Rhetoric media on state gold plated pensions

MX5huggy

SouthCoastBoy said:

"People choose which industry they go into, and accept their working conditions. Anyone can therefore opt to move to the public sector. " I am not sure that is true, where I live it is very difficult to get public sector jobs as they are generally the better paid. People can apply and try and get in, but no guarantee and therefore I would not say it is a choice. 

This illustrates some difference, https://www.gov.uk/government/news/rules-on-carrying-over-annual-leave-to-be-relaxed-to-support-key-industries-during-covid-19, between private and public sector. I work in the private sector, and we were allowed to carry a maximum of 10 days over from 2020, but they had to be used by Jun 2021. I know somebody in the public sector who has so much holiday accrued they are not going full time (4 days a week) until June 2023, this is a perfect example of why as a nation productivity is poor. 

What does that illustrate? Those relaxation of leave rules applied to virtually all public and private alike. You may have been able to take your employer to a tribunal if they had not let you carry over days. Some in the public sector didn’t have a chance to take any significant leave from March 2020 till Jan 2022. 

SouthCoastBoy

I was attempting, and most probably failed, to illustrate that the private sector will have stricter criteria than the public sector when applying the carry over rules and the impact it has on productivity (which as a nation is very low), In my case I had until June 2021, and only allowed to carry 10 days over, in the example of the public sector worker I know, he could carry over days until June 2023. He is does not work in healthcare or any other frontline services, he has an office job at county hall.

zagfles

MX5huggy said:

SouthCoastBoy said:

"People choose which industry they go into, and accept their working conditions. Anyone can therefore opt to move to the public sector. " I am not sure that is true, where I live it is very difficult to get public sector jobs as they are generally the better paid. People can apply and try and get in, but no guarantee and therefore I would not say it is a choice. 

This illustrates some difference, https://www.gov.uk/government/news/rules-on-carrying-over-annual-leave-to-be-relaxed-to-support-key-industries-during-covid-19, between private and public sector. I work in the private sector, and we were allowed to carry a maximum of 10 days over from 2020, but they had to be used by Jun 2021. I know somebody in the public sector who has so much holiday accrued they are not going full time (4 days a week) until June 2023, this is a perfect example of why as a nation productivity is poor. 

What does that illustrate? Those relaxation of leave rules applied to virtually all public and private alike. You may have been able to take your employer to a tribunal if they had not let you carry over days. Some in the public sector didn’t have a chance to take any significant leave from March 2020 till Jan 2022. 

No you couldn't. The relaxation of the working time directive in 2020 was widely misunderstood, we went through it at our place with union involvement. The point of the relaxation was to avoid essential services being short staffed due to people off with COVID, self isolating etc. It was not because employees weren't able to book their usual 2 weeks in Benidorm. Leave is time off work, you can still take time off work even if you can't travel anywhere.

It was completely up to the employer whether to make use of the relaxation, our employer chose not to as they didn't have a staffing problem due to COVID, since virtually everyone could work from home. So we had to take our full quota of leave in 2020, no carry over.

JoeCrystal

zagfles said:

No you couldn't. The relaxation of the working time directive in 2020 was widely misunderstood, we went through it at our place with union involvement. The point of the relaxation was to avoid essential services being short staffed due to people off with COVID, self isolating etc. It was not because employees weren't able to book their usual 2 weeks in Benidorm. Leave is time off work, you can still take time off work even if you can't travel anywhere.

It was completely up to the employer whether to make use of the relaxation, our employer chose not to as they didn't have a staffing problem due to COVID, since virtually everyone could work from home. So we had to take our full quota of leave in 2020, no carry over.

That was my lot at my workplace as well. We were told to take it or lose it, so our payroll went through all the employees who still got holidays left over while furloughing and paid them the full rate to use all holidays before the end of the holiday year instead 80% of the salary. It means that the employer doesn't need to worry about their staff not having any extra holiday in the following holiday year even though it costs them more.

JoeCrystal

Altior said:

If you were absolutely determined to get into the public sector, it could be achieved in all but the most niche of cases. The role you are willing to accept is another matter. But there is always a ladder to climb, once in the door. 

Heh, I am keeping a close eye on my local council job sites! I am not entirely sure they allow transfers in with my DC pension pot into LGPS, though It would be nice to find out if they do allow it before going for their jobs! It is interesting to see more jobs now come with Labour Market Supplement as well.

Silvertabby

JoeCrystal said:

Altior said:

If you were absolutely determined to get into the public sector, it could be achieved in all but the most niche of cases. The role you are willing to accept is another matter. But there is always a ladder to climb, once in the door. 

Heh, I am keeping a close eye on my local council job sites! I am not entirely sure they allow transfers in with my DC pension pot into LGPS, though It would be nice to find out if they do allow it before going for their jobs! It is interesting to see more jobs now come with Labour Market Supplement as well.

A transfer in from a DC scheme is an employer discretion.  Many have stopped accepting them because of the extremely generous transfer in factors, meaning higher pension entitlement meaning higher employer costs in the event of redundancy or (in a more round about way) ill health retirement.

You should be able to access the LGPS scheme guide for the Local Authority you are interested in, which should say if they accept transfers in from DC schemes.

hyubh

zagfles said:

Careful, you'll be accused of a hate crime by giving facts about how good public sector DB pensions are

Seriously though, there are a few advantages in the private sector. For instance, most private sector DB schemes use capped RPI, rather than uncapped CPI. Which is best? Who knows

It's a 'hate crime' to state basic facts...? Uncapped RPI pension increases would be extremely unusual... statutory for private sector DB is zero on pre-97 excess and pre-88 GMP, CPI capped to 5% for 97-05 excess, and 2.5% for 05+ excess... Public sector schemes giving full CPI increases on GMP for members reaching SPA from 2016/17 onwards is, moreover, a fundamentally more generous way of equalising GMP than how most private sector schemes are doing it.

sevenhills

Andy_L said:

Well they are trying to compete for staff within that sector

I was reading about the latest pay offer for local government. It's around 4%, a flat £1925, so not too bad if you are a low paid worker.
 We have had below inflation rises for a decade. Local governments are broke, yet they need to attract enough staff.

Random47

dunstonh said:

The comparison of just pension equivalence could be seen as quite a narrow economic view of the teaching profession's impact to our society. If we continued to pay teachers £20-45k pa (headteachers £50-80k) and then asked them to contribute 25% of salary how many teachers would we have... less of them or more??

In some public sector roles, it is justified.  In others, it is hard to justify.

Today's public servants contribute 6-10% (teachers ~7-11%), the 'employer' contributes around double that, that being the private industry standard. There's your 25-30%

Many of the public sector pensions are unfunded.   There is no real employer contribution.   Just the taxpayer.

For clarity Local Government Authority (coouncil workers) LGPS schemes are funded. England & Wales to tune of £276B and Scotland £46B. NHS also have funds. So far from the media BS a lot of 'satellite' government employees are not paid from pay as you go taxed revenue. The employers contributions are also paid into the funds (and not to the taxman).

see link here:
https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/cbp-7309/#:~:text=It is made up of,members, and £46%20billion.

The Local Government Pension Scheme (LGPS) is a public service pension scheme. It is a defined benefit (DB) scheme which means it provides benefits based on salary and length of service. Unlike the other main public service pension schemes which operate on a pay-as-you-go basis (meaning that contributions are paid to the sponsoring government department which meets the costs of pensions in payment) it is funded (meaning that contributions are paid to a fund which is invested and from which benefits are paid at retirement).

The LGPS (E&W) is the largest DB scheme in England and Wales. It is made up of 88 LGPS funds with 6.2m members and assets of £276 billion at end March 2020.  LGPS Scotland is made up of 11 funds. At end March 2020, it had 606,312 members, and £46 billion.

daz378

I've been tupe  d over since 2015  and thankfully  kept my terms and conditions  up to date, although being a carer  I'm so tired    and would be so tempted  to try for an easier job were it not for my pension , 3.5 years when I hit 60 will ask for my figures, I suspect may not be enough, but won't  be far off...however I can be working alongside colleagues at weekend...I'm on 18 pound an hour approx...colleague on new contract  only on 11 ph...and we are short staffed , most tupe  staff  are older than me...so it's only going to get worse