Public-private wage divide gets 50% wider

MissMoneypenny

ruggedtoast wrote: »

All these threads ever end up as is an exercise in sour grapes. As a public sector worker with a final salary pension (that may if I cling on to my job forever and Gordon doesnt nick it to give to a privately owned bank just about mean I can turn both bars on in my dotage) I apologise for not being as imminently fcked as my private sector brethren.

Unless Britain wins several trillion lotteries, I doubt the money is going to be there for those final salary pensions that some hoped for, so that may be immaterial anyway. I was just interested to know Humpy's view on the whether civil servants should have a market value pension to go with a market value salary.

Linton

MissMoneypenny wrote: »

Ditto

They don't generate any money. Teachers may teach the skills that allow private business to grow on and make money from a business, but they don't make a profit for the country. Their salary is paid for by the private workers.

My maths teachers taught me good maths skills. My university lecturers added to my skills at a higher level. The firm I work for has enhanced those skills and used them to make their business money and in turn pay towards the public purse.

This really is nonsense - businesses do not and could not make a profit in a vacuum. They rely on services provided by the state. To list some of the things they require in order to exist, never mind make a profit...

- supply of educated people entering the business
- a system of law
- a managed currency
- transport infrastructure
- physical protection of their assets and staff - police & defence
- relations with foreign governments to permit exports/imports
- medical care of employees

etc etc

The cost of this essential physical and social environment does not appear in the company accounts - if it did the profits would look rather different! It seems to me that I could make a rather better case that private business and its employees live well off the hard work of state employees than you have done for the reverse.

Your inference that private employees are in some sense superior to those employed by the state is again difficult to justify. To take a binman - if he moves from local authority management to a private company because of outsourcing does his status change on your eyes even though he may be doing the same work for the same money? Is an insurance company middle manager more virtuous than a hospital administrator? Is either in easily identifiable sense generating a profit for the country? Is the bin man?

A better model of the relationship between state and private business is one of symbiosis. Each needs the other to exist and to operate effectively and efficiently.

By the way I spent all my working life in private industry so I am not arguing a personally advantageous case.

ruggedtoast

Jasper27 wrote: »

. I earn £18000 a year at the top of my scale, consultants can earn £1000 a day! Most of the public sector workers in this country are lower grades on less than average earnings, I don't know what we've done to deserve some of the vitriol and bile flying around this thread.

What you've done is put the seed of doubt into some peoples minds that you might not be a hardworking family.

Seriously though, anyone inhabiting this kind of forum probably feels disenfranchised in some way. If a person who couldnt afford a house for years then has to start worrying about their job just as prices start to come down, they look for people to blame.

It was reckless Cityboys and exploitative fatcats before, now its the bloated public sector bureaucrats . Neither group really exists, except as a mirror for peoples insecurities, we've all been sold down the swanny so why resent one another?

Personally I think my salary is fair for what I do and my qualifications. I could have worked a lot more hours for a lot more money in the private sector, had access to promotions that I'm never going to get in public, yearly bonuses, and maybe been marched out of my office with my desk in a box yesterday because a committee in New York decided they didnt need me..

It wasnt where I wanted to be so its not where I went. And I dont see why I should feel guilty about that.

MissMoneypenny

Linton wrote: »

Your inference that private employees are in some sense superior to those employed by the state is again difficult to justify.

Would you show me where in my posts you think I have inferred that?

Andy_L

Really2 wrote: »

Wrong local goverment is?

http://www.communities.gov.uk/news/corporate/1079260

How would local councils gelt civil service awards if they were not?

Perversely the "Department for Communities and Local Government" who won those awards in that link is a Civil Service department to help Local Authorities co-ordinatre best practice & stuff across borders.

Andy_L

stonethrower wrote: »

I think they will tax civil servants pensions eventually just like they have just done in Ireland.

http://www.rte.ie/news/2009/0203/economy.html

It's an increased employee contribution, not a tax on public sector pensions (which are taxed exactly the same as any other income)
From the statement
"all public servants will now pay more toward their pensions...On average, the payment will be 7.5% of the total earnings of all public servants. (It does not apply to those already on pension"

stevsand

I have worked in public and private sectors and there is very little difference.

Andy_L

Old_Slaphead wrote: »

I acknowledge what you say about the potential pitfalls of comparisons however as Cannon Fodder says with a sampling size of millions many of these deviations will have been ameliorated.

Increasing the sample improves the confidence in the averages. It doesn't affect the reasons why they are different.

vigesimal

Linton wrote: »

By the way I spent all my working life in private industry so I am not arguing a personally advantageous case.

im willing to bet you have always worked for others as you have no idea how a business runs. Making a profit and paying for services are not the same. These are all services.

- supply of educated people entering the business
- a system of law
- a managed currency
- transport infrastructure
- physical protection of their assets and staff - police & defence
- relations with foreign governments to permit exports/imports
- medical care of employees

Linton

vigesimal wrote: »

im willing to bet you have always worked for others as you have no idea how a business runs. Making a profit and paying for services are not the same. These are all services.
[/quote]

The point is that they are required for a business to run just as much as the business's raw materials. If they weren't provided by the state they would need to be paid for by the business and so reduce profits. In some types and locations of business the cost of these "services" does directly affect P&L - eg defence for the mafia and oil companies in dangerous parts of the world, education and foreign affairs for the RC church, health insurance in the US.

Sure, for accounting purposes they are ignored, but I contend that to then use the profit as evidence that those working on the private sector are by definition productive and profit-generating whilst those in the public sector are the reverse is simply not justified.