Public sector pay freeze/Inflation calculation

Windofchange

westernpromise wrote: »

...Almost nobody in the NHS is ever fired for incompetence. The only time you ever hear of this is when a doctor or dentist is struck off for fiddling, either the books or with the patients. If he limits himself to just killing patients, he's usually pretty safe. Harold Shipman wasn't caught because the NHS spotted the high death rate among his patients - he was caught when he fraudulently altered the will of one of his victims in his own favour.

Except in today's dailymail:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5310161/Ruling-doctor-convicted-boy-s-death-struck-off.html

"Senior doctor, 35, who was convicted of manslaughter over blunders that resulted in death of boy, six, can be struck off, High Court rules"

"One of her co-accused nurse Isabel Amaro was also found guilty and was later struck off the nursing register."

That's two from today's news alone. Don't let facts get in the way of a good argument though hey champ?

ukcarper

Thrugelmir wrote: »

Simply having more police officers isn't going to stop the gang culture that's prevailing. Too much money in drugs, prostitution, people trafficking. In part a downside of FOM and open borders.

It might help if you are victim of a crime. My neighbour has his backdoor smashed and someone tried to enter, he was in his shed and when criminal saw him he climb over fence and ran up road. Neighbour ran police straight way police didn’t turn up until next then did virtually nothing.

Tromking

Pennywise wrote: »

What's that got to do with public sector pay?

There's an argument that more staff and more resources would help the NHS and crime figures, but last I heard, there were plenty of people wanting to become police officers and medics - so that suggests that pay levels aren't too low to stop people wanting to enter those professions.

You may have a point with Police Officers, the problem there is probably down to the lack of recruitment rather than poor retention. Not so with the NHS I’m afraid as the people leaving surpassed those joining last year. Both issues however are the result of rationing money otherwise known as austerity.
If enhancing pay and conditions is the not answer, what is?

Tromking

If it’s any solace to those who say that public sector workers can’t be sacked, in my area I think those being ‘let go’ outnumber retirements now. This primarily being down to very low quality applicants not being able to hack the pressures and then going sick. If you think as I do that our Government is engaged in the managed decline of our public services, this is an example of that.

GreatApe

economic wrote: »

Yet again you are missing the full picture. You need to look at pensions as well. What do NHS doctors get and what do US doctors get? NHS doctors receive huge pensions benefits, US doctors dont.

I can't see the gap being closed from $294,000 average in the USA to the pay range for salaried GPs £56,525 to £85,298. Sure some doctors earn double that but some earn half as much.

Even if we use £70,000 for the average UK doctor (I can't seem to find an average for UK doctors just lots of pay scales) which is possibly an overestimate and use $1.40/£1 we get UK doctors getting paid just 1/3rd USA doctors.

Doctors pensions don't seem that big. £35,000 pension can be had for £10k annual savings into a pension pot over a 40 year working life. So uprate the UK doctors pay from £70k to £80k and you get UK doctors earning just 38% of what US doctors get.

The NHS is a balance to doctors skill and success at rigging markets to limit supply and drive wages up. Try going to the USA as a fully qualified and experiences doctor from the UK and see how easy or not it is for toy to practice over there.

Nothing is ever perfect but the NHS on balance is good.
It's negatives are largely balanced by its ability to pay doctors half of what they otherwise might earn.

BobQ

economic wrote: »

What is the right level of pay for public sector workers? How do we know we haven’t been overpaying them for many decades? Pay should include pensions as well. How do we know we need all these public sector workers? Hopefully technology and AI can replace many of the public sector workers so we don’t have to pay wages anymore and we get a far superior level of service. Public sector should be downsized and made efficient as much as possible because in reality they are accountable to no one.

Automation will do for the public service and the private sector. The latter will probably suffer most.

Pay is difficult to compare. It has to be on the basis of equal pay for jobs of equal worth. Averages are meaningless. Both sectors have a range of jobs. The public sector has a higher proportion of professionals, graduates etc The lower skilled jobs have long since passed to the Carillions and Sercos of this world, so the average is higher. You are right that the lower skilled in the public sector are well paid when considering their pension. But those in middle ranking and senior jobs are poorly paid including their pension.

BobQ

westernpromise wrote: »

Touched a nerve I see.

Suck it up. So what if the truth hurts.

I have no axe to grind. I have worked in both sectors. I do consultancy in a lot of public sector organisations and by and large find the staff work very hard. You can always fins some that do not but you seem incapable of being fair about the matter.

But not answering the question suggests to me that the truth does indeed hurt.

antrobus

BobQ wrote: »

..
Pay is difficult to compare. .

But not impossible. The ONS manages to do it.
https://visual.ons.gov.uk/is-pay-higher-in-the-public-or-private-sector/

Public sector workers earned 13% more per hour than those in the private sector in 2016. But earned 1% less per hour, on average, than private sector workers with "equivalent characteristics". And the ONS notes that they "out-earned their private sector counterparts by 4% per hour in 2010, before the introduction of the public sector pay freeze."

Of course, I believe this is just earnings. No account is taken of pensions.

BobQ

westernpromise wrote: »

Which is less than a quarter of the rate at which people are dismissed in the workforce as a whole. Very, very low standards are acceptable.

So I'm right. But I'll restate to make you happy: approximately no-one is ever sacked. Is that better? I note you can't dispute my list of public sector job losses for killing people.

It does not matter how many you are wrong as you said that those in the public sector never get dismissed. "approximately no one" is still wrong.

Saying the private sector dismisses more is also irrelevant without statistics. You produce none.

You have not produced a list of public sector job losses.

Moby

Tromking wrote: »

Hasn’t that particular exercise been unwittingly carried out since 2010?
I guess it depends on your personal experience and expectations as to whether you think public service remuneration is pitched at the right level.
My personal take considering that the NHS is in near meltdown and recorded crime is up 14%, is that it isn’t.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/crime-rises-statistics-england-wales-police-officer-numbers-record-low-government-tories-labour-cuts-a8178631.html

What goes around comes around. People ultimately get the service they are prepared to pay for and then have the sheer effrontery to whinge about it when the inevitable happens.:rotfl:
I remember a chance encounter with a contractor in a prison a few months back.....he changed a light bulb and turned to me and said with a smirk.....that's another 40 quid......just about sums it up........the Govmt contracted services out ostensibly to reduce the cost to the taxpayer but instead ended up lining the pockets of multi national company shareholders. Carillion, G4S, SERCO,..... etc. Do these scumbags get the brickbats........no they're long gone and instead what we have is the usual.......abuse of hard working public sector workers by IT types whose general understanding of reality is gleaned through an overactive imagination and a computer screen.