Strike

[Blue Punter]

From my experience, I have to say that's absolute bollocks. I know plenty of people in the private sector and on average they earn more than people with similar roles in the public sector. Not to mention other perks and freebies such as business lunches, racetrips, private boxes and all sorts of corporate hospitality offered up under the guise of entertaining.

I started in the Civil Service in 1998 as a graduate on a 3 month fixed appointment. The annual salary for that post was £7,800. In comparison to similar clerical jobs in the private sector, it was the lowest paid job by far in the job centre. At the time, the pension wasn't a great incentive to me, I was only supposed to be there 3 months as a stopgap. But I soon deduced from colleagues how important it was to them. It was something that had been agreed and in some way offset the disadvantage of the low wages many people were on.

Your knowledge of the private sector is obviously limited - as I work in the private sector as do numerous friends. The only friends I have who do well out of hospitality are in the building game. I have been in the private sector for over 10 years and never offered any football tickets, racetrips and we get £25 a head for christmas. We do not get a pension.

Also, why did you take the lowest paid job when the pension was not a concern to you?

Why do you keep making incorrect assumptions about me? Stating my knowledge of the public sector is limited. Apart from people I know personally in the private sector a lot of my work involves working and liasing alongside some of the biggest multinationals (as well as the smallest of SME's) in the UK over a huge variety of trade sectors. So in reality I probably understand as much, if not more than you do.

As for taking the lowest paid job, there was a multitude of reasons. Several posts available, location, immediacy of start & I had friends who worked there.
Hope that helps.

 

[Blue Punter]

The assumption there is that you had the option of getting a superior salary elsewhere. In the main it's a myth that the private sector is filled with high salaries when compared to those offered by the public sector. Your average private sector employee will be struggling along on a not great salary, whilst having to accept wage freezes and changes to pensions/terms and conditions just like your average public sector employee.

From my experience, I have to say that's absolute bollocks. I know plenty of people in the private sector and on average they earn more than people with similar roles in the public sector. Not to mention other perks and freebies such as business lunches, racetrips, private boxes and all sorts of corporate hospitality offered up under the guise of entertaining.

I started in the Civil Service in 1998 as a graduate on a 3 month fixed appointment. The annual salary for that post was £7,800. In comparison to similar clerical jobs in the private sector, it was the lowest paid job by far in the job centre. At the time, the pension wasn't a great incentive to me, I was only supposed to be there 3 months as a stopgap. But I soon deduced from colleagues how important it was to them. It was something that had been agreed and in some way offset the disadvantage of the low wages many people were on.

Not having a dig at you but have to say workers in SOME areas of the Public Sector have it easy. I have worked in both sectors and I have noticed a huge contrast.

Whilst yes you do receive some pretty nice perks in the private sector such as business lunches, paid for meals and invitations to events there is also the grim side such as being up at stupid o clock to speak to somebody on the phone in india, staying behind work until 9pm to ensure targets are met, not having stability in your job and every month is a fight for keeping your job.

Public sector jobs are pretty secure as long as you work hard. I have seem some absolute dross during my time in the Civil Service. I witnessed one girl royally take the piss having reduced hours because of 'whip lash'. Another girl went on sick for 3 weeks due to 'stress' co incidentally straight after a manager refused to provide funding for a uni course.

Swings and roundabouts in both sectors.

I agree with you. This shouldn't evolve into a public v private sector debate. It started out as a debate on industrial action.

There was a similar one from CityKev who works in the private sector a while back and my sentiments (and most of the other people on this thread) were exactly the same. Basically stand up for your rights.

 

[George Hannah]

do you think a work pension is a bad thing then -if we don't all have one nobody should?

No, but if the terms needs to be altered because of of a longer life expentacy you should be able to understand that. Look at Mattys post from a couple of pages back to see the cost difference what a pension was forecast to cost and what it will cost now.

The idea that increasing life expectancy has anything to with the degrading of pensions in either the private or public sectors is a myth. You may have noticed that the statutory retirement age for men and women has been abolished and eligibilty for the state pension continues to be extended. This is at root a consequence of our decline as an economy and the natural tendency for the elite to preserve for itself the maximum protection. It is not surprising for example that the good citizens of Cyprus are upset to see an attempt to suck their savings into the German coffers.

 

[Dalian Blue]

I worked as a civil / public servant in our fair city for almost 14 years (M11 2NS for anyone that would care to look it up) - wife, two kids mortgage to deal with I resigned and six months later was on double salary but the downside was I was living in Riyadh. Another 14 years and I've seen a hell of a lot of Asia, and gone through the divorce routine.
I picked up a contract with a British company in Stockholm, who terminated my contract after 5 and a bit months. I went to the Swedish union, had an interview with two very nice Swedish ladies, one of which was the interpreter, the end of the interview was 'we are going to teach these people a lesson about Swedish labour law' they did.
Bottom line I admire anyone that sticks with the public sector, teaching, prison officers and the fat biro's, they aren't doing it for the money.

 

[Matty]

In that case they can review the shite pay I've had for the last 32 years, the salary I accepted on the understanding that there were certain compensations eg a decent pension.
If I start to pay more towards that pension then they can compensate me by paying some arrears on that shite salary.
Works both ways, but of course that won't happen.

The assumption there is that you had the option of getting a superior salary elsewhere. In the main it's a myth that the private sector is filled with high salaries when compared to those offered by the public sector. Your average private sector employee will be struggling along on a not great salary, whilst having to accept wage freezes and changes to pensions/terms and conditions just like your average public sector employee.

Facts about civil and public services

Since 2004, when the government announced 100,000 posts would be cut from the civil service, tens of thousands of civil and public servants have lost their jobs and about 2,000 offices have been closed.
Pay for many civil servants in recent years has been frozen or increased below the rate of inflation.
And yet, the coalition government plans to make massive cuts in public spending that will inevitably lead to thousands more job cuts, and hit public sector pay and pensions. The new government is also committed to further privatisation of our public services.
While sections of the media and some politicians continue to try to blame the public sector for the country’s economic problems, the truth is that civil and public servants are as much the victims of the recession as other workers.
To help challenge some of the common myths and misconceptions, we provide some facts and figures about public sector pay, pensions and jobs.
Myth 1: civil and public servants are well paid
Myth 2: civil service pensions are ‘gold plated’
Myth 3: civil and public servants are secure in their jobs
Myth 1: civil and public servants are well paid

you might also consider that the average Civil Service "take" is now just under 2 years (i.e. the duration the pension is paid before the retiree expires)

I'm going to ignore Myth 3 as, in order to be a myth it must be something people actively believe. Public Sector jobs are no safer, or at risk, than Private Sector jobs. There is no belief they are "jobs for life".

As for myth 1, no-one believes Public Sector employees are "well paid" or that they have "better pay rises than the Private Sector". What they believe, and rightly so in many cases, is that the Public Sector employees claims that they are far less well rewarded financially, and get much lower pay rises, are disingenuous.

Since 2007, basic pay in the civil service has increased by 6.5% and inflation by 10%, meaning a real terms cut in living standards.

Guess what, the majority of Private Sector employees have also not had a 10% pay rise over the last 5 years so have also had a pay cut in real terms.

Average civil service pay is £22,850 a year, compared to £24,970 in the private sector.

What exactly is the "Private Sector" this is being compared with? Comparable jobs? The Private Sector as a whole? Is £24,970 the average salary for all private sector employees? So, therefore, this includes Carlos Tevez does it with his salary in the millions? Without clarity figures like this are meaningless. It's also not really possible to come up with a "comparable Private Sector" hjob to that of a Public Sector employee. Public Sector jobs cover such a wide and varying range that there is no one comparable role with which to match.

If anything, I'd say a more widely held myth, amongst public sector employees, is that the private sector employee goes home at night and rolls around laughing on a bed of £50 notes.

Myth 2 is really where I wanted to focus, as pensions is what I was talking about previously. Yes, private sector workers do indeed believe that Public Sector pensions are excellent, that they are expensive, unsustainable and unfair. And they are absolutely right to think so, and I say this as someone with a private sector employment history which involves working closely with employee pension schemes.

Pensions in the civil service are far from generous and have been changed recently to a career average scheme.

I almost stopped reading at this point. The fact someone can try and claim that a "career avaerage scheme" is not a "generous" one is laughable. ANY defined benefit scheme is generous, extremely, in the current climate. Try having a defined contribution scheme, and therefore absolutely no clue what your final pension is likely to be, or a stakeholder pension, now peopel with those can attempt to claim their pension is not a generous one (although some of those are still not as bad as others).

The growing gap between public and private sector pensions is the fault of private sector employers retreating from decent pensions. The real divide is between executives in the boardroom securing for themselves large pensions with low retirement ages, and their workforces suffering repeated cuts.

This one actually got me angry. It's Trade Union propaganda 101. Unite the masses by pointing the finger at the "fat cats". And it's demonstratably untrue in the vast majority of cases. I used to have a Final Salary pension. Then it was changed to a career average pension. Now it's a Money Purchase pension. There are no "fat cats" creaming off the money here, there's just a company struggling in the competitive private sector and needing to restructure it's pension to make it affordable.

We all help to pay for private sector pensions through the price of goods and services. And we all help to contribute to public sector pensions through taxation.

Yes, but when I pay for a good or service I actually GET a good or service, that I chose, and I will see some direct benefit from. When I pay tax, and I pay a SHIT LOAD of tax, I have no say what this goes on, and may very well see no benefit whatsoever from some of it. If I pay £25 worth of tax on a good, I get that good. If I pay £25 of tax, and that £25 goes towards paying public sector pensions, where's my benefit now?

Excluding the very highest earners, the average civil service pension is £4,200 a year.
More than 100,000 people receive a civil service pension of £2,000 or less a year: over 40,000 receive less than £1,000, and more than 60,000 get between £1,000 and £2,000.

Another set of useless figures when taken in isolation. How many years service do these people have? Anyone with 2 or more years service will get a pension of some description, if I worked for the public sector for 2 years in the 1980's and I retire in 2013 I'll get a pension from the public sector. It will be a very small one, but that's understandable, I was only paying into it for 2 years. I would fall into the categories you mention above, btu that doesn't mean the pension payout is poor necessarily.

Two and a half times as much public sector money is spent subsidising private sector pensions through tax relief than paying for public sector pensions – 60% of this goes to earners at the higher rate.

Again, useless without surrounding facts. 2.5 times as much spent, ok, but how many more private sector pensions/pension members are there than public sector? Rough figures here, there are approximately 30m people employed in the UK, just over 6m of those are "public sector" employees. So that's a ratio of 1:4, or to put it another way, 5 times as many private sector employees as there are public sector ones....Lets say, for arguments sake, the government cuts, or stops, these tax reliefs. That in turn means huge pension cuts for private sector employees, to pensions that are already far worse than public sector ones in the main. Is that what the public sector workers want here, to royally screw over the private sector employee so they can keep their generous pension?

you might also consider that the average Civil Service "take" is now just under 2 years (i.e. the duration the pension is paid before the retiree expires)

Yet again, a useless figure taken in isolation. What is the average "take" of a private sector employee? Substantially higher? Lower? The same? Are you saying the average public servant dies at age 67? So 1/5th of all employees will die, on average, at 67? Given the average ages men and women live to nowadays are, as I stated earlier, 78 for men and 82 for women, this figure is very hard to accept. It means that private sector employees will live to, approx, 82/3 each. 67 compared to 82/3, seems wrong to me.

I'm not here to slag off the public sector, I just feel they need to understand the employment world outside their public sector bubble and realise that they aren't exactly as downtrodden and undervalued as they thing when compared to the private sector. We too are suffering.

 

[johnmc]

Why do you keep making incorrect assumptions about me? Stating my knowledge of the public sector is limited. Apart from people I know personally in the private sector a lot of my work involves working and liasing alongside some of the biggest multinationals (as well as the smallest of SME's) in the UK over a huge variety of trade sectors. So in reality I probably understand as much, if not more than you do.

As for taking the lowest paid job, there was a multitude of reasons. Several posts available, location, immediacy of start & I had friends who worked there.
Hope that helps.

Well if your work involves working and liasing with people at multinationationals I presume you are dealing with people at or around boardroom level? Would that be ok to presume? As if you believe that racetrips, match tickets and free lunches are the norm for the majority of private sector staff ie shop floor then my opinion would be that you are, in my experience, incorrect. As you say you could well know more than me and you probably do. However my experience is that real perks are few and far between.

Thats an explanation that suits yes.

I appreciate the downsides of the public sector, my brother worked for the council for 10 years up until a year ago before he got the push and his wage was always poor. But I couldnt believe his redundancy package!! Anyway that probably brought his wage up to a decent level over the period and he gets his pension so things not too bad for him out of it. But if we all in this together then your pension needs to be tweaked - not removed or anything, just tweak as it costs far more now and that money has to come from somewhere.

 

[wayne71]

I worked in the public sector for a while and respect a lot of the workers who put in long hours for poor pay. It seems some of the private sector who at one time looked down their noses at the poorly paid public sector workers are now envious of some of the few benefits the public sector actually have.

Hope the strike achieves something mate.

 

[Blue Punter]

Why do you keep making incorrect assumptions about me? Stating my knowledge of the public sector is limited. Apart from people I know personally in the private sector a lot of my work involves working and liasing alongside some of the biggest multinationals (as well as the smallest of SME's) in the UK over a huge variety of trade sectors. So in reality I probably understand as much, if not more than you do.

As for taking the lowest paid job, there was a multitude of reasons. Several posts available, location, immediacy of start & I had friends who worked there.
Hope that helps.

Well if your work involves working and liasing with people at multinationationals I presume you are dealing with people at or around boardroom level? Would that be ok to presume? As if you believe that racetrips, match tickets and free lunches are the norm for the majority of private sector staff ie shop floor then my opinion would be that you are, in my experience, incorrect. As you say you could well know more than me and you probably do. However my experience is that real perks are few and far between.

Thats an explanation that suits yes.

I appreciate the downsides of the public sector, my brother worked for the council for 10 years up until a year ago before he got the push and his wage was always poor. But I couldnt believe his redundancy package!! Anyway that probably brought his wage up to a decent level over the period and he gets his pension so things not too bad for him out of it. But if we all in this together then your pension needs to be tweaked - not removed or anything, just tweak as it costs far more now and that money has to come from somewhere.

The nature of my work means that depending on the circumstances, I come into contact with people at all levels.

 

[johnmc]

I come into contact with people at all levels. Boardroom & shopfloor.

And these shop floor staff get regular perks like match tickets and racetrips?

 

[Matty]

In that case they can review the shite pay I've had for the last 32 years, the salary I accepted on the understanding that there were certain compensations eg a decent pension.
If I start to pay more towards that pension then they can compensate me by paying some arrears on that shite salary.
Works both ways, but of course that won't happen.

The assumption there is that you had the option of getting a superior salary elsewhere. In the main it's a myth that the private sector is filled with high salaries when compared to those offered by the public sector. Your average private sector employee will be struggling along on a not great salary, whilst having to accept wage freezes and changes to pensions/terms and conditions just like your average public sector employee.

From my experience, I have to say that's absolute bollocks. I know plenty of people in the private sector and on average they earn more than people with similar roles in the public sector. Not to mention other perks and freebies such as business lunches, racetrips, private boxes and all sorts of corporate hospitality offered up under the guise of entertaining.

I started in the Civil Service in 1998 as a graduate on a 3 month fixed appointment. The annual salary for that post was £7,800. In comparison to similar clerical jobs in the private sector, it was the lowest paid job by far in the job centre. At the time, the pension wasn't a great incentive to me, I was only supposed to be there 3 months as a stopgap. But I soon deduced from colleagues how important it was to them. It was something that had been agreed and in some way offset the disadvantage of the low wages many people were on.

From my experience, I have to say it isn't. I work in the private sector, always have, so I too know plenty of people who work in this sector. For 14 years I've worked for my company (we've been outsourced twice), I've worked with hundreds of different people over that time, the perks and freebies you mention have simply not been present, in the slightest. I've never been for business lunches, racetrips or in a private box, I don't know anyone that has.

As for the "comparable roles", as I mentioned in another post, it really isn't possible to accurately compare public and private sector roles. Each role, even when on the face of it looking similar, will have it's own different set of responsibilites, activities and consequences that make a like for like comparison impossible. Maybe my job is exactly identical to a public sector job, in terms of title, activities etc. However my job may well be "valued" more by my employer. I might bring in more money, have more of an impact on profitability. The exact same role in two different companies can have 2 different sets of impacts, so two different sets of rewards are understandable.