how are all these final salary pensions going to be funded?

Sir_Humphrey

baby_boomer wrote: »

Quite. QED :beer:

You don't seriously expect anyone on this board to believe that, do you? :rotfl:

Unless you've gone part time to put the civil servant case online?

Nowhere near. My annual award has only exceeded RPI once since I joined in 2002.

I have increased my income however via promotion and moving to a better paying department. The latter is market forces in action.

baby_boomer

Sir_Humphrey wrote: »

Nowhere near. My annual award has only exceeded RPI once since I joined in 2002.

Smoke and mirrors as this answer to a question in the Lords shows

Table showing Civil Service Bonus Pot as a % of salaries for each of the last five years

2005-06 - 5.0%
2006-07 - 6.5%
2007-08 - 7.6%
2008-09 - 8.6%
2009-10 - 8.6%

Your pay has been boosted by steadily rising bonuses since you joined, hasn't it?

Can you also confirm that the mandatory bonus system for senior civil servants began in the same year that you joined?

downshifter98

All of these final salary schemes (public & private) are spread over many years (decades) and with them only being paid on a 'salary' basis will be easy targets for (more) tax - future governments will think of more and more canny ways to rake back money from them as they are paid - remember that the more generous of these pensions are already taxed at 40%. How long before 'national insurance' is extended to all, for example.

Sir_Humphrey

baby_boomer wrote: »

Smoke and mirrors as this answer to a question in the Lords shows

Table showing Civil Service Bonus Pot as a % of salaries for each of the last five years

2005-06 - 5.0%
2006-07 - 6.5%
2007-08 - 7.6%
2008-09 - 8.6%
2009-10 - 8.6%

Your pay has been boosted by steadily rising bonuses since you joined, hasn't it?

Can you also confirm that the mandatory bonus system for senior civil servants began in the same year that you joined?

The bulk of the bonuses go to the SCS. They are just a way of paying people without pension costs as they are non-consolidated and non-pensionable.

My last bonus was a whole £500 before tax (the normal figure). Don't spend it all at once. At another department I worked at they abandoned bonuses and replaced them with £50 gift vouchers.

Not something to rival an investment banker.

Luckily, market forces work on reality, not the imagination of the ill-informed.

The_White_Horse

Sir_Humphrey wrote: »

Nowhere near. My annual award has only exceeded RPI once since I joined in 2002.

I have increased my income however via promotion and moving to a better paying department. The latter is market forces in action.

but everyone in the public sector gets promoted to a new grade every year. that is the con. no pay rise, but a 6% increase because of the promotion from band whatever to band whatever.

what a crock.

its your human right to get promotion innit.

dktreesea

Final salary schemes are doomed, especially government funded - whoops, I mean taxpayer funded - ones. At some point, the gov will change them all to accumulative pensions. I predict the government will guarantee the total contributions by the worker and their employer, but not the income earned from them, then apply some notional profit calculation to date, at a fairly low rate, which will value the pension as of the current date. From then on, the employee and employer contributions will add onto the notional amount, and each year a suitably low interest rate will be applied. So when you retire all you will be guaranteed to get is the contributions themselves - no guarantee of any profit. Reminds me of premium bonds. Inflation erodes the value of your contributions over time, and you're not guaranteed any rate of return.

Having scrapped the final salary pension scheme, they'll then move on retirement dates, i.e. you won't be able to access your pension until at least 60, then it will be 65, and by the time I get there, 70.

Following on quickly from that will be a law that says you can't require someone who is still capable of doing the work to retire. My mother, a nurse, expected to retire at 60 and ended up working until she was 73. She's in New Zealand.

You think youth unemployment is high now? You ain't seen nothing yet. Wait until all the pensioners are hard at it working. Youth unemployment will soar. But we can't have social unrest. The leaving age for high school will be jacked up to 18. Then they'll bring in NEET. People not in employment, education or training won't get a cent in benefits. No more hanging around with your mates saying "Naah, I'm not working with a load of foreigners. I'd rather sign on", like I saw one young chap doing on the TV one night, about people working picking vegetables.

Government employment will be slashed. They may lay people off, but the real clanger will be a freeze on employment. They needn't worry - without a final salary pension scheme dangling in front of their faces, working for the government, which by then, due to lower staffing levels but no change in workloads, will feel like slave labour, isn't exactly going to be an attractive option.

And if all that wasn't bad enough, the next innovation will be the employment contract. So on the one hand slave labour, as in unpaid internships in the guise of "work experience" may stop , and the people have to be paid at least the minimum wage, but on the other everyone who works for the government signs an employment contract. Which guarantees you work only for the time of the contract. If they let you go one month before the end, that's all they owe you - one month's pay. I believe the government is already introducing this by stealth. Teaching contracts for new teachers, but only for a year, come to mind. For doctors starting out, it's just as bad. No wonder so many emigrate.

CLAPTON

No wonder so many immigrate

Sir_Humphrey

The_White_Horse wrote: »

but everyone in the public sector gets promoted to a new grade every year. that is the con. no pay rise, but a 6% increase because of the promotion from band whatever to band whatever.

what a crock.

its your human right to get promotion innit.

Wrong again.

dktreesea: You're a cheerful chappie. What you suggested will never happen, and if it did you would find yourself having to pay "tips" to staff if you wanted any sort of public service. Like in Kenya.

Old_Slaphead

StevieJ wrote: »

What is your problem, the guy was offered a job and contract of service and he accepted, why didn't you do the same if you are jealous?

Maybe a lot of people in the private sector did likewise until Brown's tax raid, increasing longevity and abysmal stockmarket returns over the last decade (coinciding with GB's custody of the economy) rendered FS schemes too expensive to maintain.
Unlike the public sector, private firms do not have a generous benefactor to keep subsidising the scheme no matter how uneconomical it is (probably a bit like football clubs - until the penny finally drops).

Anyway, public sector scheme are now in their death throes - it's only a matter of how long and how severe are the cutbacks.

Pennywise

Sir_Humphrey wrote: »

The fact is that most civil servants at EO or above who are any cop could be earning more right now in the private sector than in the public sector, even with the recession. The reason we do not do so is because of the security.

But where are those jobs? Unless the number of vacancies increased, market forces would result in a reduction of the remuneration package as the employers would have far more people applying for each vacancy. They'd also have the pick of the bunch and would continue to engage the best person for the job, but which would probably mean the people who've got the most relevant work experience, i.e. those already in the private sector.

All we ever hear are the public sector comparing themselves to "the best" of the private sector workers/jobs. That's unrealistic. For every public sector "plodder" there are an equivalent or greater number of private sector "plodders" on the same or worse remuneration. In the public sector, only the cream get the top jobs - that leaves the masses who are still experienced and educated but far lower down the food chain. In reality, very few, in fact only the exceptional, public sector staff would get better jobs in the private sector - there's just not enough of the "top" jobs in the private sector. It's like the way teachers compare their own wage to the top salaries offered by the top private schools - the average teacher wouldn't have a hope in hell's chance of a job in such a top school - just not comparing like for like at all.