Public sector pensions

StillGoing

There are fat cats in private as well as public companies. There is waste in both. In times of prosperity, the public sector are the poor relation. Now times are hard, the private sector want us to join in their missery despite the maths indicating that the current pension provisions are sustainable.

At least there's one thing out of all this, the Con/Lib alliance isn't likely to last a full term. Mind you, the Libs are a bunch of crooks and prats, the Tories are a bunch of crooks and prats, and Labour are a bunch of crooks and prats. Not one party is out there for middle Britain as far as I can see.

holker

GeorgeShaw wrote:

However, the public sector is not subject to the commercial pressures that private organisations are. It is inefficient as a direct result./quote]

Private sector isn't necessarily more efficient, just look at the deable that is the privatised former publicly owned industries, for e.g. the railways or the money grabbing energy companies ripping off the British public. These privite industries pay their staff far more than the Government pays, they treat customers with contempt and have the added costs of profit, dividends, and return on capital.

If you don't believe me read the following extract from that well known left leaning publication today's Mail on Sunday

A new investigation by Channel 4’s Dispatches programme has revealed that the taxpayer is funding far bigger individual pay packages – in one case we found, an astonishing £10 million a year.
This is no ordinary tale of Fat Cattery. These multi-million-pound deals are being paid to the heads of the ‘outsourcers’ – the giant private companies that say they can do a better and more efficient job collecting bins, say, or providing nursing care than the State.

Gleeful: Capita boss Paul Pindar will benefit from a public-spending squeeze
They are private companies but they are also the creation of the Government’s drive to outsource services. The lion’s share of their turnover – and of their executives’ enormous pay packages – comes from the public purse. But there is little in the way of public accountability.
These outsourcers already account for £79 billion of state expenditure every year, a figure which is set to grow if the Government fulfils its pledge to put nearly all state-run services out to contract.


Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... z1GT2o28cm

GeorgeShaw

holker, that's Captain Fagor's quote not me ...

I agree with what you say about private companies. Some people seem to be under the illusion that the first priority of private companies is to provide the best possible goods/services at the lowest possible price. In fact the opposite is true. Private companies seek to provide the least possible goods/services at the highest possible price. That's called capitalism.

How many times have you heard a manager say - oh, we're making too high a profit here, I'll give you all a refund ...

Some companies have outsourced to India for financial reasons - my (IT) company did that for support and maintenance. The result was a cataclysmic deterioration in customer service.

"Efficiency" - driven by the lowest possible price - doesn't necessarily lead to an equivalent level of service. Just to go back to the NHS again. Cleaning was outsourced in order to reduce costs. What happened? The service deteriorated and MRSA rates rose.

It's true that there is too much bureaucracy in parts of the public sector. But where has a lot of that come from? A lot has come from outsourcing/privatisation and internal markets - supposedly to reduce costs. But when you do that, then you have to employ accountants and lawyers that you didn't have to before. Bean counting requires bean counters. So you can't have it both ways.

Like I've said previously, the situation is much more complicated than some people make out. If "cutting waste" was so easy, don't you think it would have been done by now?

random man

Good article by David Mitchell in today's Observer:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree ... ureaucrats

rhext

Slapshot wrote:

rhext wrote:

I still don't understand why public sector workers should be protected by right from a demographic issue which everyone else is expected to just deal with.

You're right, we shouldn't so here's the solution, pay us a market value wage rather than cap it, freeze it or change the goalposts on our ability to earn......ahh hang on, then there would be complaints and whinges about public sector pay rises.

Everyone wants the infrastructure that the public sector creates and provides, shame so many people don't understand they have to pay for it.

Cap it, freeze it, change the goalposts........today that is what the market is doing, and has been for some time! That's one of the reasons that sympathy is a little short. Do you want a market value wage or don't you?

rick_chasey

cycladianpirate wrote:

Rick Chasey wrote:

For the people who say the public sector "consumes" tax, it's not how it works, since there is no such thing as a finite amount of cash. This is macro economics and it doesn't work like your bank account works.

Take the componants of GDP. They are:

Consumption: Private expenditure (usually the biggest componant) e.g. rent, food, petrol etc.

Investment: As it says - mainly includes business investment, but also accounts for houses etc (though not financial products, since that's counted as 'saving')

and importantly:

Government spending: What the gov't spends. Salaries, military equipment etc. It doesn't include stuff like unemployment benefit, since that's transfered cash, rather than spending.

Finally ,you do net exports, i.e the amount received on exports minus the amount spent on imports.


Any gov't spending behave economically just like private spending (i.e. consumption), and, importantly, is subject to the multiplier effect.. That's why some people 'fear' when gov't cut too much during recessions - it quite literally reduces GDP, since it is a compnant of GDP. And if the multiplier effect is bigger than 1x, then a gov't spending cut costs the economy more than the value of the cut.

So anyone who comes out with stuff like "gov't spending is money down the drain" or "we pay for it" is, simply, wrong, and ignorant of how it actually works.

My God! I thought the old 'wealth creation' argument had died a death in the Seventies!! Seems it's alive and kicking on Bikeradar of all places. No doubt you are under the impression that if the last labour government "just had a few more years" everything would be hunky dory.....

You might wish to consider micro economics old son and, more importantly, address your mind to the "fundamental economic question".....why do people bother getting up in the morning???

Explain yourself. I have no idea what you're on about.

Slapshot

rhext wrote:

Slapshot wrote:

rhext wrote:

I still don't understand why public sector workers should be protected by right from a demographic issue which everyone else is expected to just deal with.

You're right, we shouldn't so here's the solution, pay us a market value wage rather than cap it, freeze it or change the goalposts on our ability to earn......ahh hang on, then there would be complaints and whinges about public sector pay rises.

Everyone wants the infrastructure that the public sector creates and provides, shame so many people don't understand they have to pay for it.

Cap it, freeze it, change the goalposts........today that is what the market is doing, and has been for some time! That's one of the reasons that sympathy is a little short. Do you want a market value wage or don't you?

What?? As long as the last ten years?? The Public Sector gets hammered by every government no matter their colour, it's just not a new thing. I'm not greedy, one of them would do fine. Either leave our pensions alone or pay us a proper wage, but don't make us responsible for sorting the bulk of the government and financial sectors mess.

daviesee

Slapshot wrote:

but don't make us responsible for sorting the bulk of the government and financial sectors mess.

Nailed it!

Unfortunately, those who are responsible have a complete inability to look in the mirror when apportioning blame. Or when looking at who to target for the fixes. It all travels downhill....

Pross

plowmar wrote:

And don't forget, despite all the publicity, the average public sector pension is just £7800 p.a..
As GeorgeShaw said the current pensions were part of their contract.

I often see this quoted but I assume it doesn't take account of the number of years service / paying in. I worked for 8 years in public sector from the age of 16 and paid into a pension scheme from day 1. When I left I was on a salary of about £18k so not exactly highly paid but my annual pension payout from those 8 years service is about £3.5k at todays rates. In order to earn a pension of £7,800 with a full term (40 year) contribution you would have to still be on minimum wage when retiring and I don't there's anyone who does 40 years of work and still ends up on minimum wage in the public sector. To include people who haven't paid in for a full 40 year term is skewing the figures a lot.

I have since paid into a private pension for about 12 years (only 4.5% of my salary but average salary close on double the public sector wage and 50% longer paying in) and at current levels my pot can just about by get me an annuity of about £2,500. Even if I had paid in the equivalent to the local government contribution I would fall well short.

I completely agree that the existing staff should continue to get their agreed pension rights but it is a completely unsustainable way of providing a pension in future and I can't believe it was ever financially viable.

andyrm

OK - cat among the pigeons a bit here.

On the assumption (and this is a hypothetical situation I am putting forward) that the government agreed to bring Public Sector salaries in line with average UK salaries for the same roles, in return for the final salary pension scheme being scrapped, would the Public Sector workers then agree to a leading Private Sector business man coming in and going through the entire operation from top to bottom and making any changes necessary? If we're going to equalise both sectors, they should be FULLY equalised.

I'd suggest the following changes:

- Basic pay plus a performance related bonus for all staff.
- Criteria for performance related bonus to be worked out and signed off, hopefully with minimum union disruption.
- Improved "fast track" procedure for sacking under performing staff so that they don't drag down an organisation.
- Unions agree to accept all staff/budget cuts as required to bring workload/staffing in line with Private Sector equivalent departments.

I've based these ideas on things I have thought for a while, plus input from my girlfriend who is a teacher - at her work they have a couple of underperforming staff that they can't get rid of easily, but who earn more than others in the school because of the length of time they have been there. That is plain wrong - there should be no tolerance for long term poor performance and resistance to change as it drags down the morale of the rest of the workforce. In a private sector enterprise, you'd try retraining, then a disciplinary and if no improvement, get rid of them. Nothing wrong there.

In terms of the review of all departments/staffing/workload - this is exactly what the private sector have done for years, tweaking roles to account for natural wastage, cutting costs where possible (without jeopardising quality and service) and expecting staff to dig in when the times are tough. Regardless who you feel "caused" the current economic meltdown, it is every citizen's duty to do their bit to help alleviate it.

rhext

daviesee wrote:

Slapshot wrote:

but don't make us responsible for sorting the bulk of the government and financial sectors mess.

Nailed it!

Unfortunately, those who are responsible have a complete inability to look in the mirror when apportioning blame. Or when looking at who to target for the fixes. It all travels downhill....

I come back to it. ....for the sake of this discussion 'the government' equals 'the taxpayer'. Incomes have been sliding and pension costs rising in the private sector for years, so I still don't see why it's reasonable to demand more tax in order to protect public sector workers from the same pressures.

It'd be nice to think that the financial sector could fix the mess, and over time I'm sure they will contribute - as long as we don't make it so expensive for them to operate here that they b******r off overseas.

rick_chasey

rhext wrote:

It'd be nice to think that the financial sector could fix the mess, and over time I'm sure they will contribute - as long as we don't make it so expensive for them to operate here that they b******r off overseas.

What incentive do they have to fix the mess?

I literally spend all day speaking to these guys and they spend most of their time saying "pfft, not like the good old glory days" referring to '03-07, but only because they're flat on last year.

I also haven't noticed many people at all moving away from the UK because of the 50p tax rate, and it's literally part of my job to notice and track that stuff.

rhext

Rick Chasey wrote:

rhext wrote:

It'd be nice to think that the financial sector could fix the mess, and over time I'm sure they will contribute - as long as we don't make it so expensive for them to operate here that they b******r off overseas.

What incentive do they have to fix the mess?

I literally spend all day speaking to these guys and they spend most of their time saying "pfft, not like the good old glory days" referring to '03-07, but only because they're flat on last year.

I also haven't noticed many people at all moving away from the UK because of the 50p tax rate, and it's literally part of my job to notice and track that stuff.

They help fix the mess by staying here, operating profitably and paying their taxes. It's not so much the individuals, but the institutions. If a global bank is operating in London and paying decent wages, then they'll have staff 50p tax band or no 50p tax band. But if you milk the institutions too hard, they'll go elsewhere and their tax revenues will follow them.

But my real point is that they don't have much incentive to fix the mess - therefore it doesn't matter how much carping we do about how we got here in the first place, it's still going to be the taxpayer who has to bear most of the costs.

rick_chasey

rhext wrote:

Rick Chasey wrote:

rhext wrote:

It'd be nice to think that the financial sector could fix the mess, and over time I'm sure they will contribute - as long as we don't make it so expensive for them to operate here that they b******r off overseas.

What incentive do they have to fix the mess?

I literally spend all day speaking to these guys and they spend most of their time saying "pfft, not like the good old glory days" referring to '03-07, but only because they're flat on last year.

I also haven't noticed many people at all moving away from the UK because of the 50p tax rate, and it's literally part of my job to notice and track that stuff.

They help fix the mess by staying here, operating profitably and paying their taxes. It's not so much the individuals, but the institutions. If a global bank is operating in London and paying decent wages, then they'll have staff 50p tax band or no 50p tax band. But if you milk the institutions too hard, they'll go elsewhere and their tax revenues will follow them.

But my real point is that they don't have much incentive to fix the mess - therefore it doesn't matter how much carping we do about how we got here in the first place, it's still going to be the taxpayer who has to bear most of the costs.

Better in the tent p!ssing out?

Possibly, though I think the inequality they bring just by being has effects that chat about GDP and tax revenue hide - but I think you'd be surprised by how much you can squeeze before they do actually bite and leave. They just have a very good bark.

rhext

Rick Chasey wrote:

rhext wrote:

Rick Chasey wrote:

rhext wrote:

It'd be nice to think that the financial sector could fix the mess, and over time I'm sure they will contribute - as long as we don't make it so expensive for them to operate here that they b******r off overseas.

What incentive do they have to fix the mess?

I literally spend all day speaking to these guys and they spend most of their time saying "pfft, not like the good old glory days" referring to '03-07, but only because they're flat on last year.

I also haven't noticed many people at all moving away from the UK because of the 50p tax rate, and it's literally part of my job to notice and track that stuff.

They help fix the mess by staying here, operating profitably and paying their taxes. It's not so much the individuals, but the institutions. If a global bank is operating in London and paying decent wages, then they'll have staff 50p tax band or no 50p tax band. But if you milk the institutions too hard, they'll go elsewhere and their tax revenues will follow them.

But my real point is that they don't have much incentive to fix the mess - therefore it doesn't matter how much carping we do about how we got here in the first place, it's still going to be the taxpayer who has to bear most of the costs.

Better in the tent p!ssing out?

Possibly, though I think the inequality they bring just by being has effects that chat about GDP and tax revenue hide - but I think you'd be surprised by how much you can squeeze before they do actually bite and leave. They just have a very good bark.

I think for the first time on this particular thread I agree with you 100%.

daviesee

rhext wrote:

daviesee wrote:

Slapshot wrote:

but don't make us responsible for sorting the bulk of the government and financial sectors mess.

Nailed it!

Unfortunately, those who are responsible have a complete inability to look in the mirror when apportioning blame. Or when looking at who to target for the fixes. It all travels downhill....

I come back to it. ....for the sake of this discussion 'the government' equals 'the taxpayer'. Incomes have been sliding and pension costs rising in the private sector for years, so I still don't see why it's reasonable to demand more tax in order to protect public sector workers from the same pressures.

It'd be nice to think that the financial sector could fix the mess, and over time I'm sure they will contribute - as long as we don't make it so expensive for them to operate here that they b******r off overseas.

Not my view. My point about the Government was MPs spending and making decisions to better themselves, make themselves look good and butter up voters without taking accountability for the cost as they will be gone by payback time. That applies to all parties. Then the taxpayers suffer so I think we agree on that.
Some public sector jobs are required (police, nurses etc) and these do need to be protected but they be evaluated as they would in the private sector. My wife is a nurse and you should hear her opinions on middle management.
All options need to be fully evaluated to get us out of this mess as soon as possible. Personally, I think we are inches away from sliding back into recession and have never fully got out of it.
It would be nice if the financial sector could get us out of it but their solutions are likely to be similar to what got them into a mess in the first place and they have no real incentive to do so. Add in the fact that the financial sector subsidy is a pitance on the Government black hole (yes, that is us) as a whole and the future is bleak.

GeorgeShaw

Pross wrote:

I have since paid into a private pension for about 12 years (only 4.5% of my salary but average salary close on double the public sector wage and 50% longer paying in) and at current levels my pot can just about by get me an annuity of about £2,500. Even if I had paid in the equivalent to the local government contribution I would fall well short.

That sounds like the problem is that you have a p*ss-poor pension. Are your employers not paying into it as well? That would be normal (or at least used to be before they started cutting back).

One of the problems since the 80s (notwithstanding the effect of interest rates and longer lifetimes affecting annuities) has been the movement to individual personal pensions. A recent report showed that these were vastly less efficient that group pensions - a comparison with the Netherlands showed the latter received 50% more. The reason is simple. Individual pensions attract far higher administrative costs and you annuity has to insure you individually against the risk of you living too long. With group pensions costs are lower and insurance is less as it can be shared across the group.

The problem is that we have been sold "choice" in pensions - but we end up with a worse deal.

Pross

To be fair it is more me than the company, I haven't paid enough in since our pay was cut by 10% although the company also stopped paying in at that point but even there was a total of 8% going in it would get nowhere near my public sector scheme pound for pound. My grand plan was always to work my last 10 years back in public sector but that could be harder to achieve than I'd always anticipated now!

Also, in response to the often spouted claim that public sector pensions make up for lower salary, this is the case at times but private sector salaries are driven by market forces and I recently applied for a public sector job at a similar level to my current job and nearly identical salary. The big difference was I would have had 5 days a year extra leave and the 12 hours of unpaid overtime I did last week would have been paid or provided as extra leave. Not intended as a complaint as I have had 10 years where I have earned more than I would have in the public sector but just an observation that the grass isn't always greener on either side it's just that Unions / employers / Governments would sometimes like you to believe it is.

snailracer

Captain Fagor wrote:

...the public sector is not subject to the commercial pressures that private organisations are. It is inefficient as a direct result.

The government insists that monopolies can not exist in business (BAA being a recent example), as this results in poor value for paying customers. Yet it insists on state monopolies for health and education. Outside of China, the NHS is the biggest institutionalised organisation in the world!...

Sometimes, the economies of scale possible in a large monopoly trump the higher operational efficiency of competitive private sector players that must, by definition, pass on the costs of duplication.

For example, the USA has private healthcare in a large, free and competitive healthcare market but is, by every measure, less efficient than the NHS.

My personal experience of private US healthcare is that it is sh1t, in comparison to the NHS - I had to get past 3 different receptionists and fill out 3 forms to verify my health insurance coverage before I even saw a doctor, and was then subject to a merry-go-round of unnecessary overtreatments as I was passed from one consultant to another, all furiously milking the gravy train. I also found it offensive that expensive NMR & CAT scanners were lying idle in overstaffed, shiny private clinics, whilst the "uninsured" had to queue up outside the slumtastic charity hospital, or make do without and simply suffer and die.

GeorgeShaw

Pross wrote:

To be fair it is more me than the company, I haven't paid enough in since our pay was cut by 10% although the company also stopped paying in at that point but even there was a total of 8% going in it would get nowhere near my public sector scheme pound for pound. My grand plan was always to work my last 10 years back in public sector but that could be harder to achieve than I'd always anticipated now!

Also, in response to the often spouted claim that public sector pensions make up for lower salary, this is the case at times but private sector salaries are driven by market forces and I recently applied for a public sector job at a similar level to my current job and nearly identical salary. The big difference was I would have had 5 days a year extra leave and the 12 hours of unpaid overtime I did last week would have been paid or provided as extra leave. Not intended as a complaint as I have had 10 years where I have earned more than I would have in the public sector but just an observation that the grass isn't always greener on either side it's just that Unions / employers / Governments would sometimes like you to believe it is.

Again, this is not necessarily a private/public thing. John Lewis, for example, have very good employment terms for their staff, and run a final salary pension scheme. Yet they are as cheap as anywhere. And they regularly get the highest rating for their customer service. They've seen that there is an investment to be made in quality staff.

Other companies don't seem to realise that if you offer peanuts, then you employ monkeys.

And a lot of this is driven by senior managers who will, I'm sure, be getting a better pension than you, and just look at the short term to drive costs down - mostly easily done by crapping on the staff.

hells

Im 25 and in the ambulance service, Im already getting little twinges and niggles in my back and aching pains in my hips and knees. There are several people at my work in their 20's who have developed serious back problems, including one person about the same age as me with a prolapsed disc. This is due to lifting and carrying overweight and obese people on a daily basis.

Sometimes I struggle to carry the heavier patients down the stairs as it is. I really cant see my self as a 67 year old woman trying to carry a 30 something obese patient in a chair down 10 flights of stairs in a tower block and hoping they dont go into cardiac arrest, nor can I see my 70 year old self crawling under a vehicle in the pouring rain trying to get to someone who has been hit by a car and is now under it. I dont want to be in my late 60's and going at 4am on a saturday night into a dodgy estate to enter the flat of a mental health patient who is known to have access to multiple weapons and is stating they want to kill other people. I dont want to have drunken yobs trying to beat the crap out of me when I am just trying to help them as they have called for my help when Im nearly 70 and not so quick on my feet. Would you be happy to watch your severly ill relative being carried by two medics in their 70's in a metal chair down a spiral staircase? Would you be happy to be strapped into a spinal board in the back of an ambulance knowing the driver racing around on blues is approaching 80?

Paramedics are often forced out of our jobs in their 50's due to injury (usually spinal). Not all of us public workers have jobs that we can safely or physically do in our older years. At the moment we pay 11% of our salary into our pensions. We have no benefits, rewards or bonuses in our job other than our pension. I dont know about other ambulance services but in London we are being run ragged, were dealing with over 4000 calls per 24 hour hours on a regular basis, we don't even get given a rest break during our 12 hour shift and finish nearly an hour late every shift.

I took this job because I wanted to do something good with my life and help other people, job security and a decent pension were also attractive and in my opinion deserved as reward for the job. Having done it for alittle while now I feel as if we are not valued or respected at all in this profession, we get paid very little to be abused daily by everyone and now they are after our pensions to add insult to injury. My motivation for this career is starting to wane severely, even though I generally enjoy helping my patients. They can't rely purely on the matra 'the job is it's own reward'. I'm sure my colleauges in the hospitals, police and fire brigade feel the same.

daviesee

GeorgeShaw wrote:

Again, this is not necessarily a private/public thing. John Lewis, for example, have very good employment terms for their staff, and run a final salary pension scheme. Yet they are as cheap as anywhere.

John Lewis is possibly not the best example to use as I think they are basically a co-op where the employees benefit and not simply thinking of shareholders.

I will easily accept being proven wrong on that issue but if I am correct, maybe they should be the model company anyway.

RichN95.

blackpoolkev wrote:

Why should I (private sector worker) contribute towards the public sector pensions black hole? If government employees think that the proposals in the Hutton report are unfair then maybe they could try to buy their pension provision on the open market.Good luck.

I haven't read the whole thread, so I may be repeat stuff here.

As a public sector worker, we should get it because that's what we signed up to. It's part of the renumeration package. If you don't like then pay us more, because the pension is effectively part of our salary.

StillGoing

You take a public sector job, it's usually for your working lifetime. Part of that contract is the pension package. Just as in the '90s when there were plenty of banks being sued for mis-selling mortgages, the public sector will feel they have been mis-sold a pension package. You base your life around your pension as a public sector employee. Those that are currently in the scheme can be perfectly well sustained for future years. We've just given £3b to India who don't need it for fuck sake. Now Hutton is talking about the fat cats at the top not having their pensions capped along with the rest of us low lifes.

By all means set a new scheme for any new joiners on the basis you know what you're getting when you sign up, but leave existing workers alone. We get paid a shit wage for what we do on the basis that our pension will compensate us for it in retirement.

Slapshot

philthy3 wrote:

You take a public sector job, it's usually for your working lifetime. Part of that contract is the pension package. Just as in the '90s when there were plenty of banks being sued for mis-selling mortgages, the public sector will feel they have been mis-sold a pension package. You base your life around your pension as a public sector employee. Those that are currently in the scheme can be perfectly well sustained for future years. We've just given £3b to India who don't need it for fark sake. Now Hutton is talking about the fat cats at the top not having their pensions capped along with the rest of us low lifes.

By all means set a new scheme for any new joiners on the basis you know what you're getting when you sign up, but leave existing workers alone. We get paid a shoot wage for what we do on the basis that our pension will compensate us for it in retirement.

SPOT ON!

Pross

GeorgeShaw wrote:

Again, this is not necessarily a private/public thing. John Lewis, for example, have very good employment terms for their staff, and run a final salary pension scheme. Yet they are as cheap as anywhere. And they regularly get the highest rating for their customer service. They've seen that there is an investment to be made in quality staff.

Other companies don't seem to realise that if you offer peanuts, then you employ monkeys.

And a lot of this is driven by senior managers who will, I'm sure, be getting a better pension than you, and just look at the short term to drive costs down - mostly easily done by crapping on the staff.

The company I work for are at the better end in terms of pay and conditions in our sector, we have lost a lot of benefits as we provide professional consultancy to the construction industry and so took a huge hit when the recessions started (about a third of our work was for the housing sector). Most of our comparable competitors made wholesale redundancies in addition to cutting wages and benefits so we got off relatively lightly by agreeing to a pay cut and reduction in other benefits combined with having directors that didn't want to take the easy option. We now have a healthy workload but due to supply and demand our fees are about 40% lower which means we sometimes have to work extra hours for no extra money to get jobs out and keep our clients. It's not a complaint as such as I realise we are governed by market forces and I've had it pretty good for a decade.

As with the public sector we were the victims of the recession that wasn't of our making but we had to take a pragmatic approach and accept that a cut in pay and benefits was preferable to having no job. That's not to say I agree that existing public sector employees should have pension cuts enforced on them but I do think a responsible employer should consult employees and Unions to give them the full picture and come up with ideas as the current system is unsustainable and options for those joining in the future need to be considered. Paying in 8% of a salary over 40 years just cannot provide 66% of a final salary for potentially the next 20 years or more even if invested in a high growth market.

I would love a final salary pension from my current employer but with the best will in the world a company that is just over a decade old, has 50 odd employees and a turnover of a few million a year with fairly small profit margins is unlikely to be in a position to provide one.

StillGoing

The public sector pension has been proved to be sustainable. There are less people retiring and more people contributing according to an article in a recent edition of the Times.

rhext

philthy3 wrote:

The public sector pension has been proved to be sustainable. There are less people retiring and more people contributing according to an article in a recent edition of the Times.

So why are the costs going up?

StillGoing

Mis information by a government intent on fulfilling it's prophecies by any means other than curtailing their own wanton spending and lucrative pay and pensions. That and having to start paying back some of the PFI schemes that were supposed to help the public sector work more efficiently but have in fact landed them with huge debts while filling the pockets of the directors behind the PFI.

rick_chasey

philthy3 wrote:

You take a public sector job, it's usually for your working lifetime. Part of that contract is the pension package. Just as in the '90s when there were plenty of banks being sued for mis-selling mortgages, the public sector will feel they have been mis-sold a pension package. You base your life around your pension as a public sector employee. Those that are currently in the scheme can be perfectly well sustained for future years. We've just given £3b to India who don't need it for fark sake. Now Hutton is talking about the fat cats at the top not having their pensions capped along with the rest of us low lifes.

By all means set a new scheme for any new joiners on the basis you know what you're getting when you sign up, but leave existing workers alone. We get paid a shoot wage for what we do on the basis that our pension will compensate us for it in retirement.

I'd imagine the lot just going into work, or at least trying to, are unlikely to want to pay for a pension for a generation who screwed it for them.

Especially after they were made to pay for all the stuff you wannabe pensioners got for free

Given that the population about to go into retirement is more represented than any other age group, also makes that impossible.

The baby boomers have lived a life of consistent prosperity which we now understand to be unsustainable. I don't think the generations after them are likely to be sympathetic enough to pay out of their own money, which goes much less far now than it did, for the boomers to continue that lifestyle.