Any Public Sector workers here?

LittleMissAspie

tawse57 wrote: »

wonder if we will suddenly see a flood of redundancies in Sept or Oct?

How will we "see" them? Will people be walking around with signs saying I used to work for the public sector but got made redundant?

I work in the public sector and my workplace has been making people redundant every year as long as I've been here. We must have half the managers we used to and my entire team except me was axed last year. So I really can't see any difference to how it's always been.

And I'm buying my first house.

RuthnJasper

FATBALLZ wrote: »

Without wanting to get into a public vs private debate, you really don't help yourselves with these sorts of comments. I've had no pay rise in two years either but thats standard fare in the private sector. I certainly wouldn't say it warrants 'bad' being heavily emphasised and a face with the colour draining away.

Bad is when your whole department is sacked off leaving 200 people out of a job - I think given the attitudes on this post it's likely times really will become bad - are 600,000+ public sector workers going to leave in a couple of years through 'natural wastage'? Where are they going to go? I'd imagine the attrition rate is very low.

Well - you're entitled to your opinion, but you don't know me, my situation OR how bad things are. I have worked in the public sector for the past 3 years, but was private sector before that and suffered from being made unexpectedly redundant. I know what it is like.

I have to budget down to my last penny. I have one meal per day and no television, as I cannot afford the licence fee. For me, and some of my colleagues, a pay freeze - particularly when VAT is being increased to 20% next year and the cost of living continues to rise - IS bad. I suspect I will never (unless I win the lottery) be able to buy my own home.

Please don't have a go at me; I'm unhappy enough as it is. Thanks.

RuthnJasper

bendix wrote: »

Why are they even 'good folks already working hard [sic] with sport and young people' within councils.

Why does public money need to be spent on people working hard with sport and young people?

I mean, what do they do?

P.E. Teachers in schools... Sports Clubs... Council-owned leisure centres... etc.

tawse57

LittleMissAspie wrote: »

How will we "see" them? Will people be walking around with signs saying I used to work for the public sector but got made redundant?

I work in the public sector and my workplace has been making people redundant every year as long as I've been here. We must have half the managers we used to and my entire team except me was axed last year. So I really can't see any difference to how it's always been.

And I'm buying my first house.

But that was when Brown was in power and he was busy printing money to create public sector jobs.

This new govt is talking about truly massive cuts - not just a team here or there but each and every Council in the land having to get rid of 25% of their staff.

That kind of stuff will be in the local papers, on the news and you will soon be aware of it. Imagine 1 in 4 of your colleagues no longer having a job.

Surely this must be worrying people and causing some to stop buying anything let alone houses?

I did read an article recently that it is still at senior management level about knowledge of the cuts to come and that by Nov we will all find out. Very worrying - I fear it will be like the 1980s again.

tawse57

RuthnJasper wrote: »

Well - you're entitled to your opinion, but you don't know me, my situation OR how bad things are. I have worked in the public sector for the past 3 years, but was private sector before that and suffered from being made unexpectedly redundant. I know what it is like.

I have to budget down to my last penny. I have one meal per day and no television, as I cannot afford the licence fee. For me, and some of my colleagues, a pay freeze - particularly when VAT is being increased to 20% next year and the cost of living continues to rise - IS bad. I suspect I will never (unless I win the lottery) be able to buy my own home.

Please don't have a go at me; I'm unhappy enough as it is. Thanks.

Thanks for being so open and honest - I hope things improve for you financially... I know you are not alone and more and more people are counting every penny.

Truth is, the country is technically bankrupt but the country is split into one group who realises this and one group which is still living in la la land. They are going to have a rude awakening in the next 18 to 24 months. Many people who think they have a job for life will discover that is not true.

Intergalactic_Floozie

I'm worried sick too. I worked for the NHS (secretarial) for 8 years before starting my current job 5 years ago (a different part of the public sector) and I've got a double whammy to contend with because my department is undergoing a six month review, and this was before the election so we've not only to contend with the review, but also the cuts in general. This is the first time ever I have considered getting mortgage protection cover because I fear for my "previously safe as houses" job

FATBALLZ

RuthnJasper wrote: »

Well - you're entitled to your opinion, but you don't know me, my situation OR how bad things are. I have worked in the public sector for the past 3 years, but was private sector before that and suffered from being made unexpectedly redundant. I know what it is like.

I have to budget down to my last penny. I have one meal per day and no television, as I cannot afford the licence fee. For me, and some of my colleagues, a pay freeze - particularly when VAT is being increased to 20% next year and the cost of living continues to rise - IS bad. I suspect I will never (unless I win the lottery) be able to buy my own home.

Please don't have a go at me; I'm unhappy enough as it is. Thanks.

I'm not having a go, I'm trying to put things in perspective. Two years of pay freezes is not a bad result in the context of a decade of the state and the general population both spanking the overdraft to within an inch of its life and now having to pay the tab. The truth is the real pain for the public sector has not even started, and the massive cuts will have another knock on effect to the private sector, nobody is safe.

Running_Horse

twirlypinky wrote: »

you're forgetting that wages are generally lower in the public sector then in the private sector, you could argue that that's the price we pay for the job security and pension.

Is that still the case? Anecdotally, most public sector workers I know earn more than most of my private sector colleagues.

When you factor in the cost of buying a decent pension then I doubt it is the case at all. My current and previous pension schemes have been slashed and closed to new joins. How are the younger generation going to live in old age, especially once they have finished paying for us lot.

tawse57

Intergalactic_Floozie wrote: »

I'm worried sick too. I worked for the NHS (secretarial) for 8 years before starting my current job 5 years ago (a different part of the public sector) and I've got a double whammy to contend with because my department is undergoing a six month review, and this was before the election so we've not only to contend with the review, but also the cuts in general. This is the first time ever I have considered getting mortgage protection cover because I fear for my "previously safe as houses" job

I am sorry that you are so worried but thank you for being open about things.

Do you think you are alone in your department who feels like this? Are your colleagues as worried or are they oblivious to the coming cuts?

From what I am hearing you can have two people working side by side - one is fearing for his/her job and the other one is still convinced that there is a job for life.

I remember the 1980s and I keep forgetting that there are millions of workers now who weren't old enough to work back then.

arby

twirlypinky wrote: »

This isn't about making the situation more fair.
1) Most public sector organisations have already frozen recruitment and made many posts redundant over the last three years, only you don't get to hear about it because it's a post rather than a person. We don't have that many more staff we can actually lose.

2)It's reached the stage where front line services are going to suffer and that isn't just a case of "oh well it's about time the public sector felt it" it's a case of WERE ALL going to feel it. You're going to wait longer at the hospital, it's going to take longer to get an appointment at the GP, women giving birth are going to have to share their midwife with more other women, the council are going to take longer to process just about anything, parks are not going to be maintained, roads will be maintained less regularly, police men are going to have to reduce their presence at large events to avoid loss on the streets, patient transport services will struggle to get patients to and from hospital on time...

The public sector isn't just a bunch of people you pay for through your taxes. We run the support structure in this country.

So you're making out that I made a personal attack on you? By your constant use of 'we'. As in 'we run the support structure of the country'. I understand what the public sector does, in fact, i'm in quite a unique situation as 50% of my work is funded directly from the government, the other 50% is privately won and delivered. I'm not going to get into the details of it, but within 30 seconds of meeting someone through my work I know whether they've ever actually earned a penny of the money they're talking about using (ie, I know the source of their revenue). There is a massive change in the way a person operates if the money they're spending is directly linked to their company's profit vs funding simply handed to them from the government. There is a huge amount of waste in the public sector, I can name hundreds of thousands that's been wasted from my own office in the last year. I'm not talking about your media-frenzy rubbish of 'what about mid-wifes, what about highway maintenance etc' I'm talking about a wake-up call to everyone that the way we operate has to change, not just the number of people that operate.