Strike!

[Cate Fox]

At least those in the public sector still have a pension. One I paid into for 16 years in a private company is ****ed and now worth zilch. I'm pretty angry about the strikes and their constant crowing that everyone in the private sector is so much better off.

 

[drew]

Final salary pension schemes are unsustainable.

It gets a bit tiresome to hear public sector workers comparing their pensions to CEO's, bankers and senior managers in the private sector, there are a hell of a lot more workers getting minimum wage and zero pension their than the paltry state ponzi scheme.

If you seriously think that this government or the next is going to sort all of this mess out and be fair at the same time you're deluded.

Great Britain is bust.

 

[FoxCovert]

**** right off, Pensions are bollocksed across the board. Just do what we've all had to do and take a bite of the shite sandwich.
Fecking 9 to 5 lefty tossers

If thats aimed at my comments let me explain a little more, I work longer than 9-5 to provide services to the public, i go the extra mile, i dont take issue with the claim that public sector workers do get many benefits that the private sector don't get. I have never taken advantage of this. Don't pretend that there are not benefits to the private sector also. I have not had a pay rise for 3 years and dont look like getting one in the near future while many private sector workers have moved ahead on pay. Like i said, dont believe the rhetoric, i dont see many bankers taking a bite on the shit sandwich, or investing in helping the economy grow. I am just a reasonable, hard working person, i dont take the piss and i dont support a lot of the leftie union rhetoric that i know gets peoples backs up. But what is going on at the moment with the public sector is just plain wrong. Where i do agree with you MK is that we are all being bollocksed, not just on pensions. The whole economy does need rebalancing so we manufacture and export but dont scapegoat and demonise hard working people, public or private sector.
Why pay benefits to the the feckless and workshy. Why keep thousands of young people on benefits and make workers who have grafted for 30/40 odd years work until they drop.

 

[Cate Fox]

I don't know of many pay rises in the private sector these past few years either. To state my point I have been on the exact same salary for the past 3 and a half years.

 

[FoxCovert]

At least those in the public sector still have a pension. One I paid into for 16 years in a private company is ****ed and now worth zilch. I'm pretty angry about the strikes and their constant crowing that everyone in the private sector is so much better off.

With respect Cate, you can't blame the public sector worker for this, i lost money too on on an additional pension scheme and i take issue with an unregulated and greedy financial sector.

 

[Cate Fox]

With respect Cate, you can't blame the public sector worker for this, i lost money too on on an additional pension scheme and i take issue with an unregulated and greedy financial sector.

I wasn't blaming the public sector; it was purely an example that you aren't the only people to feel hard done by.

 

[spionfox]

I don't know of many pay rises in the private sector these past few years either. To state my point I have been on the exact same salary for the past 3 and a half years.

I have had a pay freeze for a third consecutive year and had below inflation rises for the two years before that. My bonus scheme was abolished two years ago and unatainable for two of the years prior to that. My company car is now running into its fifth year (unheard of previously, we usually lease over three years) and my private fuel allowance is in the process of being withdrawn.

I am employed in the private sector.

At least I still have a job (for now).

 

[FoxCovert]

I wasn't blaming the public sector; it was purely an example that you aren't the only people to feel hard done by.

I know we aren't.

I have had a pay freeze for a third consecutive year and had below inflation rises for the two years before that. My bonus scheme was abolished two years ago and unatainable for two of the years prior to that. My company car is now running into its fifth year (unheard of previously, we usually lease over three years) and my private fuel allowance is in the process of being withdrawn.

I am employed in the private sector.

At least I still have a job (for now).

Me too, for now also, after a very difficult year.

Perhaps we all, hard working public and private sector alike, have more in common than those in more wealthy and powerful positions would like us to believe. They are the ones who are getting away with it while we fall out with each other.

nobody benefits from it.

 

[Lako42]

We do have a good pension and we do have good holiday entitlement, but the salary is poor compared to degree level private sector work especially when you take into account all of the hours.

So who forced them to take up teaching rather than going private?

 

[popillius]

I know from uni who have failed in their chosen career path have gone on to become teachers after about a year's training. They are idiots. Anyone can teach. I don't know what you think is so taxing about border control either?

Perhaps the most cretinous and ill-informed comment I've ever read on here. I too am not a teacher but the incredible stresses and strains of the job are documented thoroughly by those who, like me, may not be in the profession but understand it. You, I assume are in a much more important, skilful job that only you and a handful of experts across the globe could succeed in.... Or are you, as I suspect, in a position for which you don't need to have the patience, dedication or education to be able to teach anyone, anything? The fact that you elude to the notion that you too, have been through the University system tells me a lot more about the blight on higher education and not those who have used their degrees to pass on the need for learning to imbeciles like you.

The benefits of having a public sector job far outweigh any drawbacks they may have. I haven't got a pension and I won't be able to afford to start paying into one for at least two or three years

The benefits of these positions are exactly why public sector workers chose to go down that road with regards to career choice. These were some of the key reasons many people dedicated themselves to work, for the public, in jobs that weren't hugely paid, so they could have security for their futures. These promises, the very foundations of what convinced many highly skilful graduates to enter public service, have now been reneged on by a government who are lying to people like you, about the affordability of such schemes.

You had the choice to go into public service and give you and your family a stable future and you failed to take it. You chose to enter a career which gave you no pension option and have since opted out of paying into one ever since you started working. This idiotic short-sighted decision isn't the fault of public sector employees. You could always go into teaching of course, 'Anyone can teach' can't they?

Indeed. If I went on strike, I'd be sacked and replaced in the space of about a day

Hmmmm, it seems you are far easier to replace than a teacher or a midwife then?

Most of the public sector workers I know are striking today. Are they on the picket lines? No, the majority of them are doing their Christmas shopping or they're down the pub. Just another day off for them, so much for solidarity.

This is simply wrong. Perhaps a good idea would be to check out FACTS before spouting any more verbal diarrhoea. Don't believe the comments made by tabloids or our esteemed PM who has delivered precisely none of his pre-election promises, actually do some research. It will have been one of the skills you learned at school from your teachers.

 

[popillius]

So who forced them to take up teaching rather than going private?

Who forced you not to?

 

[Matt_B]

So who forced them to take up teaching rather than going private?

Did someone force you to take a job with a pension worse than mine?

 

[drew]

Some of you lot are gonna shit a brick when the next lot of bank bailouts happen.

 

[Durham Fox]

Borders working better today than the day before. Roads lovely and quiet this morning. Bins still emptied this morning. Sack all the ****s that were striking, nobody will feckin notice.

 

[popillius]

I don't know of many pay rises in the private sector these past few years either. To state my point I have been on the exact same salary for the past 3 and a half years.

But nobody promised you something that you are now not going to have. You need to see the public sector pension scheme as a subsidiary of salary as promised. It is, in real terms, a massive, massive pay cut both in the present and continuously for the next 40+ years of employment and 40+ years of retirement for some folk! Not really comparable to a three year pay freeze.

Don’t fall into the tissue of lies that paints this system as unsustainable. Every single study of the figures except that of our idiotic chancellor and his team of renegade morons shows that, in real terms, the current scheme is more than affordable. Both the National Audit Office and the House of Commons' Public Accounts Committee BOTH show, unequivocally, that the cost of public sector pensions is falling as planned and, over the next 10 years, will cost about £6bn LESS.

 

[popillius]

Did someone force you to take a job with a pension worse than mine?

Exactly. We all made choices. Ours in the public sector it seems, were based on promises this government have are now trying to take from us, despite all evidence that shows their affordability.

 

[Dour]

This distinction people try and make between public and private sector employees is just daft. Public sector pay for equivalent work is generally worse, ameliorated by better conditions of employment (including, often but not always, a cheaper pension scheme).

But once public sector pay and benefits have been driven down, private sector pay and benefits will be hit even more because, for most workers, there will be even less of a viable alternative as to where you can ply your trade. So unless you've struck weirdly lucky - maybe as ending up working as a professional that strictly controls who joins the club or inheriting a business - look forward to your income spiralling down towards the minimum wage (while that lasts).

 

[drew]

More fool you for believing a bunch of charlatans promise.

GB promised no more boom and bust, did you fall for that one as well?

 

[Dour]

I don't know of many pay rises in the private sector these past few years either. To state my point I have been on the exact same salary for the past 3 and a half years.

Indeed. Only a select few have had it easy. But once a similar job to yours in the public sector becomes much less attractive as all the other benefits have been shaved away, do you not think that this is going to be an excuse to reduce the salary for equivalent jobs in the private sector?

 

[Ike O'Noclassed]

This distinction people try and make between public and private sector employees is just daft. Public sector pay for equivalent work is generally worse, ameliorated by better conditions of employment (including, often but not always, a cheaper pension scheme).

A concept I've been grappling with all day. Out on strike and I'm not even employed in the public sector, but well worth it to cock a snook at that bunch of overprivileged chancers masquerading as HM Government.