Public sector pay – the myths exposed

[ttosca]

Claims that public sector workers are 40% better off than their private sector counterparts melt under the spotlight.

www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/may/09/public-sector-pay-workers

No it's not - it's backed up by every productivity survey I can think of.

I am delighted that so many public sector workers are treating the process so antagonistically. The intellectual argument has already been won by the right, but the shroud waving makes it much easier to maintain public support.

LFN I think part of the problem is that you come across as a swivel eyed Tory fanatic, so people tend to ignore you these days.

If you want to be taken seriously it would really help if you quoted sources that haven't already been roundly discredited.

'Intellectual argument has been won by the right.......' Hmm great oxymoron - can I use it?

slug I am not a Tory - I am a small-c conservative. Cameron's stances on International Aid to basket case countries like Pakistan, and so many other policies, make me livid. He wants to be popular - and he never will be - instead of being content with being respected and trusted to do a good job, like Maggie.

I just thank heaven that we have real Tories like Iain Duncan-Smith and Michael Gove in really important policy-making positions - people who really care about the future of this country.

I see Michael Gove as potential future PM material. Also Justine Greening and Philip Hammond are definite contenders for very high office indeed.

Sadly, Osborne won't make the cut - although I adore his political nous, he just doesn't have that easy/sleazy charm with the electorate that the likes of Blair and Cameron ooze.

I know someone who actually knows Michael Gove and thinks he is a prize tw*t who is massively out of touch with children - which is a bit of a problem when he is making policy about education.
Yes, Gove for PM - should keep the Tories out of Govt for a bit.

'I know someone who knows someone' - yeah, right, convinced.

honest

Six degrees of separation and all that.

Others on this thread are quoting sources and/or their personal experiences-have you anything to back up your point of view longfingernails?

Start with ONS figures and go from there. Here is the digest of the situation as of last year.

business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/industry_sectors/public_sector/article6974029.ece

"I adore his political nous".

Conservative with a small c means keeping things the same so the rich go on getting richer without pesky poor people stirring up trouble for them or making them share.

Cut 75% of public services, except the military? Why stop at the military?

I suppose you are of the opinion that the man should be the head of the household and if you can't afford to pay the doctor, then you and/or your children deserve to die in the gutter. Because that is what will happen without any public sector. Or perhaps we should just cull disabled people at birth to save us all some money and - heaven forfend! - ensure no annoying public servants need paying to help care for them.

Won the intellectual argument, my arse. Most of this right-wing thinking is simplicity and stupidity of the highest order as far as I can see. We're already seeing what a failure Osborne's "No Plan B" economic policies have been. The economy is flatlining and will probably fall back into recession later this year. And as for Gove's loony free schools - it's just more of the same protecting the privilege of the rich at the expense of everyone else. Worse, it's actually about diverting public money - including that paid by the poor - back into the pockets of the wealthy.

dollius No, I don't believe the man should be the "head" of the household. I do believe that family is the foundation of our society though.

I believe in universal taxpayer funding of basic healthcare, with local suitably qualified but democratically elected commissioners controlling the rationing - but certainly not taxpayer provision. The NHS has been one of Britain's biggest mistakes since its inception because of this fundamental error.

Just look at who is squealing at the free schools/academies policies. The unions, the Labour left, local education authorities, and quangos. Meanwhile, parents are deciding to send their children there in massively oversubscribed numbers. I adore the fact that the unions are being so comprehensively smashed in.

It will all come to a head with the pension strikes, coming up soon. Everyone who lives in the real world will have no sympathy whatsoever to lazy, unproductive, unionized public sector workers demanding that taxpayers continue to pay for their gold-plated final salary schemes. Hutton's average-salary compromise is a step in the right direction, but he should have gone straight to a full contributory principle - after all, the dinosaur unions were spoiling for a fight anyway.

Civil servants have a crucial role to play in society - but that role does not include running hospitals, running schools, or collecting rubbish. These jobs are better done with intelligent but limited regulation, and without interfering bureaucratic layers upon layers of non-jobbing middle managers.

Slashing the public sector by 75% won't leave enough to pay for what you are talking about. And, frankly, if you are so convinced by Gove et al why don't you ask them to give up their gold-plated pensions first? Tories promised to close the MPs final salary scheme to new accruals when they got into power. A year later and - guess what - it's still open.
MPs need to lead by example - why don't you start with them?
And, I agree that family is foundation of society, but families come in all shapes and sizes and, if you get rid of the public sector, you go back to relying on the unpaid labour of women - and that is where we would be heading.
"Lazy, unproductive, public sector workers" - have you actually met every single one of them? Or do you just rely on the Daily Mail to do your analysis of other people's lives and work ethics for you?

LFN - you might find This article on American School Reforms interesting.

NY Mayor vs the US teaching unions.

"As Albert Shanker, the late, iconic head of the UFT, once pointedly put it, ?When schoolchildren start paying union dues, that?s when I?ll start representing the interests of schoolchildren.? "

"Conservative with a small c means keeping things the same so the rich go on getting richer without pesky poor people stirring up trouble for them or making them share."

Dollios - I don't think that is Obama's motivation for wholesale education reform. Likewise, I don't think Gove is much of a small c conservative either.

Whatever you think of their actions - their motivations are the interests of the children and the wider economy.

Public sector workers generally have an overinflated opinion of their own abilities and what job they could be doing in the private sector. A lot of them are in for a REAL shock once they lose their jobs in the cuts and they realise what things are like in the real world. For too long, the public sector has been used as a make-work scheme for middle-class Labour types.

RobF, I've heard that argument so often. Believe me, having worked in both the public and the private sector, it simply does not hold water.

I watched with great amusement as the first batch of redundant bankers who decided to 'take a backwards step' and 'give something back' came to do their teaching practise at the college I worked in. Not one of them lasted more than 5 weeks. Too much like hard work apparantly.

longfingernails - I think you need some help with such bitterness (privately provided of course). Presumably someone didn't empty your bin one week.

Clear that Longfingernails hasn't actually read the Hutton report! LOL - keep up with the bitter ranting tho' LFG - the entertainment value is superb!

LFN - come and spend a day in my team and then tell me public sector workers are lazy. You have no idea.

Just hoping back up the original post I noticed that it states that the pay gap is a mere 2-4% (almost within statistical variance).

My immediate thought on this is how has it calculated the cost of the pensions.
Now this isn't a major issue when it comes to calculating private sector pensions, the vast majority are Defined Contribution schemes (You put some in, the employer puts some in, end of) so it is very easy to work out what the contribution is.
For Defined Benefit schemes (You put some in, the Employer puts some in, the employer remains on the hook for the difference ) so the discount rate used to calculate this difference is of critical importance.
A small change in the estimations of how much the scheme will grow by (assuming it is properly funded which most DB schemes aren't, public or private) can have a massive impact on the final cost, especially if it is based on a final salary when someone earning potential is at it's peak (but the contributions from both parties have been lower over the course of their career).

Of course trying to introduce DC schemes so everyone knew exactly how much all sides were liable for (A preference of accountants, which I must admit to being) would cause not just strikes but quite possibly a lynch mob outside Downing street.

CT

Remind me, how much are Sports Direct staff getting in their bonuses? And John Lewis?

If Public sector people think they are hard done by, why are they so desperate not to lose their jobs?

Um, because there are no other jobs out there ManicMiner.

Why don't I want to loose my public sector job? Last time I worked in the private sector I was working for morons delivering a pointless service to stupid deadlines for a customer whose product was equally pointless, but they were a bank and were oblivious to waste. The sheer meaningless of it got to me.

There are plenty of frustrations where I work now, ironically mostly due to layers of procedures to keep Daily Telegraph readers happy, so it's like wading through treacle, but ultimately what I'm doing actually benefits large numbers of real people. A side-effect is that my work saves money, improves efficiency and helps the public sector deliver better for less.

Each individual's experience can be different though.

The last time I worked on a public sector project I was totally appalled at how badly the department was run. Everything was completely and utterly overengineered. Projects were overstaffed and the whole thing was like one big gravy train. I lasted two weeks as I don't think my comment that we should just give the minister his bonus and save the country the money he was about the commit on a useless project went down very well.