Discontent that will end the Tory Govt is coming

[Blue Boy 63]

 

[BeerIsTheBest]

Glad you admit it.

The private sector by and large hasn't needed strikes to get pay rises higher than the public sector. Employers have to pay more to recruit and retain staff. In the public sector the government just doesn't care about staff shortages caused by low wages (and lies about the numbers).

On the railways, privatisation brought little competition for the passengers but it did bring competition for staff (driver pay shot up) and train companies settled separately with the unions. The Financial Times explains:

"In the pre-Covid era, the train operators were able to negotiate with the unions on an individual basis rather than collectively, making accommodations easier to come by. That changed when the pandemic ended the franchising model and the train companies became fee-driven operators bearing none of the revenue risk, with the taxpayer taking it on instead. And with the government standing behind the budget, it inevitably ends up setting the terms of the pay package. That leaves employers — bunched together as the Rail Delivery Group — stuck trying to agree tricky nationwide reforms such as driver-only operated trains that, while acceptable on some parts of the network, are a red rag to the RMT union on others."

Why private sector strikes are not all about the money

Disputes at Royal Mail and the railways will not be solved with pay rises alone

www.ft.com

Vic
Thanks for sharing the FT piece. I have experienced businesses (Printing and roadside vehicle rescue) where a defined group of employees have, over time garnered the most attractive T&Cs and normally enjoy higher annual wage rises or incentives or improvements due to their importance to the organisation.
in footie terms I suppose it’s a bit like KDB earring more than other, more mortal players. Imagine the cost implications of having to give every player on our staff the same percentage increase as Kev?
Trying to appease all working groups in a organisation with highly skilled, highly valued employees and others with less skills during a period of rampant inflation is tricky at the best of times. You’ve got to go back quite a few years when this challenge really existed.
Maybe unsurprising that the gvmt didnt think this through when awarding contracts. I bet nobody senior now in gvmt has directly negotiated with unions in a high inflation time or thought that the nuances of pay budget was deeper than just a vanilla increase across all employees, irrespective of job role. More likely nobody was really bothered about doing thoughtful budgeting homework.
Personally I like to think that Sunak will capitulate on nurses. Don’t know what they can do with organisations like rail where they have dug a really deep hole.

 

[BringBackSwales]

What a lot of people don’t take account of is the enormous difference between public and private sector pensions. The majority of private sector companies stopped Defined Benefit employers closed their DB schemes to new employees decades ago, and most now don’t even use them for employees who were previously in them, and have replaced them with massively less beneficial Defined Contribution schemes. The public sector still use Defined Benefit scheme, and these produce hugely better pensions per pound if payroll. In private companies any deficit on scheme future payments versus scheme assets goes onto the company’s balance sheet. In the public sector this isn’t counted on the Government’s debt; I attended a pension seminar 20 years ago and the hidden public sector debt was said to be over 2 TRILLION pounds, it is now closer to 3 TRILLION pounds and increases every year - this is real debt but not counted as debt, and is actually a bigger value than the whole of the country’s officially published debt. Three things come to mind from this (1) it is a real but rarely acknowledged differential of public v private sector pay (2) it means the country is more ducked than we think it is (3) it’s political suicide for any government that tries to do anything about it.

 

[The Light Was Yellow Sir]

Are there any private sector companies striking?...no, they can’t hold a gun at the private sectors collective head!
Are we all in this ‘belt tightening together? Are we fuck!
where does the money come from to pay an extra 17-20%?

Mass delusion on a grand scale.

 

[law74]

What a lot of people don’t take account of is the enormous difference between public and private sector pensions. The majority of private sector companies stopped Defined Benefit employers closed their DB schemes to new employees decades ago, and most now don’t even use them for employees who were previously in them, and have replaced them with massively less beneficial Defined Contribution schemes. The public sector still use Defined Benefit scheme, and these produce hugely better pensions per pound if payroll. In private companies any deficit on scheme future payments versus scheme assets goes onto the company’s balance sheet. In the public sector this isn’t counted on the Government’s debt; I attended a pension seminar 20 years ago and the hidden public sector debt was said to be over 2 TRILLION pounds, it is now closer to 3 TRILLION pounds and increases every year - this is real debt but not counted as debt, and is actually a bigger value than the whole of the country’s officially published debt. Three things come to mind from this (1) it is a real but rarely acknowledged differential of public v private sector pay (2) it means the country is more ducked than we think it is (3) it’s political suicide for any government that tries to do anything about it.

Maybe you should attend another seminar soon because public sector pensions, which were ALWAYS sold as deferred pay, have changed massively in the last ten years (see the McCloud judgement), with pensionable age rising for females from 60 to 67 or depending on age 68, and pension changing from final salary to average earnings, at the same time as wages have been cut year on year, up to 20% in real terms.

This struggle is NOT about public sector V's Private Sector, it is workers against the landed gentry and the obscenely wealthy that want to deprive us of even the crumbs from their table.

At a time when the average earnings of CEO's in the FTSEtop 100 has risen by 39% in the
Last 12 months, while workers wages have dropped at a faster rate since the industrial revolution, it is time for change.

 

[BringBackSwales]

Maybe you should attend another seminar soon because public sector pensions, which were ALWAYS sold as deferred pay, have changed massively in the last ten years (see the McCloud judgement), with pensionable age rising for females from 60 to 67 or depending on age 68, and pension changing from final salary to average earnings, at the same time as wages have been cut year on year, up to 20% in real terms.

This struggle is NOT about public sector V's Private Sector, it is workers against the landed gentry and the obscenely wealthy that want to deprive us of even the crumbs from their table.

At a time when the average earnings of CEO's in the FTSEtop 100 has risen by 39% in the
Last 12 months, while workers wages have dropped at a faster rate since the industrial revolution, it is time for change.

The point about 20 years ago was the deficit in public sector pension schemes, which is resl but not included in any figures for national debt. It was two trillion pounds, it is now closer to three trillion. It’s getting bigger and it has to be paid for. Nobody can afford to pay for that, even the cunting rich

 

[Vic]

Vic
Thanks for sharing the FT piece. I have experienced businesses (Printing and roadside vehicle rescue) where a defined group of employees have, over time garnered the most attractive T&Cs and normally enjoy higher annual wage rises or incentives or improvements due to their importance to the organisation.
in footie terms I suppose it’s a bit like KDB earring more than other, more mortal players. Imagine the cost implications of having to give every player on our staff the same percentage increase as Kev?
Trying to appease all working groups in a organisation with highly skilled, highly valued employees and others with less skills during a period of rampant inflation is tricky at the best of times. You’ve got to go back quite a few years when this challenge really existed.
Maybe unsurprising that the gvmt didnt think this through when awarding contracts. I bet nobody senior now in gvmt has directly negotiated with unions in a high inflation time or thought that the nuances of pay budget was deeper than just a vanilla increase across all employees, irrespective of job role. More likely nobody was really bothered about doing thoughtful budgeting homework.
Personally I like to think that Sunak will capitulate on nurses. Don’t know what they can do with organisations like rail where they have dug a really deep hole.

From rail to farmers via nurses, the message is the same. The Tories aren't listening. Staff shortages in so many area because wages are better elsewhere or they just can't get the staff. (Latest is 45,000 visas for seasonal farm workers, NFU reckoned 55,000 needed - and coming from places like Nepal and possibly taking on debt to get here so effective modern slavery, rather than the regular EU returnees who know what they're doing without fresh training.) The cost of agency workers, reliance on rest day working, and in the case of rail a terrible service so fewer passengers travel and more subsidy needed unless services are cut further.

 

[gordondaviesmoustache]

From rail to farmers via nurses, the message is the same. The Tories aren't listening. Staff shortages in so many area because wages are better elsewhere or they just can't get the staff. (Latest is 45,000 visas for seasonal farm workers, NFU reckoned 55,000 needed - and coming from places like Nepal and possibly taking on debt to get here so effective modern slavery, rather than the regular EU returnees who know what they're doing without fresh training.) The cost of agency workers, reliance on rest day working, and in the case of rail a terrible service so fewer passengers travel and more subsidy needed unless services are cut further.

You should put all that on the side of a bus…

 

[ganganvince]

Are there any private sector companies striking?...no, they can’t hold a gun at the private sectors collective head!
Are we all in this ‘belt tightening together? Are we fuck!
where does the money come from to pay an extra 17-20%?

Mass delusion on a grand scale.

Royal Mail, BT just gone back in. Greene King, InBev, Amazon voted to go out of top of my head

 

[bluethrunthru]

Its also worth noting that in a widely reported poll 1 in 10 of 18 - 24 year olds thats a quarter of a million youngsters say they are never going to look for work. They will live at home - do the odd side hustle to get a bit of spending money and thats it.

Why would they do that you ask?

Because they know that basically they are in a society where education and work doesn't pay for every one. You get a degree and end up flipping burgers - you get a "good" job like a nurse or a social worker - they see strikes and how unrewarding that work is. They will never be able to own their own home - its hardly likely they will be able to rent and enjoy any sort of social life - they don't want to clean stations or streets so they are just opting out.