Huge row over pensions report

cheerfulcat

CIS wrote:

The logic is that people are comparing the occupational age of 60 with the SPA age of 67 as though there's a benefit to being a civil servant, in that can retire up to 7 years early. They can, but only with an occupational pension, not a state pension, exactly the same postition as millions of others.

But it's not an occupational pension in any real meaning of the phrase. It is a form of state pension, funded as it is by the taxpayer. Private sector employees and the self-employed are being told that they will have to work longer in order to afford to retire because their pensions will otherwise be insufficient but at the same time they are having to pay for public sector employees to retire at an earlier age than they can themselves.

djohn2002uk

cheerfulcat wrote:

But it's not an occupational pension in any real meaning of the phrase. It is a form of state pension, funded as it is by the taxpayer. Private sector employees and the self-employed are being told that they will have to work longer in order to afford to retire because their pensions will otherwise be insufficient but at the same time they are having to pay for public sector employees to retire at an earlier age than they can themselves.

How ridiculous.

The vast majority of Civil Servants, and I was one, have ordinary jobs just like people in the private sector, the main difference being that they are mostly paid less than if they had a comparable job in the private sector. Some of the Clerical Assistants are on a pitance, close to the minimum wage, and their pension will reflect this.

All Civil Servants contribute towards their pension just as anyone else would contribute to a company pension. When they retire they can go at 60 on the pension they have accrued,(and not many will have been there anything like 40yrs to get the maximum) but probably can't afford to untill they qualify for the State Pension at 65. No different to a company pension.

As for you as a taxpayer paying for it, again no difference to a company pension. Do you think Mr Tesco pays the pension of his retired staff? (And their bonuses and staff discounts, which Civil Servants don't get) Not on your life. You pay when you shop at Tesco, and not only for Tesco Pensions but the pensions of the companies who sell the branded goods you pick up there too.

Just remember, not all Civil Servants wear a bowler hat, pinstripe suit and carry a brolly and briefcase. The vast majority earn less than the average wage and that will be reflected in their pension, if they can afford to stay there long enough.

CIS

Private sector employees and the self-employed are being told that they will have to work longer in order to afford to retire because their pensions will otherwise be insufficient but at the same time they are having to pay for public sector employees to retire at an earlier age than they can themselves.

Lets even the field then. If private sector have to work longer to fund public sector and then find they cant retire, why dont we compare the schemes of those in the private sector who can afford to retire early against those who cant ?.

Should those who can afford to retire early then be penalised and have their retirement age altered just to level the field ?, Just because they happen to hit lucky with a scheme that provides for them.

Milarky

magaretclare wrote:

I worked with many women who laughed at me, told me I was a fool to pay into the NHS scheme. They deliberately kept their hours below full-time in order to stay out of the scheme. I know several who are now looking at retiring into poverty.

Yes, how often have you come across employers and employees who agreed to only employ/work up to what was previously the 'trigger point' for flat rate national insurance? That was up until 1985, when it was slightly reformed if people recall, but it was not until 1999 that the 'nil rate band' of earnings came in, making such narrow calculations self-defeating [because then both employer and employee only paid NI on the additional earned income - not on the whole.]

I think it was iniquitous that there was ever the choice not to pay into pension schemes. When the married women's contribution option stopped in 1978 it should have stopped altogether even for those paying it at the time. When you think of it, a woman who married in e.g. 1977 is still working but if she has continued to pay smaller contributions all those years then she is looking at retiring into poverty.

Part of the scrapbook of ad hoc changes which passes for pension 'policy'. It's now 2005 and we are only just getting to the stage where the government is having to answer for this complexity [I nearly said 'c**p'] and come up with something better. But as you can see, they have only been able to amend it in bite-sized pieces so far. That does not auger particularly well for their adequately facing up to these latest proposals does it?

I found this item was helpful in underscoring a few significant points:

http://news.independent.co.uk/business/comment/article329705.ece

Whether pensions in the future are more or less 'funded', the ultimate problem is the proportion of working people to retired people - a demographic fact. As Mr King correctly observes, the rise of China [and India] provides the developed world with the kind of 'cheap' labour that will allow us to make more from our pensions savings.

deemy2004

djohn2002uk wrote:

How ridiculous.

Just remember, not all Civil Servants wear a bowler hat, pinstripe suit and carry a brolly and briefcase. The vast majority earn less than the average wage and that will be reflected in their pension, if they can afford to stay there long enough.

I'm sorry but the civil service live in cloud cuckoo land...

At least Tesco is generating wealth, building stores, and supplying food stuffs grown around the world...what do the civil service contrbute.

And NO TEsco pensioners do NOT get their employer pensions funded by the tax payer...

and | would bet that the average tesco worker is on far less wage then the average civil service worker

Yes to be fair they should recieve similar pension deals, i.e. if a tesco worker is forced to retire at 67, then so should the non productive civil service .... errr.. workers..

cheerfulcat

djohn2002uk wrote:

How ridiculous.

The vast majority of Civil Servants, and I was one, have ordinary jobs just like people in the private sector, the main difference being that they are mostly paid less than if they had a comparable job in the private sector. Some of the Clerical Assistants are on a pitance, close to the minimum wage, and their pension will reflect this.

There are no jobs for " five a day coordinators " in the private sector. Nor are there jobs for " peace studies workers ". Extra layers of management are discouraged in the private sector. What are the extra 800,000 civil servants employed by Gordon Brown actually *doing*? Are they producing anything useful ( answer - no ). The vast majority of public sector workers are *not* doctors, nurses, teachers and other useful and necessary people. They are paper shufflers and box tickers.

All Civil Servants contribute towards their pension just as anyone else would contribute to a company pension. When they retire they can go at 60 on the pension they have accrued,(and not many will have been there anything like 40yrs to get the maximum) but probably can't afford to untill they qualify for the State Pension at 65. No different to a company pension.

As for you as a taxpayer paying for it, again no difference to a company pension. Do you think Mr Tesco pays the pension of his retired staff? (And their bonuses and staff discounts, which Civil Servants don't get) Not on your life. You pay when you shop at Tesco, and not only for Tesco Pensions but the pensions of the companies who sell the branded goods you pick up there too.

" Mr Tesco" does not send me demands to pay, nor does he have the power to jail me if I don't shop with him...private sector pensions are paid out of *profit* - in effect the *shareholder*, not the taxpayer, pays for them.

Just remember, not all Civil Servants wear a bowler hat, pinstripe suit and carry a brolly and briefcase. The vast majority earn less than the average wage and that will be reflected in their pension, if they can afford to stay there long enough.

If it's such a lousy deal, why do so many people choose to work in the public sector?

CIS wrote:

Lets even the field then. If private sector have to work longer to fund public sector and then find they cant retire, why dont we compare the schemes of those in the private sector who can afford to retire early against those who cant ?.

Should those who can afford to retire early then be penalised and have their retirement age altered just to level the field ?, Just because they happen to hit lucky with a scheme that provides for them.

I can't think of anyone whose private sector company pension scheme allows them to retire early.

CIS

Peole tend to work in the civil service becuase generally speaking there isnot the job upheavel and redundancy that you get in the private sector. The wages are not great, but the pension can make up for this for people who want to make a career out of it.

And at the end of the day, its a job, and you'll find a lot of the major locations - Longbenton,Norcross etc are in deprived areas where jobs are often hard to get and very welcome when you do.

Nobody denys that there are civil service jobs that are unneccessary, the frontline staff dont like the idea of all of these silly little 'manager for co-ordinationg paperclips' or whatever and they would like to see the layers of management reduced, but you cant blame the gerenal staff for this,

Where I worked, we started off 3 1/2yrs ago with about 100 staff, 1 HEO and 1 SEO. Now they have about 300 staff, but have approx 10 HEO's and 5 SEO's.

If that expansion of management happened in a private company, would the receptionist or the filing clerk be responsible ?, I don't think people would blame them for a minute.

CIS

The early in my post above refers to 60 (maybe early was the wrong word ), my point was, if you and I are in different schemes and reach 60.

My pension is better than yours and i can afford to retire at 60, but you can't , does that mean I should be held back on drawing it to even the field ?, I think most peoples answer would be 'No', after all, I would have worked all my life for that pension.

So, why the wanted difference between the private and public sector ?, you cant start discriminating just because one person works for the private and one for the 'evil' publci sector.

EdInvestor

The irony is that what gets up people's noses most about the public sector is often council tax - but council workers' pensions are not Government funded, they are private, the same as normal company final salary pensions.

That's one reason why you have to pay more council tax, to sort out their deficits.

Worst of both worlds?

CIS

I think at the end of the day, I know there are problems with the civil service, but a lot of it comes down to a them and us mentality, or us versus the establishment.