Public-sector strike: does it get your support? Please vote in our Facebook poll

[HelenMumsnet]

Morning.

We'd love to know how you feel about Wednesday's public-sector strike action. Does it get your support - or not?

We've put up a little poll on our Facebook page to help us find out. Please do click and vote.

Thanks v much, MNHQ

I would also like to add (to the previous post looking at civil service pensions) the average private sector employer contribution is 6% of employees wage into their pension scheme (so even in the private sector the pension pot would hopefully not just consist of the employees contribution).

inhibernation. I would say that I am more frustrated than hostile. This will be my last post on the subject because as you say my views are probably too entrenched to progress although I would suggest that being prepared to walk out on strike despite the effect on other people is a pretty entrenched position as well.
You seem to suggest that I because I dont agree with the strike, that I dont show support for the wonderful work done by the school that our child attends. That is a trifle insulting as, as a total stranger, you cannot possibly know the level of support that we give the school.
My husband's personal private pension is now worth a fraction of its original forecasted value and there isn't a darn thing we can do about it. We have also been told to pay more and to work longer so our situations aren't a whole lot different. If the government were to maintain your current pensions deal then we may well be asked, to not only pay more to sustain ourselves, but, also, more to sustain the public sector pensions and we just wouldn't be able to afford it.
My child doesn't understand politics, financial problems or strikes...he's just trying to make sense of a confusing world. My job is to help him find his way and keep him on an even keel as much as possible in order to maintain a decent quality of life. I defend my right to criticise ANYONE who deliberately makes that job harder.

Many many people have no pensions. You don't get one if you're self employed unless you set one up and make 010% of the contributions. Many people are employed in companies where the company is too small even to hvae to offer a non contributory stake holder pension.

So it is not true that every one but public sector workers has an employer's pension. It is not true that non public sector workers have an employer's pension into which the employer contributes. And the self employed who can pay a lot of tax get nothing unless they contribute themselves 100%.

The strikes are not likely to affect the amount of money we have for public sector workers except I suppose it may hasten the redundancies in the public sector so there will be fewer public sector workers whose pensions have to be paid.

Ah, but the self employed person benefits from being able to pay pension contributions out of gross not net income, so saves an awful lot of tax. They can sell their company and/or the building they base it in (if they are clever enough to have the freehold) and keep all but 18% of the profits. They can award themselves bonuses in good times, they can take on extra work to up their income, especially if they are hourly paid. If it all goes wrong the rest of us pick up the tab for their healthcare, kids education, rent and so on, which lets them take greater risks. It's fallacious to strip all this out of the equation and only compare the size of notional pension pots.

In big companies where employer contributions are made the average is 6% employer contributions-public sector workers I feel would certainly count here. Of small businesses (5 employees and under) only circa 5% have employer contributions. In the private sector 42% of male employees have employer contributions and 31% of female employees.

www.public-sector-pensions-commission.org.uk/wp-content/themes/pspc/images/Public-Sector-Pensions-Commission-Report.pdf

Very few people are self employed. So it's back to trying to compare apples with apples. It's unfair to try and compare the average public sector worker of whom there are many to a self employed person whom are but a few.

Ditto with the union examples comparing an average public sector worker to a director of a FTSE100 company which I saw the other day.

As this post so neatly points out: It?s the generosity of employer contributions in the public sector that will still make it a more generous package, according to many experts, even if the Government?s proposals are implemented.

C4 Factcheck

"Ah, but the self employed person benefits from being able to pay pension contributions out of gross not net income, so saves an awful lot of tax."

But this is the same for everyone paying into private pensions. I know lots of public sector workers making additional deposits into a second pension scheme and claiming tax relief.

Curbs to the scheme (and I agree with these) includes the new rules for 2011/12. As follows:

■ The maximum annual allowance (for tax free relief = AA) will be reduced from £255,000
to £50,000 (subject to the usual limit of 100% of
relevant earnings for the year).

■ The rate of tax relief on pension contributions will
continue to be available at the individual's
marginal income tax rate (and will not be
restricted to 40% ).
no net tax relief will be available on excess
contributions.

■ To determine whether or not the £50,000 AA has
been exceeded, deemed contributions to defined benefit schemes will be calculated using a flat October 2010 Tax relief on pension contributions in 2011/12 Making pension contributions remains a highly tax-efficient way
to save for retirement but the tax relief available is to be reduced
effectively from 14 October 2010 for some individuals.
factor of 16 times (currently 10 times) the increase
in the annual pension benefit during the pension
input period (plus the increase in value of the
lump sum). The draft legislation does, however,
allow for an inflationary increase on salary to be
ignored in determining the increase in the value of
an active scheme member's pension fund.

■ Where individuals exceed the AA in a given year,
unused allowances from the three previous tax
years will be available to offset against the excess
pension savings.

■ From 2012/13, the overall lifetime allowance for
an individuals pension funds will be reduced to
£1.5 million (funds that exceed this limit when
pension benefits are taken will suffer a penalty
charge of 55% on the excess if the excess is
taken as a lump sum, 25% if taken in the form of a
pension).

Sorry the weird numbers at the start were neat bullet points before I posted

In summary the self employed tax relief on pension contributions is available to all. They are now putting in place limits as to how much tax relief is available esp in respct of high earners (both parties are in agreement this needs to be curbed though both have different ways in implementing it).

Financial Times this morning: retail sales up 38% on the day of the strike compared with normal Wednesday. Strikers seem to have had time for a little seasonal shopping and parents at home with children seem to have resorted to retail therapy, too. As I speculated on the day, the strike might prove to be unexpectedly good for the economy.

blossom - you didn't really answer my question so I'll draw the inference that whilst you value the work your child's teachers do, you don't really care about their remuneration package. I asked you how (if you do care about their t+c) they were supposed to protest other than by striking. The fact that your pensions have depreciated is terrible - but it's not a race to the bottom is it?

If we start to see teachers leaving in droves (ditto nurses and other professionals paid a low wage for hours worked, taking into account years training and academic profile) who will you blame then? The public sector workers who left to better their prospects or the government? Imo your frustration with striking workers is misplaced.

I've been working for the NHS for 17 years, only gap being maternity leave. I am proud to work for the NHS but sad that increasingly this is not reciprocal. I came into the profession knowing that the salary would never be great. Initally, I didn't give much thought to the pension (indeed I couldn't even afford it at first, so deferred joining the scheme) but as time went by it became one of the things that served as an incentive to stay. If I worked on the front-line, so to speak, (as indeed I did for 6 years), I would not strike. Even though me going on strike caused minimal disruption and I was supported by all my patients, it was still a decision I took with a heavy heart. I appreciate what you say about it being my choice to strike - yes it was my choice. The way in which my t+c are being eroded is not my choice and I haven't been consulted about it. In fact the DOH hadn't even issued a revised pensions calculator but they issued a statement on a work website saying they believed it still offered staff a good pension. Even now, no one has told me what I stand to get on retirement, I've had to try and work it out myself. That tells me how little I am valued.

So in the end I'll have the choice to stay (with no pension) or go to the private sector/agency nursing where pension will be crap or non-existent but pay will be better. Or turn my hand to something else. And yes that will be my choice too - but, like striking, it's not a choice I wanted to have to make.

inhibernation == where will the nurses and teachers etc who "leave in droves" go?!? do they think they'll have better t&c's in the private sector? or do they think they'll live better without working at all?

No one is "racing to the bottom" (an odd expression that keeps coming up in this discussion). Those of us who oppose the reason for this particular strike do so because it's just doesn't make economic sense for the public sector to continue to receive such generous pensions. Pensions must be tied to the amount contributed to a pension fund throughout one's career. And, as people live longer, people must work longer to finance a pension.
As the strike doesn't seemt to have inconvenienced many people and as it seems to have given a boost to retail sales, I'm happy for you to keep striking .... as long as policy makers hold firm and don't yield to arguments from union leaders who appear to be economically illiterate.

For goodness sakes, please give over with the "salary will never be great" bolleaux!!

You're never going to win people over if you continue the "how hard done by we are" attitude when the majority of people work full time for around half of the starting salary for nurses/teachers!

The 'race to the bottom' rhetoric is ill judged. And it sits very badly with the alternative slogan of 'fair pensions for all'. Essentially, when you consider the two statements it seems that public sector workers acknowledge that private sector pensions are shit and think that that is right and proper (because their plea for fairness applies only to themselves not others).

The only way there is going to be a fair resolution for all this is if the low to averagely paid public sector workers divorce their fight from the people at the top end of the scale who are looking at pensions of 70K pa or more. With huge lump sum payouts as well. This means ordinary teachers not providing industrial muscle to help head teachers, lecturers not providing muscle to help VCs, Local authority workers not supporting the claims of chief execs. Those are the people with the gilt added pensions, those are the people getting employer contributions of up to 25% in some schemes, those are the people who are using everyone else to protect their own fat cat conditions.

"The majority of people work full time for around half of the starting salary for nurses/teachers!" - do they? 10K, is that the average salary for a degree educated professional?

I agree with Theta on this. I'm not going to have it that 21K or even 37K (which is the top of Band 7 in the NHS and as far as people rise without becoming managers with less clinical duties) is a massive salary these days for professional work that makes a solid contribution to our society. However, there are people at the top end in the public sector who have quite substantial salaries for doing work that is often of questionable public benefit that should have been targeted first. I don't know if that was in the union or the goverment's interest politically though, so people who do decent work for not a lot of pay are shafted while fat cat conditions persist.

I also think everyone needs to take more personal responsibility for saving what they can when they can and learn not to be so reliant on the state and/or the conditions laid out by whatever employer they happen to be working under at that time. How many of us can truly say we will be working for the same employer in 10, 20, 30 years time? It seems silly to rely on this in this day and age.

adavent - who exactly are you comparing us with when you make your strange suggestion that it's a great starting salary? Not degree educated professionals - and I bet even if you can find an appropriate example, the salary for the equivalent role will rise more steeply.

posadas - the race to the bottom comment was in response to blossom (and others on here) who seem to think it's ok for public sector workers to have a shit pension because they themselves have seen their own pension funds diminish. Of course I don't think it's ok for private sector employees to have a shit pension. Don't be stupid - of course I can't survive without working And neither would I want to. Fwiw I'd consider agency nursing (very well paid), retraining or moving abroad. Increased pay would enable me to invest i.e. in a buy to let for example. By the way, thanks for santioning my strike action. That will certainly influence me in my future decision making.

There are several issues here (in no particular order):

1. Attitudes to public sector workers and how much value people assign to the work they do
2. Affordability of public sector pensions
3. The provision of fair pensions for all
4. How we recruit and retain key workers with increasingly less favourable packages

I'm sure there are many more issues as well to do with how the government spends our money.

The average wage in the UK is in the region of £26,000 pa. Half the country does not work for £10,500 or less. It works for £26,000 or less.

Inhibernation, if you take the time to read the link to the C4 factchecker website i posted earlier and have a good hunt around the BBC website, you will find that in actual fact where once upon a time it certainly was true that public sector workers were paid less than in the private sector, this gap is gone and certainly for the last few years in actual fact public sector wages were higher than in private.

So forgive me if I think your idea that switching to the private sector will get you higher pay is flawed.

Boffinmum
sadly that is not correct
the Average (mean) wage is indeed around £26,000 but as the minimum can go no lower than zero while the maximum can go into Hedge Fund manager millions, the distribution of salaries is not symmetrical around the mean.
If you look at the data on here en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Income_in_the_United_Kingdom
you can see that the median wage with equal numbers of people above and below it is around £18,500
less than 1% of taxpayers earn over £150,000 but some of them do so by HUGE amounts

inhibernation
Shit pensions are all there will ever be from now on unless people are willing to put aside up to 30% of their earnings today to pay for not working tomorrow.
Pensions were a good idea when they were thought up.
Now they are an anachronism. The VAST majority of people over 65 are able to work part time at something (hence why B&Q recruits so many of them). Work is good for health and self esteem.
"Retirement" will be looked back on in 100 years as a 20th century daft idea.

"The majority of people work full time for around half of the starting salary for nurses/teachers!" - do they? 10K, is that the average salary for a degree educated professional?

Some facts (2009/10, full-time degree graduates):

Check out chart 9 Higher Education Statistics Agency

Less than 60% of graduates are in full time employment (although of course some will have chosen to continue studying/do voluntary work but we don't know how many felt this was their only option as opposed to being unemployed).

Of those in employment:
More than 70% of full-time graduates are earning less than £25
About 20% earn less than 15k
Approx 1% earn less than 10k

niceguy - sorry I can't find your link. If you have time, please can you reference the time/date you posted it. I'm not disputing that some public sector workers get paid more than their privately employed counterparts. I can only speak in an informed way about my own profession. I think some of you are drawing the inference that I assume you are all paid more to do a similar job. No, I'm not. I'm saying I could earn significantly more working as a agency nurse on a contract, or have a better remuneration package working as a privately employed nurse (taking into account other perks such as private healthcare etc.) And if I don't have a pension it's something I need to consider. Alternatively, I could retrain. Or indeed move (certainly out of London). What I'm saying is that people like me will be considering their options carefully and a possible consequence is that there may be serious repercussions in terms of recruitment and retention of some keyworkers, and possibly more so in areas where the cost of living is high. But I don't doubt we will fill nursing or teacher posts as there are always overseas qualified professionals who want to work in the UK for a period - they might not stay, but perhaps no one is bothered about that.

The NHS actively encourages people to stay in the NHS, giving extra annual leave to staff with long service as an incentive - pension another incentive. Of course, that may all change now. But recruitment is very expensive - and keeping up with all the administrative stuff such as registration, CRB checks etc.......I foresee that being a real headache for NHS trusts if they have a high turnover of staff.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-14028848

as an agency nurse you would no longer get fully paid sick pay, holiday pay, bank holidays, maternity leave and agencies do not pay into pensions

you are welcome to retrain - and then join the queues of highly trained people at JobCentreplus

Talkingpeace - I know all of that. I have plenty of colleagues who do very well on agency salaries even taking into account the loss of paid leave. Think you are missing my point that I would consider it because I won't have a pension. I can't afford the proposed hikes so effectively I will no longer have a pension.