Why should public sector be better off?

gregg1

WhiteHorse wrote: »

When organisations like Atos Origin, the DWP (or the Civil Service in general), or the NHS come in for criticism, the response is immediate and fierce.

You can criticise commercial organisations like BP, the railway companies, or ICI, and yet you don't get that sort of vitriolic response from employees.

Which may tell you something.

It does - it tells you that the criticism of public sector roles is always more vitriolic and fierce. Can you really be that surprised that the response is proportional to the criticism?

fluffnutter

karens wrote: »

Are there only public servants on these forums? I thought there were 20-25 million private sector employees! Aren't you bothered that you are financing retirement for these free loaders?

Of course there are private sector workers on these forums. Perhaps they just feel disinclined to join in with your Daily Wail inspired rantings.

real1314

Understanding Newspaper Articles for Dummies; Test Question 1:

You have a private sector company with 10 staff. 2 are paid £40k each, 4 are paid £30k, 4 are paid £10k. Average pay is £24k

You have public sector organisation with the same number of staff and the same pay structure. Average pay is therefore also £24k.

You "privatise" the 4 lowest paid public sector jobs and move them to the Private company. No-one actually gets any rise in pay.

What effect has been seen in the public / private sector average pay rate?


You can "suggest" many things with statistics, but only a fool is happy to accept things without questioning how they have been arrived at.

Caroline73_2

karens wrote: »

That is pretty much what we are going to do, qetu1357.
I am just stunned by what has been written by the public 'servants' on this thread (ha! what a stupid thing to call you - self-serving more like it). Do you really know how much you would have to save to get any sort of pension? £100,000 buys an annual income of around £5000 - £100 per week (who said they had ONLY got £50 per week pension? Still an ample pot of £50,000 to give you THAT). A public servant on a pension of £25000 (not unheard of) would have to have a pension pot of half a million pounds! You really believe that you poor, hard-done-to public servants have made proper contributions from your incomes to produce a pension pot like that AND live as well??? It's a sick joke. You are deluding yourselves. Get real.
The only public sector workers who deserve good, gold-plated pensions are our armed forces.
Ask anyone with a proper job whether they can manage pension contributions and pay mortgages etc. - lorry drivers, shop assistants, chefs, car body repair lads etc.
Unless you can drum up a final pot of more than £5000, forget it. Annuity companies don't want to know.

I'm a nurse, it's a proper job. I have held dying children in my arms, been part of teams that saved peoples lives and made a difference to thousands over my career. I have been part of the NHS/public sector for most of my 18 year career. I did leave to work in the private sector briefly and the conditions and pay were more favourable than the NHS. I only earn just over £25000 now in the NHS, so I hardly expect to get a pension which I contribute to of anywhere near £25000.

karens wrote: »

Are there only public servants on these forums? I thought there were 20-25 million private sector employees! Aren't you bothered that you are financing retirement for these free loaders?

Public sector workers don't get tax free salaries. We finance our own retirement.

WhiteHorse

vyle wrote: »

You're not attacking the organisations though, you're attacking the individuals.

You too seem unable to distinguish the individual from the organisation. If the organisation is dissolved, does the individual disappear as well? Of course not, but to see the responses of some posters, you wouldn't think so. These are the pitiful people who completely depend upon the organisation for their self esteem.

You're attacking teachers, police, nurses, and administrators who are just trying to make a living in !!!! conditions, because you assume that everybody gets the same pension and perks as high profile politicians.

The 'teachers and nurses' reference is a crude form of moral blackmail often employed by politicians. 'Just trying to make a living' doesn't excuse cruelty, incompetence and corruption.

As for having no personal responsibility, when sorting out taxes, if I made a mistake, I could easily end up causing somebody huge hardship ...

And what would happen to you? 'Retraining'? 'Redeployment'? Or sacking? Civil servants constantly get away with things that would have them out on their ear in the private sector.

If watchdog is to be believed, if I made any errors, people could die from the stress I'd cause them.

I've met people whose lives have been destroyed by HMRC.

WhiteHorse

gregg1 wrote: »

It does - it tells you that the criticism of public sector roles is always more vitriolic and fierce.

Indeed, but the obvious question is why? Consistently and across the board, many (but not all), public sector workers are regarded with loathing.

Can you really be that surprised that the response is proportional to the criticism?

Surprised? No, because they are bound, body and soul, to the organisation. That's never healthy.

sharnad

karens wrote: »

'Devoted their lives to public service'...what a laugh! You get perks and pensions that the average person working in a real job in the private sector can only dream of.
The figures for size of pension pot versus annual income are correct (don't be so patronizing Gregg1). You can double check them elsewhere. Poor health/smoking may increase your annuity, but not hugely.
The fact is that public servants do not contribute anything like a fair amount to produce their handsome pension pots. They like to think they do. But do the maths - £100,000 over 30 years. You explain it then!!
Consider this
"Over the past five years, the average annual pension for a retiring officer who has completed his full 35 years' service has jumped from £12,500 to £14,250. Before the Pension Act of 2006, full service was defined as 30 years' service. The lump sum paid on retirement has risen from £80,000 to more than £88,000." (The Observer)
"Police officers now retire on average at 51"
"Many retiring police officers then get another job, but will draw their index-linked pensions for more years than they've served in the police." (The Observer)
Retire early, decent pension, lump sums, hobby job in middle age etc etc.
Freeloading public servants are draining the rest of us.

Most people dont earn nearly this and would have to have a higher salary and more than 50 years service to get back the amount you are suggesting

sjaypink

OP, face up, unfortunately your Nan has spent her life lazing around in crappy jobs, not bothering to put anything by, not bothering to aspire to better.

Or possibly not lazy as such, maybe just a bit too thick to do any better? A bit too selfindulgent to plan ahead? Bit too bitter and twisted to take responsibility for herself, preferring to bitch about others, blame them for her shortcomings?

Your only shred of comfort here in having such an utter loser in the family is the hope that these traits are not hereditary....

....oh dear

vyle

WhiteHorse wrote: »

You too seem unable to distinguish the individual from the organisation. If the organisation is dissolved, does the individual disappear as well? Of course not, but to see the responses of some posters, you wouldn't think so. These are the pitiful people who completely depend upon the organisation for their self esteem.

Ack, I mistook you for Karens somehow, who did appear to be attacking individuals rather than the organisation. Talk to anybody who I used to work with (myself included) and they will have nothing but hatred for the organisation.

The idea of the civil service is great, but the execution is terrible. I was looking for a new job for three years of my four years in it and hated the politics and changing goal posts so much that I ended up leaving without having found another job.

Some posters in the thread seemed to think that evil lazy people took jobs in the civil service for an easy ride and huge salaries and pensions when for many (myself included) it's a case of take the job or have nothing. Too many of my colleagues were too old to consider changing their role at their age. Who wants to completely retrain and change everything for two years? Hell, it was sad to see them effectively trapped.

The 'teachers and nurses' reference is a crude form of moral blackmail often employed by politicians. 'Just trying to make a living' doesn't excuse cruelty, incompetence and corruption.

Who is cruel and corrupt? I'm training to be a teacher and wouldn't want to be perceived as cruel and corrupt for doing so...

And what would happen to you? 'Retraining'? 'Redeployment'? Or sacking? Civil servants constantly get away with things that would have them out on their ear in the private sector.

Sacking and personally a lot of guilt. I have trouble sleeping at night if I know I made a mistake on a customer order, let alone knowing i'd ruined somebody's life.

The perception of having no responsibility is rubbish. I was responsible for peoples' finances and any mistake would have further reaching consequences than just me being fired or not. I was being paid less than I am now for doing something far more important.

I've met people whose lives have been destroyed by HMRC.

My father in law has a blacklisted credit rating, is unemployed, had his business ruined and is living in a static caravan and was bankrupt thanks to an HMRC screw-up. Whoever made the mistake had a job with consequences and responsibility that they didn't live up to.

I re-read a number of your posts and you're right that the system is bloated and unweildly and if the civil service was run like a private business, it'd have sunk long ago. HMRC decided to manage their operation by stealing ideas from Unipart for crying out loud -- you can't manage something that requires treating each piece of work individually and dilligently like a production run where every step of the job is the same every time.

The problem the civil service faces is that it's scrutinised so intensely that it keeps changing how it does things to be transparent at the cost of practicality. it keeps changing how it wants to do things, tries to streamline that which cannot be streamlined while making jobs that ARE streamlined cumbersome.

They developed software that was meant to make the processing of PAYE easy for anybody to do off the street with a view to make trained staff redundant (whilst allowing for short term contractors to work and go as needed).

They did this at great expense then kept the processing teams they wanted to get rid of when they found that the software only allowed for perfect forms to be processed while spitting out anything that required a human brain to sort.

There's a laundry list of problems with the senior management and political agendas, but the frontline staff that Karens seems to have an issue with don't deal with any of that. They are in a job just like anybody in the private sector, and many of them are trying to get out, because a pension that MIGHT be ok (which they're funding out of their own wages) sure isn't worth the awful pay and the stress of going to a job that changes its mind every five minutes, where nobody knows what's going on and arbitrary targets are bandied about from management like some sort of !!!!!!!ised bingo game.

I worked in the public sector, and I'm far better off in the private sector. I have bonuses, perks, I'm paid better, there's less stress and I have less responsibility AND a much better pension.

I've probably got a lot off subject in a way, and I admit I mistook you for somebody else, but it's important not to judge frontline civil servants on the sins of the organisation.

As an ex colleague of mine said when he saw me recently, "you got out at the right time. It's like escape from Colditz in there."

avinabacca

karens wrote: »

That is pretty much what we are going to do, qetu1357.
I am just stunned by what has been written by the public 'servants' on this thread (ha! what a stupid thing to call you - self-serving more like it). Do you really know how much you would have to save to get any sort of pension? £100,000 buys an annual income of around £5000 - £100 per week (who said they had ONLY got £50 per week pension? Still an ample pot of £50,000 to give you THAT). A public servant on a pension of £25000 (not unheard of) would have to have a pension pot of half a million pounds! You really believe that you poor, hard-done-to public servants have made proper contributions from your incomes to produce a pension pot like that AND live as well??? It's a sick joke. You are deluding yourselves. Get real.
The only public sector workers who deserve good, gold-plated pensions are our armed forces.
Ask anyone with a proper job whether they can manage pension contributions and pay mortgages etc. - lorry drivers, shop assistants, chefs, car body repair lads etc.
Unless you can drum up a final pot of more than £5000, forget it. Annuity companies don't want to know.

Hi Karens - private sector employee here, just weighing in to point and laugh at your nonsense.

Thanks awfully