Public-private wage divide gets 50% wider

carolt

chris_spackman wrote: »

................getting paid £100k plus benefits and expenses(taking taxpayers money and buying things some hard working folk could never afford), pension whilst hard working folk are having theirs wiped out by Bankers and Brown & Co and not stepping foot in the pub as he would not be able to relate to a single person in it.

Gosh, this thread seems to have got rather heated.

Number of public sector workers earning 100K plus per annum = not very many.

It seems the divide and rule policy is working nicely - ensure the little people bicker whilst the ruling elites scarper with the billions in bonuses.

Always the same.

treliac

Old_Slaphead wrote: »

Maybe it's dementia setting in but your first sentence doesn't make sense.

Her future appears to be safe - so's mine (in the short term anyway). I work very, very hard for several small manufacting businesses. Given nil support from this Government we're still making a profit and have a fullish order book. One of a dying breed probably.

Despite your denigration of the public sector, I'm sure you both appreciate the benefits of your partner's income as well as your own.

As helenjg suggests, it's difficult to compare jobs on a like for like basis. As you know, many of the very low paid jobs have been outsourced by councils, though they are still funded from the public purse and serve local communities. I would argue that highly paid staff are a small minority in the scheme of things and comprise middle to senior, professional, managers and executive level staff.

FWIW I've worked in both private and public sectors. I've never worked unpaid overtime in any other setting as I have as a frontline public service worker, nor found the work so demanding or with a sense of satisfaction and the personal value of having given something back to society.

Old_Slaphead

treliac wrote: »

Despite your denigration of the public sector, I'm sure you both appreciate the benefits of your partner's income as well as your own.

As helenjg suggests, it's difficult to compare jobs on a like for like basis. As you know, many of the very low paid jobs have been outsourced by councils, though they are still funded from the public purse and serve local communities. I would argue that highly paid staff are a small minority in the scheme of things and comprise middle to senior, professional, managers and executive level staff.

FWIW I've worked in both private and public sectors. I've never worked unpaid overtime in any other setting as I have as a frontline public service worker, nor found the work so demanding or with a sense of satisfaction and the personal value of having given something back to society.

Have I denigrated the public sector ? If so, when & how?

Certainly I appreciate and benefit from my partner's working in public sector. That doesn't stop me having a view that the gold plated pension is now grossly unfair given that the original reason for the scheme was to compensate for the generally lower pay levels. This is now manifestly not the case needs correcting.

On the subject of job comparison - it's impossible to compare public vs private - it's impossible to compare jobs even in the same organisation.

Regards unpaid overtime - many jobs in private sector work unpaid overtime as presumably they do in public sector. However the latter also seems to get much better holidays and job security and takes much more sick leave as further added bonuses.

Don't get me wrong my only real gripe is the pensions issue. Given that their now sems to be no-one suggesting that public sector are lower paid anymore, then equality should also be introduced in the pension provision field too.

Dylanwing

I have worked in both, and private sector is better in good times, and in hard times, public sector is better. If you look at where the private sector do things that public setor workers used to do, generally wages are lower, staff numbers are inadequate, quality is poor, cost is greater, and a handful of Directors are getting very rich.

treliac

Old_Slaphead wrote: »

Have I denigrated the public sector ? If so, when & how?

Certainly I appreciate and benefit from my partner's working in public sector. That doesn't stop me having a view that the gold plated pension is now grossly unfair given that the original reason for the scheme was to compensate for the generally lower pay levels. This is now manifestly not the case needs correcting.

On the subject of job comparison - it's impossible to compare public vs private - it's impossible to compare jobs even in the same organisation.

Regards unpaid overtime - many jobs in private sector work unpaid overtime as presumably they do in public sector. However the latter also seems to get much better holidays and job security and takes much more sick leave as further added bonuses.

Don't get me wrong my only real gripe is the pensions issue. Given that their now sems to be no-one suggesting that public sector are lower paid anymore, then equality should also be introduced in the pension provision field too.

Your first post on this thread for a start:-

Genuine question : does your team add any value to the transaction, or does it perpetuate a level of bureaucracy that arises at each end (ie import and export) of the deal?

The rhetoric and stereotyping gets us nowhere.

I suppose your OH tells you about all the sick leave. Well my OH works for a major retailer and tells me about some of the high sick leave they have. And for myself, I think I have had about 3 days in the past 3 years; can't remember when I was last sick.

Our holiday entitlement compares similarly and we could go on.....

Local govt job security may be better for some but it very much depends on area of work and I think there will be cuts to come, often by the back door - by not recruiting to vacancies. They don't want to pay redundancy.

But I very much take issue over rates of pay and the so-called statistics that assert a 'like for like' equality of pay. I don't see that evidenced at all. And I could tell you that my OH is in a good pension scheme, better than the LGPS, which is true, but probably unfair as I do know it is not now the norm in the private sector even if it should be.

helenjg

Cannon_Fodder wrote: »

At least the stats have the benefit of being in measured millions, smoothing out regional/age/career/bias factors etc etc etc.


i.e. your Master/degree example; How many jobs actually NEED a degree?

Or is it just bias of the Establishment, to recruit "their kind of people"...a kind of institutional snobbishness?

All of the people with degrees are in jobs that require those degrees. I didn't count the admin staff that have degrees but aren't using them iykwim.

Old_Slaphead

treliac wrote: »

Your first post on this thread for a start:-
The rhetoric and stereotyping gets us nowhere.

I suppose your OH tells you about all the sick leave. Well my OH works for a major retailer and tells me about some of the high sick leave they have. And for myself, I think I have had about 3 days in the past 3 years; can't remember when I was last sick.

My posting asked a genuine question to a specific individual poster - it was NOT a sweeping generalisation about the public sector as a whole as you seem to think. You seem to be trying to make an issue where there is not one.

Again, I don't believe I have denegrated the public sector - I know a great many people that work there and most do provide a valued service. I do have issues with the abundant apparent layers of bureaucracy, much of which appears wasteful - a view shared by many other employees.

I also have issues with the provision of generous pensions given that the present government has done all it can to devalue the pensions for non-public sectors workers. Is it fair and can the future taxpayers afford this staggering cost?

As regards sickness - not "in house" anecdotal evidence - here's a recent link :

http://www.cbi.org.uk/ndbs/press.nsf/0363c1f07c6ca12a8025671c00381cc7/90ab71d2f4d981da8025744200523b87?OpenDocument

Slightly more tongue-in-cheek I was talking to a teacher yesterday who was (jokingly) complaining that he only managed 3 days off school last week and thought schools should have been closed all week (many of us managed to get to work on all 5 days).

carolt

Old_Slaphead wrote: »

Slightly more tongue-in-cheek I was talking to a teacher yesterday who was (jokingly) complaining that he only managed 3 days off school last week and thought schools should have been closed all week (many of us managed to get to work on all 5 days).

Yes - that was, as you correctly point out, a joke.

As a teacher, I usually drag myself into teach even if I'm v ill - because whilst an office won't care if it has an empty chair, a room full of students will certainly notice and suffer if the teacher is off sick. It's very hard for teachers to be off sick - and I'm not alone. Can only think of 1 day in all the days my eldest 2 have been at school when either of them had a teacher off sick. Likewise, when I was at school, I can't actually recall a single day of teachers being absent through sickness - lots of teachers coming in with dreadful colds (including a memorable home economics lesson where she sneezed into the scotch eggs we were making...never been able to look at one since!), having lost their voices etc.

I think you'd find teachers have far, far lower sick days off than most.

Old_Slaphead

carolt wrote: »

Yes - that was, as you correctly point out, a joke.

As a teacher, I usually drag myself into teach even if I'm v ill - because whilst an office won't care if it has an empty chair, a room full of students will certainly notice and suffer if the teacher is off sick. It's very hard for teachers to be off sick - and I'm not alone. Can only think of 1 day in all the days my eldest 2 have been at school when either of them had a teacher off sick. Likewise, when I was at school, I can't actually recall a single day of teachers being absent through sickness - lots of teachers coming in with dreadful colds (including a memorable home economics lesson where she sneezed into the scotch eggs we were making...never been able to look at one since!), having lost their voices etc.

I think you'd find teachers have far, far lower sick days off than most.

It was as you/I said, said jokingly.

I have absolutely no knowledge one way or the other but would be interested to see any evidence you have which supports your claim (not that I'm disputing it).

If what you (re teachers) and the CBI (re public sector as a whole) say is true then the rest of public sector must be taking way above average sickies.

carolt

Can't speak for public sector as a whole - only re teachers.

I can well believe public sector do take more sickies, if not as individuals, then prob some on long-term sickness bump up the averages, as public sector workers do have better job security so can do that. Definitely a perk in a lot of the public sector - but not one that many people use, as there aren't that many long-term sick.

Still fundamentally disagree that public sector workers are paid better, even taking benefits/pensions into acccount than private sector workers doning the same job.

eg private school teachers paid more than state school ones, I can assure you!