So which public sector jobs are better paid in the public than the private sector?

[lesley33]

I am sure you have read in the news about the proposal to freeze or reduce public sector pay in poorer parts of the country. Part of the argument being put forward is that public sector wages are higher than in the private sector, in all but the South East. However I am struggling to think of jobs where public sector staff are paid more than the equivalent private sector staff. However, perhaps that is just in my area of work.

So if you know of jobs where the equivalent post is paid less in the private sector than in the public sector, please let me know.

The title of the thread should have been 'What jobs pay more in the private sector than in the public sector?'

To that I would have said:

IT professionals
Contract negoiators
Accountants
Project/Programme managers
Specialist engineers

The Civil Service has real diffiiculties recruiting and retaining these. In many cases they can only do so by paying allowances on top of salaries.

PMSL at Xenia and comparing the salaries of people in Cornwall with nurses, teachers etc and declaring that its wrong that nurses etc are better off.

I should bloody hope so! I have 18 years nursing experience and am responsible for the standard of care across 4 wards and and clinics. I do on average 9-10 hours of unpaid overtime most weeks.

Do you honestly believe my salary should not be higher than someone who works in a pasty shop?

Disclaimer: I don't think everyone in Cornwall sells Pasties for a living.

We should be fighting for better T&Cs for all workers not allowing or worse, rubbing our hands together, at the demise of one sector over another.

WetAugust, you're right.

Plenty of people seem to have this idea that the public sector is so cushy. Come and work in it then and see for yourself.

both HCAs and qualified nursing staff earn less in private work than the NHS. At least they do in my experience. However working in the private sector we do get free private healthcare for ourselves and subsidised for our families.

I work for local govt and could less or more in the private sector depending on how you classify my job.

Part of it is debt collection and I suspect someone working in a call centre doing that would earn considerably less but may have the benefit of commission (no idea tbh), however I have a lot of specialised technical knowledge and when I freelanced I earned £8-£12 an hour more than I do when employed by LG. I just couldn't guarantee the work and there are no benefits such as sick pay, pension etc.

If the public sector is so feather bedded, you would think solicitors would be queueing up to work there, but strangely enough enormous numbers of them appear to be working in private practice and doing very nicely, thank you.

Nursey nurses in the public sector are much better off when I worked in private day nusries you get four weeks of in which you can't take at christams, or in the summer I had to even work christams eve, I didn't have a pension Also it was shift work the opening hours were 7:30 -6:30 then as the nursey doubled as a Mormon hall we had to pack away which ment you didn't actally leave till 7

When I worked in my local la which had a libuary,cafe and bike hire BTW had a gypsy and traveller team which had a staff of four they had a vacancey for one which was advertised on the intranet 24k we have approx 200 travellers in our area at any one time

Also before 10 and after 4 the council was like a gost town no one kept office hours 2 hour lunches were the norm and because their was hot desking their was no way of keeping track of we're anyone actally was

Nothing is blocked so workers spend their time on face book and ASOS.com (ladies when your ringing for council tax their on the net don't be fooled)

Also the calles were not veted so people used to make all personal calls their also parties not sure I should be telling you this but councils love a party

Their would be a leaving do, a 60th ,new baby do and getting to know new work mates do and not just some rich tea and orange proper catered stuff prawns and breaded mushrooms wine the whole lot
All on the tax payer, they also had a breakout area which was well stocked with 5 diffrent types of milk and biscuits like you wouldn't believe

The council leaks money somone needs to plug the holes

Mrbo I worked in the public sector for a bit and it wasn't like that where I worked! Although I do remember when we were all running around like crazy, 1 team that when I visited clearly didn't have enough work, got new furniture regularly, etc.

MrBo, please tell me which council cos we can't even order stationary.

I have never worked for an LA which provides drinks and biscuits for the staff. They bring their own in or have a kitty. On the rare occasion there was a party either the staff or the managers paid for it. trust me, there's no money being leaked at the council's I've worked at.

Yes, MrBo - I'd love to know which Council that is with, as it's a very different picture here too.

I want to know as I want to apply for a job there

Mrbojangles - I have worked in four different local authorities, and in each case the IT systems and web access have been so locked down as to be verging on ridiculous. It is hard to access the sites you need to do your job, let alone get away with wasting time on FB!

We've always needed to provide our own tea, coffee and milk and have to offer our own to any visitors as well. I have never attended a single "do", and any Christmas lunches etc. are paid for by the staff.

You clearly have an agenda and are talking out of your proverbial.

When I worked in LA I was a youth worker. The blocks meant that we couldn't access any sites that had safe sex materials or info for teenagers and some sites aimed at youth workers. We used to complain, but nothing ever happened.

Yes - don't get me started on not being able to access sites I occasionally need to, as part of my job.
I was going to go through your post, refuting things one by one, but it's so ridiculous, it's not really worth the time. Nor, BTW, do I think people arguing that their T&Cs are worse than another group's is actually helpful.
Surely we should be pointing out to our MPs what a ridiculous concept this is, rather than picking over the fact no-one on my team ever has a lunch break, and debating as to if that's usual in either private or public sector work.

I've taken to doing a lot of my research on my phone cos the Internet is so restricted & 2 days + to decide if they will unblock a site for you but your drug addled pregnant teen is waiting for help today

I deal with overseas students and we're not allowed to make overseas calls ... we were also prevented from uploading Skype onto our computers to achieve the same thing. Luckily that has now all stopped, but it was a pain at the time.

I remember as a youth woorker having to make calls from a very very senior manager's office to organise an international exchnage as we were not allowe to phone abroad. It was before the days of email BTW so really had to phone.

During my time in the public sector (both town and county council) I can honestly say the public got their moneys worth out of the staff. Those doing 'professional' jobs such as legal, accountants/finance, IT etc usually got in for around 8am and most didn't leave until well after 6pm, with many clocking up in excess of 50hr weeks (37 being the contractual obligation), flexi time could only be taken in accordance with 'business need' - so if you were over worked and the office was under staffed you couldn't take your flexi, you also could only carry over 15 hours per month and weren't able to claim overtime payments once you reached a salary of c.£30k. So you put the time in and got no reward.

When it got to this time of year leave was cancelled for many many staff to get budgets in order, and nearly all of the staff mentioned above would be losing out on great swathes of annual leave because of a freeze on temps/locums meant that work couldn't be covered in their absence so rather than come back to piles and piles of work they simply never took time off.

IT systems were in the dark ages, you'd be working with office packages that were no longer supported but they couldn't afford to upgrade so had to make do with self developed patches. Stationery was rationed. Photocopying, rationed. Printing, rationed.

People really do need to open their eyes and work in the public sector for a bit before they shout about them being overpaid. Stress levels in the public sector are astronomical which is why there are so many of the PS workers off sick!

Oh access to sites is usually due to bandwidth and not the nature of the site. Our IT bods had blocked all social networking sites (although Social Services could unblock that for periods of time to monitor familys etc) and any sites that 'could be used for social purposes'. So you couldn't do your shopping. Couldn't put a bet on the horses etc.

We have a no overtime pay if you are on about 18k+ now!

Same situation about lack of staff/bigger caseloads = v stressed staff = ill staff = less staff = lack of staff ....

Today's Evening Standard - cream of the top graduates in banking and finance - someone boasting how very little in the City of London they are now being paid - £20k which is very low for those best of their year people. The public sector has no idea what is coming. There just isn't the money to pay them all.

We all have seen appalling public sector waste. It's almost like a part time job in the the public sector in many areas, not all of course. The leaving early - it's just like a different world - even between private and state schools - the private school teachers are there working very very late with all kinds of clubs and the state schools are releating teenagers just after 3 here if not earlier.

"the private school teachers are there working very very late with all kinds of clubs and the state schools are releating teenagers just after 3 here if not earlier".

• just because those in private schools may have a longer day it does not mean that state sector teachers are working less hours - my DH works in an inner city school (the best school for value added in the country) and works 70 plus hours a week - and no, he doesn't get great holidays as he works at least half of them - he has less holiday than my private sector job.

There are many reasons why the pupils may have a shorter day and do less clubs (a lot of the students have jobs/are carers for family) but the input from the teachers required to get them to pass GCSE's when they come in to secondary with no English language is huge, as I'm sure you can imagine Xenia.

I am a journalist and though I know it is not quite what you mean, but salaries and benefits package is far, far higher at the BBC than private sector.

I'm another who took a pay cut to move from the private to the public sector. The change being that I started in a call centre (which had the worst wages of all my jobs due to my being at a very low starter level, but the best benefits) then slowly progressed through admin roles in different companies with better pay but worse benefits. Finally got my job in the civil service (HMPS) doing admin, taking a pay cut to do so. I do love though how people with no actual working experience of the civil service somehow know better than those of us who work there

To be honest it makes me very, very sad and frustrated that these things always boil down to Them vs Us and who has it worse off. What we SHOULD be doing is banding together and demanding that the government make everything fair for every worker, regardless of their sector or role. But that's never going to happen when we fight amongst ourselves and let the government sit back and make cuts in vital services while we squabble.