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i would sooner pay 20% less council tax and they pay for there own pension, simples …

If council employees were required to take out personal pension plans, the council would have to pay them more. You wouldn't see 20% of your money back by any stretch. Why is this so hard for people to understand? You can't make money out of nowhere. It doesn't appear in a puff of smoke. Unless you're bailing out a bank it seems. Show me any council that's cost the taxpayer a tenth of what RBS have, by the way.

Do you honestly expect that, if the council went to its employees and said 'OK, we're not paying into your pensions any more. Sorry, but you'll have to make up the full amount yourself' the council employees would just say 'Oh, OK'? Course they wouldn't. If your boss told you you had to take an (effective) 20% pay cut you wouldn't just shrug either. You'd do the same thing they would - strike (if you liked the job itself) or quit (if you didn't). It's all very well to go with the stereotype that all council employees are feckless layabouts but do you really think that's true in reality? And if a chunk of council employees walked out because of a pay cut, do you think we'd be left with the feckless ones or the ones who actually got stuff done and could most easily get a job somewhere else? I'll give you a clue : the few good ones would leave and we'd all be f!cked.

I really really hate this attitude that councils are full of expendable employees and 'if you don't want to do it for that money, they'll get someone who will'. Again I say - you pay peanuts, you get monkeys. if you want cheap council tax be prepared for slapdash public services. Why do people expect to get equally good service for less money? Is it some sort of magic? You get what you pay for.

Jon

There is the corollary that if state pensions are too good then private pensions may not be good enough either. If people want an income equivalent to two thirds of their final salary, then people will need to put a lot more into their pension fund. That will mean either bigger employee contributions or employer contributions. I estimate that you will need to put more than a third of your income into a pension in order to have a pension that will keep you in retirement. You will also need to add more savings if you need to have a rainy day fund or buy a house.

Either way that means lower profits and lower standards of living now in order to maintain standards of living in the future. None of which you will hear from a politician.

I suppose they are somewhat contradictory but hey, who said everything had to make sense.
Unions are there to protect their members so naturally, if anyone tries to cut their members benefits they have to do something. In the case of the public service unions however I think they have to tread very carefully. Public service jobs have been getting better in terms of pay and benefits compared to some jobs in the private sector and the public service unions are very strong. However there will come a point when the people working in the private sector will look at that sort of things the public sector gets and that the unions are trying to protect and say "Well I don't get any of that and haven't for a long time, why should they be special?".

Perhaps, in my case, this is because I'm on the short end of the stick at the moment. I've had a pay cut and a pension cut as a result of the economic climate so when public sector workers are moaning that they are getting small pay rises then it makes me very cross. Not necessarily fair but there you go.

As for Royal Mail and the CWU I unfortunately don't think that any strike action will ultimately benefit the staff as RM will loose some of it's big customers so there will likely be redundancies. Sadly, it would appear that strikes are likely as the RM management don't seem willing to move towards the staff position to reach a compromise to the CWU obviously feels it has few options left. I think I will be hearing a talk from the local CWU secretary at the end of the month so it will be interesting to hear what he has to say.



There is a difference between an entirely personal pension plan and a non final salary work based scheme.
In the private sector people who lost their final salary scheme didn't necessarily get any pay increase, they got bumped onto a stakeholder/defined contribution scheme where their employer put in less money. The employees own contributions would likely either stay the same or have to increase a bit. That was one of the reasons final salary schemes closed, it was a massive saving to the employer in terms of pension contributions. If they do it to realise a saving they won't increase peoples wages to a sufficient level to compensate as it would make the exercise pointless. It also means they have to worry less and less about a deficit in the pension fund over time as it becomes the employees risk, not theirs. It sucks but it's the way it is.
In essence, why should council and other public sector employees get better treatment than their counterparts in the private sector?

At present an employer doesn't have to do a vast amount in terms of pension provisions for their employees. At present a company or personal pension contribution from your employer is essentially perk or benefit of your job, not a right.
That will change when the new personal account system comes in in a few years (employers will have to put in a minimum of 3% as will employees unless they opt out of the scheme). The danger a lot of people in the private sector see from this new scheme is that it will give employers who currently pay more than 3% into their employees pensions a way to reduce their contributions as they will still meet the government minimum. Whether of not that happens isn't clear as doing so will be a cut in benefits so employees may seek a different job so employers with good pensions may choose to maintain their contributions to attract the best employees.

Of course the real reason pensions are in such a mess is that everyone is living longer and retirement age hasn't been adjusted accordingly (plus continual interference and messing about by successive governments). Retirement age both for the state pension and private pensions really needs to be increased, and increased significantly (to 70 or more) if the existing system is to continue. As Amnesia10 points out though, no government is going to push that one as it would be electoral suicide, especially given the disparity in voting habits between the young and the old. And the situation is only going to get worse as the population ages.

Boo hoo? Public sector workers already earn less than their private sector counterparts!!

i do not wish or require my tax, be it council, PAYE or any other form, to pay for pensions of public employees
other then the state pension (via NI)
and i mean, any public employees of any kind in any shape or in any form
they must pay for there own pension or find other work

and i don't care which public service they work for

it is there pension they pay for it not me or anyone else paying taxes
and i don't really care how that is done or achieved …

Fine, give them competitive pay then. I would bet good money that that would end up costing the taxpayer more.

try working in, lets say, retail
or on minimum wage job

tell me a public sector worker on that type of money


they pay for there pension or rely on the state pension
as i am damned if i will/want/need too pay taxes for public service pensions …

the public service pensions can go to hell and freeze there before i would give the public service the time of day …

Effing Norah. Exactly what planet are you on? There are hundreds of thousands of public sector workers on that type of money. The starting pay in the civil service (i.e. a starting office job) is £15K a year gross. That's not much more than the minimum wage.


Great. OK, when you're next ill or injured, pray all the experienced nurses haven't gone off the private sector and left A&E staffed by people who have just passed their exams. Or that you don't lose a tyre on a pothole that was repaired by a 'lowest bid' contractor (seriously, if you ever go to the US, look at the state of the roads once you get off the freeway). Or that your elderly relatives aren't the ones waiting for their pension cheques to arrive on time.
Benefits like good pensions are the things that are keeping the few good people there are in the public sector there, in leiu of the kind of pay they could get in the private sector but don't get anything like. Take the pensions away and they'll all piss off, and then you really will see how bad things can get.


Well that's nice, because a lot of them give you the time of day every day whether you notice it or not. You'd bloody well notice if they didn't, believe me.

Jon

Looks like when I have kids I will have to explain to them that there was once a company called "Royal Mail."

The workers are after a larger slice of the cake, but they will destroy the cake in the process, leaving them with nothing. Demanding higher wages from a company losing millions every year and carrying out industrial action whilst competitors fish for your company's most important contracts seems extremely silly to me.

I'm guessing the RM staff have been striking for so long in the past that to back out now isn't a realistic option for the future, though that's uncertain anyway as many here have pointed out... I wouldn't be surprised if Mandy's somehow behind forcing their hand to bring things to a nice business conclusion though

there is away to do this via the NI system
enacted a voluntary NIE (national insurance enhanced)
whereby you could voluntary up your percentage payments for your NI contributions over the course of your working life
a 4% increase in NI payments under NIE would more then double your state pension

these enhanced contributions must be ring fenced for better pension payments for the individual that is making the NIE payments
this is using the current system without adding any other layers of Govt or pension management …

this stinks of mandy and his mind set …

Not necessarily. I'm a chemist (a chemistry chemist, not a pharmacy chemist) and pretty much any public sector job in my field pays equal or significantly better than I am currently paid and it's bleeding hard to get into public service science jobs (and believe me I've tried).

I'm well aware that some sectors of the civil service aren't as well paid as their private sector counterparts but it's not a blanket all situation. That's what I find annoying. Spokes people for public service jobs more often than not seem to assume that they are the worst paid in all situations when this is not the case.

Fair enough, I'd still opt for most situations though. For example most Local Authority Officers (Trading Standards, Environmental Health etc) would easily score more money in the private sector as consultants/in-house employees than they earn at the council.