Public Sector Pension Strikes – A JOKE !

sheffield_lad

J_i_m wrote: »

So who are subsidising the fees self employed tradespeople charge, little pixies? Everyone does, take your head out of my sandpit

Jim your so right, what with their generous pension scheme, paid holidays and of course time off when they become ill. Not forgetting PPI for the mortgage and life insurance which is easy for a tradesman to get.

Yes those greedy tradesmen always look after number one don't they.

real1314

The_Angry_Jock wrote: »

That's pretty much what happened though, the private sector enjoyed record growth and through increased taxation and revenue so did the public sector. No one one moaned because it was all good, now it's all gone t*ts up the public sector continue to expect growth whilst the private sector shrinks. It's madness.

If the public sector didn't grow with the private sector then how do explain higher average salary in the public sector and far superior pensions aswell as record staffing levels?

Yet another one falls for the myth of "higher average wages". You might as well say that stockbrokers have higher than average wages, doctors have higher than average wages; all compared to the private sector average.

Almost every single low paid job formerly in the civil service has been out-sourced to the private sector. Messengers, Security guards, cleaners etc.

You start with an organisation with 2 people on £10k, 4 on £15k, 4 on £20k and 2 on £30k. Average pay £22k. Let's assume that private sector pay averages £22k too.

Then you just take out the 2 jobs on £10k
You now have a public sector average of £25k ; over 10% higher than the private sector. What's more, by adding the low paid jobs to the private sector, you actually lower the average private sector pay.

Public Sector pay is compressed into a limited range. No-one is paid over £500k; relatively few are paid over £100k.
How many are paid over £100k in the private sector?

Few are paid under £15k ; but conversely there are a lot of people in the private sector paid that sort of wage.

The real comparison is against jobs of a similar nature and skill level. No-one on the right-wing side ever seems to want to try that, but without it, you not really making a valid comparison. :cool:

J_i_m

howee wrote: »

Jim your so right, what with their generous pension scheme, paid holidays and of course time off when they become ill. Not forgetting PPI for the mortgage and life insurance which is easy for a tradesman to get.

Yes those greedy tradesmen always look after number one don't they.

They should do yes. A self employed person needs to price their services to cover the wage they have to give themselves. Since a customer is paying for the service why shouldn't the trades person factor in not only living costs, but planned down time (holiday) and dare I say it... Savings for retirement?

Afterall they're providing a service privately which their customer pays for, yes?

Public sector workers provide a service to the public, which is paid for by the public (the customer) and this just so happens to include provision for retirement. Well I never... I mean what an outrage! How very dare public workers aspire to retire! I mean shouldn't they have grown out of sandpits by now?

Do you want to see my latest sand castle?

Stargazer57

Backbiter wrote: »

Life expectancy has been 70+ since the 1960s. Your figure of 23 years is miles out.
http://www.parliament.uk/documents/commons/lib/research/rp99/rp99-111.pdf

The figures in the parliament document are (1) for life expectancy at birth
(2) assuming mortality stops improving immediately and stays constant. If you look at life expectancy at retirement age and allow, as you should do for mortality to continue to improve you get figures like those jamesd has quoted. I believe the assumption made for female teachers retiring at 60 is that they will live to 92 on average. This is very expensive.

Stargazer57

Ygor wrote: »

The double blow is the government has reduced the discount rate (effectively the rate of return for unfunded schemes) by about 1.3%. Hutton thought a 0.5% drop was the equivalent of 3% of salary so a 1.3% drop is about 8% of salary. Lets see them do that with Index linked Gilt coupons and keep a AAA rating! How many private sector pension funds would consider the drop in in investment returns to be a 'saving'?

In the real world the market determines the rate of return. In case you hadn't noticed market rates of return have plummetted in recent years. But you seem to think this is some sort of pay cut.

The rate of return on an investment guaranteed by the Government is set daily by the market using the price of index-linked gilts. The prospective real return halved between the middle of 1997 and the end of 1998 from around 4% to 2% and has stayed below that level ever since but the Government did nothing about the assumed rate of return on public sector pensions for more than a decade. So they have been paying out more than the market return for the whole of that period. In recent years the return has dipped below below 0.5% yet they are still allowing much higher rates on public sector pensions.

jamesd

Stargazer57, right. There are three different life expectancies of interest and I'll look up the others later this weekend. These are:

1. Life expectancy at birth. This is of general interest but not useful really for pension discussions. That's because it's reduced by all the causes of death at younger ages and makes it misrepresent the life expectancy at retirement time.

2. Cohort life expectancy at age 65 (or 60 or whenever) which is how long someone who has currently reached that particular age can be expected to live as they live through subsequent events. This has been rising quite rapidly and it's the one that we need to watch for population retirement planning, like the state pensions planning.

3. Cohort life expectancy for particular job types at a particular age. For professions and indoor workers it's much longer than for outside manual workers and varies between them. Assuming that you're right about female teachers at 92, that's around four years older than the female population average (that I remember, will check later) and is part of the problem for the teacher's scheme that has to pay out for longer than usual. I've seen some numbers for various groups and I'll try to find those again.

J i m also makes an interesting point with "climb ladders and fight fires, or be on their feet all day on hospital wards or on the beat all day policing" in this context. I know that police officers have unusually low life expectancy. That makes their scheme cheaper to fund than might be expected from its benefits. I assume that firefighters are similar but don't know that. Inside nursing probably isn't as bad as those two but should be shorter than desk work. These differing life expectancies are why schemes for different public sector workers have different costs and benefits levels - and should have so that each group of workers can get say a similar percentage of their anticipated lifetime in retirement. Assuming we think that's a desirable goal and don't want to go instead for say years in retirement.

cyclonebri1

UglyMug wrote: »

A Public Sector worker earning £30,000 contributing 10% (£3,000) a year for 40 years will get an index linked pension of £20,000 (based on 1/60ths). Current life expectancy means they’ll receive this for about 20 years. This was acceptable, a few years ago when life expectancy meant they’d receive it for about 5 years. This is not acceptable now, annuity rates have dropped to a third (a £100,000 annuity now pays £3,333, it paid £10,000 twenty years ago), in the last 6 months alone annuities have gone down by almost another tenth. In twenty years the cost of private pensions has gone up threefold whilst Public Sector pensions have remained unscathed.
When they retire their pension contributions and national insurance payments will cease (thus saving them over 20%), their (age related) tax code will commence and they’ll also get a state pension (it’s being proposed this is raised to circa £7,000 a year soon). Their net income will be greater during retirement than when they worked. This is totally unjust and a mockery to other pensioners. The vast majority of this injustice will be funded by the Tax Payer.
Paying £3,000 a year for 40 years to receive £20,000 a year for 20 years is an exceptional deal. It’s absolutely ludicrous that they’re going on strike because they’re expected to pay a bit more, or work a bit longer, or receive a bit less.
In the Private Sector paying this £3,000 a year may just mean one escapes means testing in retirement. Any insurance company that forecasts a pension even close to £20,000 a year for this sum is lying.

I now expect to receive various responses to this post from the feel sorry for the Public Sector brigade saying that I’ve got the wrong view of how the deck chairs are arranged on their Titanic:

Namely:

1) The figures are incorrect – They’re close enough.
2) They’re on a 1/80ths scheme - Oh dear they might have to take a slight drop in income when they retire compared to when they worked.
3) They haven’t had a pay rise for 3 years – One way of reducing the costs of their final salary based pension is to slowly reduce their final salary.
4) They earn less than £30,000 – Then the comparable increase in their income during retirement will be even greater.
5) Their pensions are fully funded – These types of pensions ceased in the Private Sector because their liabilities can not be calculated, the shortfall in their schemes will have to be met by the tax payer.
6) They work very hard – Don’t we all?
7) They can’t work when they get too old – Neither can the rest of us.
8) Their employer makes additional pension contributions - This is in effect extra pay, do their Unions add this when negotiating their salaries?
9) They don’t have 40 years in the Public Sector – Then they should have funded the rest of their pension from their time in the Private Sector and realise what a wonderful scheme they’re now on.
10) Everyone in the Private Sector has a company car – Which planet are these people on?
11) They also pay taxes – Which is 20% of their income, do they go to the pub with their mate and buy them a pint after they’ve been bought 5?
12) The Private Sector should demand better pensions – If Private Sector companies had to fund similar schemes they wouldn’t survive and there wouldn’t be a Private Sector and then there wouldn’t be a Public Sector.

They’ll have a million other reason for these strikes and believing the utter rubbish spouted to them by their Unions. The real and only reason is their unfettered and totally blinkered GREED.

Well I'm back.

Got slagged off for airing my views on this issue, but

This post is exactly in line with what I posted earlier.
Good man:T


I've weighed this up, tried to analyse it, tried to see either side, but I still come to the same conclusion;

This is an act by a sector of the comunity that have their heads in the sand or so far up their !!! that they cannot relate to present day economics.

Add to the fact that so many have been institutionalised by never having been outside the educational blanket, ie, the real world, and you may understand the issues.

The world is changing, please accept that???

real1314

cyclonebri1 wrote: »

Well I'm back.

Got slagged off for airing my views on this issue, but

This post is exactly in line with what I posted earlier.
Good man:T


I've weighed this up, tried to analyse it, tried to see either side, but I still come to the same conclusion;

This is an act by a sector of the comunity that have their heads in the sand or so far up their !!! that they cannot relate to present day economics.

Add to the fact that so many have been institutionalised by never having been outside the educational blanket, ie, the real world, and you may understand the issues.

The world is changing, please accept that???

Well, you've categorised yourself as someone who can't see the difference between 1/60th and 1/80th.
I'm glad you're not responsible for spending taxpayers money. I hope to god you don't work in banking. With any luck you've a job that cannot affect anyone else's finances.

Capitalism = get the most you can for the least you put in. A simple ROCE calculation really, just substitute time for capital. So, public sector employees exhibit true private sector ethos. Good for them. :cool:

J_i_m

Indeed, teachers don't do any out of hours work at all, the fairy god mother does all the marking. Nurses clearly only work a couple of hours a day as the double shifts with minimal breaks will surely be a figment of their blinkered imagination. Police officers and A+E staff never ever spend night hours otherwise better spent in bed saving the !!!!!! of people who binge drink and gawd knows what else at weekends.

My god do public sector workers actually go to work at?

Edit: apologies to any of my public sector fellows who missed the sarcasm.

sheffield_lad

J_i_m wrote: »

Indeed, teachers don't do any out of hours work at all, the fairy god mother does all the marking. Nurses clearly only work a couple of hours a day as the double shifts with minimal breaks will surely be a figment of their blinkered imagination. Police officers and A+E staff never ever spend night hours otherwise better spent in bed saving the !!!!!! of people who binge drink and gawd knows what else at weekends.

My god do public sector workers actually go to work at?

Edit: apologies to any of my public sector fellows who missed the sarcasm.

Plenty of time to do so with 13 repeat THIRTEEN weeks off, hang on marking you mean that 1hr and 1/2 when the kids have gone home?

Nurses do a decent job (bar standing chatting to their mates too often), but is it harder than retail where staff get treat like dirt and have long shifts often with no breaks? and lets not forget who have DOUBLE the amount of sick leave???? Ring any bells lol.

A&E staff, teachers, you all choose it, I choose to work 60hrs a week with one day off (Sunday) tomorrow yipee as I also choose it. The police retire far too early and complaine when they pay 11% into a pension, try paying 10% in for 1/68th accural rate (muggings here)

Stop trying to make out your any harder working than the rest of us, the fact is the country cannot afford your pensions, and if you don't reform now you will have to but will need to put even more in later.

WAKE up public workers, Join the real world