http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstop ... vants.html


6 years redundancy payment !!!!! WTF

No wonder they want to change it. Six Years!?!?!?!?
That's just stupid. Which left wing unionist commie put that rule in place to begin with?

These rules could have been in place for decades it might have only applied to a very very few very high up. Though I cannot see the reason for such a long period of redundancy.

we all get the best we can in terms & conditions in work and so have civil servants. The ministers daren't say no as the civil servants could make their lives hell.

They have clearly negotiated some great terms in the past for themselves.

While I must confess that I just about fell of my chair when the 6 years thing was first announced (let's not forget the Labour government tried to do this before the election and was scuppered by the courts) I seriously doubt the government will be able to wave their magic wand and make it happen.

Civil Service contracts are just that, contracts. The terms and conditions in them have been negotiated between the employer (successive governments) and the employees representatives (the unions) over a considerable period of time. If the government seeks to change those conditions then they need to negotiate rather than seek to impose their will. To do so is enshrined in employment law. Give the strength of the various civil service unions the government may find itself with a fight it is ill equipped to win outright. Lets face it, the civil service is an integral part of running the country and major strikes could quite literally cripple the UK and actually make the recession much worse.

Now, I hope that there will be some common sense on both sides (though past performance doesn't bode well on this one). The Unions and CS employees need to recognise that their pay, terms and conditions are way out of line with much of the private sector and they won't get a lot of sympathy from people who don't have a final salary pension, p!ss poor job benefits and who have had their wages frozen or cut during the recession. At the same time however, I believe that the civil service pay and benefits systems has an important role to play in setting a baseline for private companies to set their own pay and benefits.

Civil servants, not to mention a significant proportion of the population, also feel somewhat aggrieved that they are having to pay for the governments bail out of the banks. Not that I think a Tory government is going to do that much to recoup the money that was doled out to the banks mind.

Viva la revolution!

Yes the banks have still got away very lightly considering the crisis that they created. I still do not think that we are out of the woods regarding the banks. No reform has been made anywhere, the central banks have just flooded the banks with money and papered over the cracks in the system. It might only be a matter of time but I expect the banks to still collapse. It might be as long as 2017 but there are so many hidden problems in the banks.

Some of the cutbacks are justified. 10 to 15% would be acceptable, and wide scale reform of the civil service, with scrapping of bonuses etc.

Finally! A sensible post.

Guess what...civil servants walk among us...they pay just as much tax as everyone else. They go home to their families with their decidedly average pay packets...then spend their evenings being told that they are scummy scroungers responsible for everything that is wrong with the world. Then some over-privaleged Eaton toff decides that even that is too good for them and they want to demoralise them even more.

Some how because the private sector are a bunch of shoddy employers, the public sector is expected to emulate that? Where's the sense in that?

I wouldn't be surprised if for most people the phrase "civil servant" drums up images of Sir Humphrey Appleby-type figures in Whitehall who are vastly overpaid, rather than the poor saps in the local job centre/council offices who earn below-average wages for their line of work.

I will accept that Public sector do have a very good role in society. They make up the legal service without which businesses would have problems protecting patents getting paid etc. Then the police and fire service who keep us all safe and meaning that we do not have to pay for these privately.

The 6 year payoffs might apply to a very few, possibly less than a dozen. The vast majority are probably on one months notice like many in the private sector. These cuts will affect teaching and every public service that we rely on. The expectations that the service will not be affected is a fallacy. Wages make up 70% of many department costs so staff numbers will be affected, and these people will end up on the dole, probably completely unnecessarily. To describe them as scummy scroungers is wrong. Politicians fit that bill more easily. Though from some comments about the unemployed being scroungers is just as bad.

Can't we just outsource all the Mandarins' jobs to Asia? That would get around any EU regulations.

Theres alot of fat in the civil service and it should be cut.

plus it's well over employed and it's not like many of them go out of their way to break their backs working.

Yes centrally in both Whitehall and local government but that will be hard to shift. I still think that they will cull front line services as it is easier. There does need to be a top down culling process to thin out Whitehall.

Spent much time in the civil service have you?

I have to say in my (admittedly limited) experience front-line civil servants (both for national and local government) are underpaid and overworked.