300,000 jobs in public sector face the axe

Harry_Powell

lostinrates wrote: »

Its a shame to turn this in to a public v private west side story that considered.

It gives us a brief and welcome respite from the 'bull' v 'bear' west side story.

lostinrates

Harry_Powell wrote: »

It gives us a brief and welcome respite from the 'bull' v 'bear' west side story.

True.

I haven't actually seen west side story so its a bit of a dangerous analogy for me. I get the general gist though...romeo & juliet derivative, with songs.

kabayiri

I think it's an attitude thing LIR.

Some employees in the private sector have shown tremendous flexibility; taking extended holidays. Here people accepted a pay cut, never mind pay freeze or modest rise.

How people in the public sector decide to accept the budget cuts I hope will be devolved down to the departments. If they choose to lower costs by other means than job losses, all power to them, in my view.

The savings have to be made though. This is just the start. I think both sectors will see more cost saving pressures in months and years to come.

custardy

Harry_Powell wrote: »

Well this has changed from your rather abrupt 'and where does the money come from to replace their spending?' post. You're now saying that some job cuts are required, so I assume that you also agree that financial savings will be made with these regrettable job cuts?

nothing has changed in my views,I just dont feel the need to justify every post i make with a background
some people on this thread seem to feel everyone on the 'gravy train' should now be put on the Titanic
realistic cuts are fine,along with planning for natural wastage,retirement etc
however it seems more like people are baying for a slash and burn technique which i feel doesnt suit anyones purpose
even if some feel it does
short terms savings through cutting jobs needs to be weighed up with long term effects

JasonLVC

custardy wrote: »

I even saw a post in here stating that postal staff got a pay rise for no changes in working conditions recently
thats just 100% wrong,yet im sure the believe it for whatever reason

Misquote Custardy. I never said they "got a pay rise for no changes in working conditions".

I stated "and the postal workers who got a pay rise but didn't want to be more efficient" - I trust you'll accept that is NOT the same as "no changes to working conditions";)

That was the basis of the strikes was it not?. According to numerous links :-

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2009/oct/08/royal-mail-post-strike-background

The strike wasn't about pay but about working conditions (to be more efficient) and job losses. The strikes were in effect due to "unacceptable" job losses/changes and thus the workers were resisting being efficient (becuase efficient means losing head count generally).

And then the dispute is resolved :-

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2010/mar/08/royal-mail-postal-strikes-deal

resolved due to large pay increases and 'modernisation' changes......and before you say "ah, so they did accept working changes and you're wrong JasonLVC", may I direct you to one of your own posts (last post on the postal strike thread, I don't know how to do link to it) where you provide a link to the real feeling of the postal workers who have been stitched up becuase they didn't want to change at all but their union let them down :-

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2010/may2010/post-m05.shtml

So I stand by my post, they got a pay rise, but that isn't what they wanted, they didn't want to work to new procedures and see jobs lost.....which is exactly what I posted and why I posted it.

princeofpounds

dont see that your example is relevant. Why have you picked someone who started before 1995 when this sort of arrangement would not be available to a starter today? There are plenty of private sector final salary pensions that are still available to employees who entered the system years ago.

Firstly, you seem to be implying that I have somehow chosen unfavourable statistics in order to misrepresent the situation. I can assure you I have done nothing of the sort. I specifically selected the NHS as it is the largest employer in the country, and I could have made everything look a lot worse by showing you the calculations for the military or the police who get both earlier retirement and high %

It turns out that selecting 'special class' or not makes no difference to the calculation. I thought about selecting it because an annuity at age 55 is FAR more expensive than one at 60 and only available for special classes, but thought that would actually be too unfair to the calculation and so if anything I was being more favourable to the public liability, not less.

The annuity rates are public and the salary was not unreasonable being close to the average public sector level.

Really, I'm not interested in this debate from the point of view of bashing the public sector. I like a lot of the public sector. I support the NHS. I don't even have a problem with public workers getting good pensions. The only thing I care about is that everything is managed well and responsibly, and public pensions is one area that simply has not been.

Secondly, most of the pension liabilities that have been built up in the system are from 'old-style' public pensions, so it makes perfect sense to consider them as they are the bills that need to be paid. Some public schemes have been reformed recently, but that doesn't dig us out of the hole, it just stops us digging quite so quickly.

Thirdly, someone has raised the issues of contributions compounding to help build up this great pension pot. I hate to shatter their bubble, but contributory pensions are a very recent thing for the public sector over the timescales that matter for pensions. The only 'shining' example of this are the councils, who made the move much earlier and as a result only have a (from memory) £300m deficit.

Let's take the NHS as an example. You can see from page 30 of their accounts that the equity of the fund is MINUS £199 billion. That's net of any assets in the fund. So there isn't anything significant propping this up except for the promise of future tax money. I'm going to be really rough here, but assuming there are 30m workers in the UK they will each have to pay 6600 pounds to fill that hole.

http://www.nhsbsa.nhs.uk/Pensions/Documents/Pensions/266_HC_486_NHS_Pension.pdf

If I have the time i'll return to the issue of contributions in a bit more detail later

custardy

JasonLVC wrote: »

Misquoted/wrong Custardy. I never said they "got a pay rise for no changes in working conditions". We only 'read' what we want to read if it suits.

I stated "and the postal workers who got a pay rise but didn't want to be more efficient" - I trust you'll accept that is NOT the same as "no changes to working conditions";)

That was the basis of the strikes was it not?. According to numerous links :-

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2009/oct/08/royal-mail-post-strike-background

The strike wasn't about pay but about working conditions (to be more efficient) and job losses. The strikes were in effect due to "unacceptable" job losses/changes and thus the workers were resisting being efficient (becuase efficient means losing head count generally).

And then the dispute is resolved :-

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2010/mar/08/royal-mail-postal-strikes-deal

resolved due to large pay increases and 'modernisation' changes......and before you say "ah, so they did accept working changes and you're wrong JasonLVC", may I direct you to one of your own posts (last post on the postal strike thread, I don't know how to do link to it) where you provide a link to the real feeling of the postal workers who have been stitched up becuase they didn't want to change at all but their union let them down :-

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2010/may2010/post-m05.shtml

So I stand by my post, they got a pay rise, but that isn't what they wanted, they didn't want to work to new procedures and see jobs lost.....which is exactly what I posted and why I posted it.

I'll accept misreading your words(and sorry for others by going off topic) but the reason for feeling 'stitched up' is the ambiguity of the agreement and the removal of caps on working conditions
eg instead of 3 D2D items its unlimited,with no expanation or system to show how the work/weight will be absorbed into a foot delivery
instead of 3.5 hours as the agreed H&S level of a foot delivery it is now unlimited
many parts of the agreement are left open to local agreement,business requirements etc which opens the doors for management interpretation and abuse
modernisation is fine amd required.In theory for a delivery postie it should make the job easier with less sorting by hand,motorised trollies etc
In reality its just increasing the weights and pressures
for mail centres it just has to be accepted that cuts will be made as machine sorting increases. however it should have happened years ago long before the market was opened and RM was making millions with a closed market.
year on year cuts werre made in delivery offices as they were told 'walk sequencing will cut down indoor working and make the job easier' yet it still isnt here
remember that pay rise comes after 3 (or 2? i cant recall) years of a pay freeze and the loss of the separate payment for D2D items
so for many its over £10 a week less in D2D for starters
its easy to use headline % increases to hide real life losses

CLAPTON

thescouselander wrote: »

I think you'll find compound interest over 40 years would be significant and more than just "a bit". The interest alone could be twice the value of the deposits at quite a modist rate of interest.

Also I believe 20% total contribution is realistic for a pension - I would expect an employer to contribute at least some towards this but it is still realisitc.

compounding will indeed add a bit more, but a 30k salary today would have been equivalent 40 years ago of around 1,500 per annum...
1,500 was a lot of money in those days so it is unilkely that a 20 year old would have been earning that
but even assuming so, the pension contribution would have been about £300 per year; even with compounding doubling that it would only add £900 to the pot rather than the £6,000 that my example assumed

marklv

JasonLVC wrote: »

Sorry Marklv, you cannot accuse someone of making generalised comments and then, without a hint of irony, then make a generalised comment.

"The public sector is mostly office based and professional".....No it isn't. The public sector consists of pen pushers and administrators, call centre staff, front of desk staff at job centres, the staff at local councils who process invoices, collect the rent, mow the parks and clear up dog muck, police back office staff, court clerks, smoking cessation officers, H&S advisors, etc. there are also some professionals such as surveyors, accountants and lawyers as well.

You're just being a silly !!!.

If you want to compare benefits you have to compare job function per job function, not simply public v private. Prat.

marklv

kabayiri wrote: »

Sorry to burst your bubble Mark but I have done work for the 2 largest fleet providers in the UK. Most company cars are sourced this way because it's tax efficient to do so.

I know the numbers involved, and the kind of pay-grades who get car perks.

The idea that a large chunk of the private sector get company cars is just not true.

It depends on the job you do, as I keep saying. And in most cases, no, there are no company cars, mainly due to tax reasons, but car allowances are given out to many managers.