary are more likely to suffer ill health and disability as a consequence of their sedentary lifestyle. If you have an active job then you are less likely to have poor physical health. If you have a job which invloves very heavy and repetitative lifting ie, Nursing, welding, farming etc then you are more likely to become disabled. Teachers are more likely to suffer stress and burnout rather than physical disability.

People that criticise this government need to realise that alot of their ideas about getting people to work, getting disabled people off benefits, getting the pension system sorted are based on the need to do this. Labour really neglected these difficult issues and over the course of their government the problems worsened. The problems won't go away, they need to be dealt with. Working as a HCP in social services and seeing all ages of people it is really clear that there is a real need as the costs of supporting people who live until they are 100+ are very real. We support many more people with very high levels of disability now than when we did 20 years ago because medically people are surviving and the cost of supporting them can go well over £1000 per week.

By all means strike, make your point, win your argument but don't expect the government to provide good social care to you aged 80+ aswell.

No, striking is the only way we can show this government that we don't like what they are doing

No it's not. You could write to your MP, hell go and hassle him in person at a surgery. Or organise protest marches in London, write to the press and of course vote for an alternative party come the next election.

Striking i would argue is actually a pretty poor way to go about protesting since teachers will find they very quickly lose public support. Their argument is flawed and unsustainable.

As for the argument that raising the retirement age means more in sickness/disability benefits. It's again a flawed argument. Pensions will be drawn by practically everyone who hits retirement age. As we live longer because of medical advances, it only stands to reason that it's because people are healthier. In which case, there will be an increase but the majority of older people will not be claiming disability benefits. In other words, it's paying out 99% of pensions versus a smaller percentage in sickness related benefits. Again it comes down to maths.

@Pang. I think most people will not dispute that teachers work hard and do a difficult job. But that it has to be taken into context. They have by no means the only stressful public sector job. Nor does it even matter because ultimately the problem is we have too many people and too little money to go around.

And the size of the problem is so large that it's not something the government can make go away by slapping 1p on income tax for the rich.

If we want to FIX the problem then we have to accept wholesale changes. Anything else is just rearranging the deckchairs on the Titanic.

Niceguy - well put.
For those who want to have a tantrum , by all means go on strike, but don't delude yourselves it is anything more than that. There is no easy fix, people ahve to face up to reality and get on with it, not just try to wish it away.

Niceguy, you are right, there are other things we could do (and people are doing them). What striking will do, I hope, is show the government the strength of feeling that exists against the particular measures they are proposing, and send them back to the drawing board.

If you think something is unfair, you are entitled to protest, don't you think?

This government is often accused of U-turns, but maybe it's just trying us out to see if we'll accept their proposals. It's a weird rather confused way of running a country imo, but you could say that they do seem to be modifying some of their more whacky ideas in the face of public protest.

If the government really want to tackle the problem of us all living longer, they need to reorganise the whole system - after lengthy and detailed consultation. We need some creative thinking here! What they seem to be doing is fiddling about with bits and bobs here and there, picking us off one by one, setting us at each other's throats, seeing how we react - and creating another hugely complicated and unfair system in the process ...

Mellow,
As somebody who in real life has contributed to a lot of the recent consultations on taxes and the like,
it is just not possible to reorganise the whole system.
It is FAR FAR too complex - and like the fiasco of the 10% tax band showed, unintended consequences abound.

The main thing that the last Government should have done and this government is attempting to do is to set a balanced budget so that we start to live within our means for the first time in 15 years.

Somebody further up the thread said that the teachers should get paid even though she did not know where the money would come from.
That attitude is what got us into this mess. If we don't have it we should not spend it. Personally, Nationally and Globally. But we have been encouraged by the finance industry (who make HUMUNGOUS profits from our borrowing) to spend spend spend.

You want to get back at the bankers - pay off your debts. They HATE that!

I wrote to my MP when the idea of increasing the State Pension Age was first mooted. He passed it on to David Blunket who responded. I suggested that if the state pension age was to be raised, (having worked in pensions for years could see the rational behind this) this should be introduced only with some form of health guarantee. As some have said, a lot of white collar workers are also subject to higher levels of illnesses such as bowel cancer, so impossible to pick based on occupation. What about those that change careers. I suggested a form of Permanent Health Insurance for those that have to work with employers being forced to pay in to such a scheme on a non-selective basis.

The response from Mr B was we have no intention of raising the state pension age as it would affect the lower paid more. Two years later they raised it. I still have the letter from Mr B. They raised it with no thought to the health of these individuals. That would have been a solution that would have also helped teachers and could still be an option as sick pay is so much better in public services. There may be a solution but I think to generalise about occupations is wrong. For instance my mother died at 66 from a white collar job that people would class as low risk, my father still working at 70 after lifelong manual jobs. He was actually healthier due to the exercise.

This is what disappointed me with the unions. They should be representing the interest of the common working person who lose out all the time.

By the way, the Govt have just announced the review of higher-rate tax relief. I do agree with this even though it will affect me personally (just). It would be a good argument that cannot then be used by the unions as this will affect all higher earners both in and out of the public sector. Interesting when the lifetime cap was first introduced of £1.8m in pensions, the main top earners with larger pensions were in the civil service. Oh and MPs who opted out, how convenient!

I must comment on the post about giving everyone the same maternity rights etc as the Public sector. Employers are under alot of pressure at the moment to keep people in jobs when there is not much money available. Please do not advocate more financial pressure on employers, it will just mean redundancies or they will not take women on. Our company only has 18% women now, don't give them any more incentives not to take on woman of childbearing age. All the legislation in the World will not stop it happening in practice.

We could end up like the United States where there is no Maternity pay.
Let alone paternity pay

Unlikely as part of Europe Talkin. Don't get me wrong, maternity pay is good but the longer and higher it goes, smaller employers will simply not be able to pay it. Big employers can reclaim it from other NI payments but this is not possible for smaller firms.

But its not consistent across Europe - look at France
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parental_leave
The point is that we have to start relying on ourselves more again (too much of the Broon approach was getting "them" to do things, while forgetting that "we" are "them)
Live within our means.
Its the only way.

TIP - well said. We keep hearing on here about 'the government should pay for this, that etc'- the gvt has no money - who pays? Who pays is those of the population who do not have cushy pension schemes how is that 'fair' or justifiable?

The cushy TPS is apparently self-sustaining. Why are teachers having to pay far more for something that funds after itself? We've had a pay-freeze and will work til we're older just like everyone else