Strike and final pension

[EuroExpat]

Weren´t you shocked when you heard on breakfast TV this morning that the average worker striking today will receive a pension of only 4000 pounds per year? I´m absolutely horrified!! And the pompous so-and-so doing the interview said men deserved to get more money as they "worked" for more years than women. This sort of thing really makes me worry that women feel feminism is no longer needed.

Will so many workers whose pensions are being affected still be voting labour at the next election ?

Lots of similar storie in the private sector, TB. For examlpe, when my company was slashing the Ts and Cs, they also froze raises, and changed the work week from 37.5 hours to 40 hours. They did later give raise equal to the increase inhours but I think they were given legal advice that they would be in trouble if they didn't.

Rasies were frozen across the company (tens of thousands of employees). Rhumor has we are getting rases this year.... I'll believe it when it is deposited into my bank account.

Note to self: Must get citizenship so I can vote tory.

Ooh Uwila, you don't have to go that far,

Just getting eligible to vote and not voting for Gordon Brown would do !

Gordon gives me the chills. And not in a good way.

I have no problem with paying for somebody's pension - its just part of their remuneration package. I don't care when they retire. I am no more 'subsidising' that I do when I pay for any service or product that covers the cost of a salary. For myself, I accept that I am unlikely to get a final salary pension. However, I have known this since I started work 12 years ago and planned accordingly. People who entered the work force 20-30 years ago reasonably expected that by taking a job that offered a final salary pension they had made adequate provision for their future. To move the goal posts now is not fair. Equally I find it very annoying that companies who took 'holidays' from pension contributions when the stock market was high now suddenly don't have enough funds to maintain final salary pensions. Maybe there should have been a bit more striking by the private sector.

Re: state pensions, when the welfare state was set up, it was seen as a way to pool resources so that nobody would go without. People paid their national insurance expecting that that they would be able to put a roof over their head and food on the table in their old age. Again, I don't expect my national insurance contributions to pay for anything more than a bag of boiled sweets by the time I am old, but I absolutely think that the current pension is a scandal, particularly bearing in mind the sacrifices that many older pensioners made during the war.

America is a country where you can work three jobs and still live in a trailer park and rely on food hand outs. I am sure that way of doing things has its merits, but I am glad that for the most part people in the UK have diffent values.

The government employees will also be getting state pension in addition to their employer's pension scheme and I have no problem with paying into the communal state pension pot, knowing that any monies I get out of it when I retire will be a very small in proportion to the taxes/NI deducted from earnings whereas these days it is possible for lower earning indviduals to pay no tax and National Insurance at all and still build up credits towards a state pension.

The ability to build up credits towards a state pension despite being on low earnings is to be applauded although it could be said to be swings and roundabouts as we don't we have a minimum income guarantee anyway ? The U.K does at least provide a welfare state which we should not be wholly ashamed of compared to some other westernised nations.

We are not being rampantly thatcherist and me,me,me about the whole thing but I for one can't see that the affected public sector workers have, in doing their comparisons, taken into consideration the private sector workers contributing to maintaining their status quo if strike action is successful and that we may be a little cheesed off as we are already

a) making up pur own shortfalls courtesy of the governments stealth tax on pension pots.

b) accepting that we will have to work longer than we were initially led to believe when we commenced our working lives and pension schemes.

c) making up the shortfalls of the public sector employees whose final salary pension schemes the government has declined to tackle and convert to money purchase schemes. (NHS/EDUCATION ETC)

The only comparison seem to be with the best schemes available (NHS/EDCUATION).

MadamePlatypus, yes I agree. This all started long before Labour came into power, ie, during the 1980's. Private cos. then raided their own pension schemes when the recession hit the following decade and they has spent all their projected profits.

sorry, 'as they had spent their projected profits'