Public sector wellcome to the real world

hcb42

dori2o wrote: »

but again, you are quoting 2 examples of what is very few and far between.
.

So did you!!

I used to be in charge of 1400 people and I never earned anything like £3500 a year in bonuses, never mind £3500 a month.

I do not think there are many people in Barclays at that type of role earning that.

i am still a middle manager with a strong international brand. Pay similar to teaching. Pension contribution is same as last ten years - 0%

2sides2everystory

jackyann wrote: »

So, just out of interest, given the choice I made at 17, what would be more helpful to society (I was a very earnest girl back then)?

to spend 40 years as a nurse & retire on what is effectively half-pay (so still pay taxes, not eligible for any benefits)
or to have worked in the private sector (haven't a clue what skills I could have offered) and, apparently be less of a burden on the tax payer in retirement - either by having paid in more contributions, or taken a much lower pension?

You can all say what you like because it's a done deal!

Well jackyann, clearly you've had a long career and earnest was earnest in the good old days so no doubt you've done good. However, I was earnest too, and I joined the private sector and tried to do good. I too was part of a pretty good final salary pension scheme for the first 10 years. Then to get my next career progression I had to change employer and since then I have had about half a dozen employers not counting takeovers and I don't have a year of final salary pension for any of it.

So you have 40 years of uninterrupted progression (and is that zero pension contribution you had to make?) and you have had your ups and downs but have finally arrived at 40/80ths ready to retire pegged to a reasonable index-linked final salary ? And so now you hope to get receive half that final salary plus CPI increases for the rest of your life which is indeterminate as we all live so long now. I'd say that retiring on half final salary is cloud cuckoo land to all but the most ruthless or luckiest head down never got taken over never got made redundant never found the need to move private sector employees retired in the last 5 years. For a start, most final salary schemes for ordinary workers no longer exist.

The defined contribution schemes of the last 15 years have generally been a total rip-off and the amount in the funds has not grown much in that time. We cannot plan our retirements like you have been able to do. Not at all.

We normal private sectorites are in the lap of the gods most years.

We all start out earnest, but it is a fact that UK public sector pensions have been completely ring-fenced from the realities of the UK employment market which has been dumbed down chronically to pre World War II conditions in some cases with queues of casual workers queuing at six in the morning waiting for a seat in a white van that takes them somewhere to work if they are lucky, possibly to some outsourced NHS laundry contract set up by your ring-fenced admin colleagues. Your pensions are basically a blank cheque written by the rest of us. We deserve final salary pensions like yours and if this country had been run correctly by civil servants and governed correctly at all levels by successive national and local governments, then we could have had an economy that could still achieve that. Some places in Europe have a high standard of living for all, and very much narrower margins between haves and have nots. Were they all born with silver spoons in their mouths? Nope - excess was curbed, community was preserved, wealth generation was taxed carefully, windfall North Sea revenues were husbanded, crookedness and corrupt privatisation, and stupid military adventures avoided. Investment made in infrastructure and conservative (small c) culture maintained. Quality in all things was encouraged. Sadly the UK did something different. Public sector has suffered a bit over the years, but not too much. Private became ruthless corporate and was beset with short-termism/get rich quick on the back of the many.

Do you not think it is scandalous that an entire 2% of GDP goes simply to pay the pensions of retired public sector workers? Just the pensions of those retired, not the contributions into the pots that still haven't retired. Maybe you may say no it is not scandalous. If all the important things cost 2% of GDP, then the country could only afford 50 things.

What proportion of GDP goes to pay private sector workers pensions I wonder. Would that be a good thing? Even if we knew the current comparitive figures in the UK (public v. private as a proportion of GDP) the ratio would not mean much as a statistic because the ring-fencing the public sector has received for so long has caused there to be two speed pension expectations in the UK between public and private which are already out of kilter by as much as half a generation.

Over our working lives life expectancy has increased by about the same half generation. It is those of us who are not much younger than you but who have known for 15 years that we won't be able to retire until at least 65 and even then, not on final salary pensions, who will feel this difference most. Whilst you enjoy your well earned cruises, and perhaps a new car to celebrate your retirement, and perhaps afford nice weddings for your 20 something aged children, and give them deposits for their houses because you have more money than you really need to spend with your mortgages paid off, we will still be working for the first 10 years of your retirement. We will be remortgaging to pay for weddings, watching our kids struggling a bit to get a foot on any property ladder because there wont be much of a pot for us to dip into even if we have decided to take 25% cash out of our meagre pension funds by then. Then when we finally retire, we will not be going on cruises and expensive holidays. We will, in the recent words of Prince Philip, "just be here" and you will forgive us if you find us moaning a bit if public sector workers generally have still managed to hang on to their amazing pots at that point.

Please don't think my comparisons are intended to be spiteful. The things you might still be able to do in retirement are merely the sorts of things I believe we ALL thought we would be doing in retirement when we started our careers in the 70s or 80s, especially the yuppees! (What happened to them??).

And ring-fencing has occurred in some interesting ways too. Take an aviation example. Those working for the CAA are public sector civil servants right? Air Traffic Controllers were part of that until the late 90s I think. When they were part privatised, what happened to their pensions? They stayed in the CAA scheme thats what. The staff got given shares in the new part private National Ar Traffic Control thingummy but their pensions stayed in the CAA government funded scheme. Last time I looked there was well over 3 billion in it just for the air traffic control wallahs. That number makes the income they generate as a part privatised company look like peanuts, yet we the outsiders are funding their final salary pensions.

In 2009, their final salary pension scheme was finally closed to new joiners but as far as I know, to those people who became earnest air traffic controllers when you became a nurse, who are now working for a part privatised company in which employees own 5% of all the shares, their pensions are still funded by us. Ring-fenced. Is that good? We might wonder how the same thing works with part privatised hospital trusts or academies with their own budgets and other weird and wonderful quangoistic initiatives to hand the reins to civil servants and float them off. What about the railways for example? I wonder if any retired Stagecoach executives or retired Railtrack executives have pensions ring-fenced in the public sector?

My pension pots in my mid fifties total about £250,000. It may look a lot but of course at current interest rates I understand from a rule of thumb read here on MSE I think that it could only provide £7500 a year fixed as an annuity at absolute best. You may or may not know the size of your pot but you might guess based on your own idea of a figure for half final salary. Half your salary divided by 3 times 100 would be what? More than £250,000 I bet.

Now here's a thought - I was clever enough at school when I was 17 to have ended up as a consultant had I been advised into medicine for example. It is debateable as to whether I could have stood the course - I was turned off medicine at university by the thought of dissecting cadavers and ended up doing something totally unrelated to my pure science degree.

As I said, I was however earnest like you and strove to help people in my job and serve them well. Maybe you could also have been a consultant with the right guidance. I wonder what a just retired NHS consultant's pension pot looks like? I imagine you'd have to wear protective goggles to look at it as it is probably dazzling!

Anyway, we are not discussing an NHS consultant's pension. We were considering yours. I would guess your pension fund is twice mine and unlike me, you don't have to worry about what actual pension your funds will buy. You have a done deal .

So go figure - I am sure you have done your bit - 40 years in nursing is surely OBE territory and I will vote for that, but circumstances have left hoards of us on the outside with no chance of the sort of pension promises you are expecting. When we started a large proportion of us who studied for our careers as you did were promised the same index-linked final salary pensions with no hesitation or condition. The rug was pulled from under those long long ago ... and few of us have managed a steady progression in our careers either. A double-whammy of a difference in worlds I'd say earnestly.

Moby

I think your name is wrong...you are definitely not giving 2sides2everystory there are you? A long rambling bitter post....and your target....not world poverty or hunger etc but a nurse who has worked for 40 years....shameful and spiteful in my view.

Jackyann I for one applaud your contribution to society and 2sides2everystory....many of us have a sense of injustice about our lot but its what you do about it that matters. Join a Union and fight against the injustices you've experienced. Attacking nurses who have worked in the NHS for forty years is not the way to go!

Congratulations to Mark Serwotka by the way....he had a good day from what I've heard on the grapevine! He totally rinsed Francis Maude on radio 4. This was the first of many such days!

jackyann

2sides - can't do that quote - it would be too long!
Moby - - it was a bitter post (I can understand that) & thanks for your support, but I don't think it was attacking!

Though I would say that I am happy in this anonymous forum to discuss figures which are in the public domain anyway, but don't think that assumptions about our different choices of holidays or family celebrations is relevant.

To be clear, I did not make a great deal of official progression, as if you wish to remain in clinical work, you don't. I was neither clever enough, nor had the desire to go up the management tree. I did a lot of training, but remained "front-line" so on the same grade for over 30 years. My final salary was £32k. I don't think in "pension pots" but going by the figure above, that's £533k.

I think that as a very rough guide I would have had to double my pension contributions had I been in the private sector. As an even rougher guide, to keep the same take-home pay, have been paid 10% more over the years to fund that. And it is difficult to put a value on security.
Going back to my OP: I don't know if that would have been fair or not.

Uglymug

Moby wrote: »

I think your name is wrong...you are definitely not giving 2sides2everystory there are you? A long rambling bitter post....and your target....not world poverty or hunger etc but a nurse who has worked for 40 years....shameful and spiteful in my view.

Jackyann I for one applaud your contribution to society and 2sides2everystory....many of us have a sense of injustice about our lot but its what you do about it that matters. Join a Union and fight against the injustices you've experienced. Attacking nurses who have worked in the NHS for forty years is not the way to go!

Congratulations to Mark Serwotka by the way....he had a good day from what I've heard on the grapevine! He totally rinsed Francis Maude on radio 4. This was the first of many such days!

Have you actually read and at least tried to understand 2sides2everystory post?
Please try and remove your blinkers.

jackyann asked a very relevanty question asking what her life would have been like in the private sector, 2sides2everystory spent a long time and effort giving us details of his experiences in the private sector and your response is that he should have joined a Union. I find your response really offensive.

taking_stock

i've just read through "2sides" story - like running through a ploughed field.

long-winded, painful, rambling, aimless nonsense from someone clearly embittered at not having thought ahead enough to make his own provision.

This has to be the wake-up call for many in the private sector - you need to make adequate provision yourself rather than moaning about the public sector. after all, if you dont, then it will be the retired civil servants paying tax on their pensions in retirement that will have to fund your pension credit and other benefits when you're old - if benefits still exist then!

Moby

Uglymug wrote: »

Have you actually read and at least tried to understand 2sides2everystory post?
Please try and remove your blinkers.

jackyann asked a very relevanty question asking what her life would have been like in the private sector, 2sides2everystory spent a long time and effort giving us details of his experiences in the private sector and your response is that he should have joined a Union. I find your response really offensive.

Actually I did read the post thoroughly and it was very partial and bitter. The fact that private pensions have disappeared is a scandal in itself but point the finger of blame at those who deserve it....not nurses working in the NHS for forty years! How can anyone possibly comment about 'what someones life would have been like in the private sector? There are far too many factors and choices in this.... including choosing to have children and the financial repercussions of this, which firm you choose to work for, poor health etc. You cannot generalise about these issues and the fact is.... joining a Union is about protecting yourself and enhancing your rights, as well as those of your fellow workers. The way out of this is to re-balance the degree of profit company owners take from private business. Private pensions disappeared or became less value because of unscrupulous profiteering. Germany has far more generous pensions for both private and public sector employees. They have the right balance between the rights of the employee and the employer. This should not be about because my pension has gone bad...so should yours because i have to contribute to it! That's simply selfish nonsense. Action needs to be taken to protect the rights of private sector employees...not bring public service employees down to their level!

Uglymug

All really excellent ideas from the public sector posters.

In the real world it costs about half a million pounds to buy an index linked pension of £15,000 per annum. How could I have been so stupid and not put aside circa £1,000 a month for the last 40 years to fund this (and prayed that the stock market did not crash the day before I purchased my annuity). Of course I should have made sure I paid this from my career average salary of circa £25,000 per annum.
Also, silly, silly me, I should have formed and joined a Union in my private sector company of circa 100 employees. This would have made a real difference (NOT).

No, the reality of my position is that in all likelihood I’m going to work until I drop. However, I’m going to be extremely happy in the knowledge that my taxes will be going towards funding the 30 odd year’s end of life holiday being enjoyed by the pensioners from the public sector. Of course, all this is completely fair and we should all support the public sector employees and encourage them not to even consider giving up an inch in their fight for their “Public Sector – fair for all” pensions.

I too am against public sector employees working a bit longer for a bit less – that’s still way, way too generous, All Public Sector pensions should be scrapped, the government would then afford to give everyone a decent state pension. This hopefully could then be more than doubled from the current £150 approx a week. This is what I would deem to be a “Fair for All” pension. – Where’s the Union and strike to organise this? There wouldn’t be a 100,000 marching for this – there’d be millions.

2sides2everystory

Well I do appreciate the responses to my marathon middle of the night post, because I think insiders and outsiders understand each other better that way. So on that score, here's another heap of what's on my mind ... can't promise it is pretty:

Of course I do think those of you who dismiss my take on life outside as bitterness are barking up the wrong tree, but my guess about jackyann's reward in retirement for half a lifetime of serving the public in the most consistent and selfless manner was almost spot on wasn't it? So there we have it. Some pensions are handed on a plate if you are in. If you are out you get insulted about having made the wrong choices and being ripped off was your fault for not watching your own back.

I am actually one of life's more contented players - money is nice, but as jackyann will surely tell us, it is not everything. A family is a normal route to contentedness, so don't knock that choice please. A selfless vocation like jackyann's of course provides huge contentedness in having been able to help the most vulnerable in society at the time they need it most when they have suffered in bad health. I am sure those thoughts sustained the nurses and others when indeed the private sector looked for a few of the maddest years of Thatcherism to be way outstripping the public sector in the income stakes. But it was just a passing phase. The balance swung way back long ago.

I have used the health service from time to time and of course visited friends and family who have been inpatients, but I am sure I cannot even begin to understand what it really means to selflessly care for the sick, seriously. I have touchwood always had excellent health.

My career journey in the private sector running parallel to jackann's is pretty typical I think, ups and downs but general decline for the last ten years at least. It would be easy to say ha, yes that was ten years under a Labour government, but private sector careers had become generally very shallow-rooted long before Tony Blair came along.

Many MSE readers, including some of those on the edge of being "in" (failed minor quangos and spurious private initiatives perhaps, or otherwise outsourced pseudo public servants) and who are perhaps 15 years younger than jackyann and I, might look at my £250,000 and may even say "Well I also earn £32,000 right now, but my pension funds have only made it to low tens of thousands and are growing really slowly - they are not projected to ever get to that kind of sum in my wildest dreams. Get over it!".

Also they may not know if there is a job for them from one year to the next. So never mind jackyann's pot whatever it is (and I suspect it is actually significantly higher than £500,000 because it is index-linked), they might be looking at my £250,000 and be very envious of that.

There's a lot of relativism in this in and out business, isn't there?

Spare a thought for those even further outside who have been paying their taxes this last 40 years and have no non-state pension provision whatsoever. And don't think that such people never thought about private pensions. They have been infested from time to time by all manner of parasitic financial adviser who long ago dropped off and and disappeared or metamorphosed eventually into something they want us to believe is halfway respectable compared to banking :rotfl:

The more I think about it, I contend that pension provision comparison above all other wealth factors maps out the gross inequalities in our society.

Public sector employees of long standing have hardly had to give it a second thought (jackyann has confirmed it - she doesn't know how big her pot is - she doesn't need to know - all she needs to know is that her cup overfloweth by the promised index-lnked amount each year!). Many have been totally ring-fenced from contribution, from inflation over the longer term, from job insecurity and from parasites (no IFA has dared "advise" someone with a gold-plate public sector pension like jackyann's because those that tried it in previous decades had their asses sued for bad advice!).

Public sector employees of more recent vintage are less ring-fenced and we private sector types will no doubt eventually meet hoards of them at the bottom.

The growing range of net worth displayed between individuals in our communities is splitting our society. Without another windfall like North Sea oil that cannot possibly be reversed in what remains of the lifetimes of us late mark baby-boomers. Our country is as we now know as failed as Greece by some measures. But somehow we are different and apparently our constantly floating paper isn't junk yet. We kid ourselves that we can keep this up with our hot air international standing, but as the hot air machine has told us, we can't afford public sector pensions to go forward unchanged.

BTW, I should have joined a Union, should I? Hmmm ... that would be the one I joined when I started work and which is the UK's largest Union and to which for some reason I am still paying a subscription today?

And as for me not posting balanced two sided arguments like some of you think my username requires well you might have a point, but generally you will find me posting the missing side of the argument on threads which have been skewed far too far in one direction for too long.

jem16

Uglymug wrote: »

In the real world it costs about half a million pounds to buy an index linked pension of £15,000 per annum. How could I have been so stupid and not put aside circa £1,000 a month for the last 40 years to fund this (and prayed that the stock market did not crash the day before I purchased my annuity).

£1,000pm for 40 years would give you £480,000 with no growth at all.

According to HL's calculator a male, aged 20 with a retirement age of 60 would need to put aside £431.25pm increased each year in line with inflation, to get a lump sum of £108,469 and £15,190pa pension with spouse provision and index linking.

So why would you be putting aside £1000pm? As to a crash just before purchasing an annuity, you would presumably have lowered your risk in the years leading up to retirement.