The public sector 'workers' strike
Today public sector 'workers' are on strike. The poor dears have thrown a hissy fit over the prospect of having to retire at the same age as everybody else, well fuck them. Everybody else, that is the people that are forced to pay for these 'workers', has to retire at 65 or more. That is if they can retire at all thanks to Gordon Brown's £5 billion a year raid on private pension funds pushing many to near insolvency, and his twisting the financial rules to force them to pay for his debt by buying his bonds even though they have a much lower return and therefore lower pensions. Then if the pension is enough to live on today you can be fairly sure it will not be in a few years time as taxes, especially council tax, carry on their inevitable rise. Council Tax, a very large chunk of which goes into these pensions schemes, going up each year not only above inflation but above the growth rate of the economy.
Public sector 'workers' get better pay, both median and mean. Public sector 'workers' get better pensions. Public sector 'workers' get more secure pensions. But they throw a tantrum just because they can no longer take these richer, more secure, tax payer funded pensions earlier retirement than everybody else. Fuck them.
posted by chris at 3/28/2006 06:59:00 am
5 Comments:
Public sector workers earn more than private sector workers? That's a damn lie statistic if I ever heard one. Surely not true if you do the sensible thing and compare like for like, i.e. people doing the same job. Your figures are meaningless because the make-up of jobs in the public sector is totally different from in the private sector. This is particularly true now that most of the low-paid staff (cleaners etc) in government actually work for private companies providing contracted-out services.
I know for a fact that doctors, nurses and teachers get paid more for the same jobs in the private sector. I also know there are a lot of absolutely brilliant people working in the middle levels of the Civil Service, who earn just a fraction of what they'd be worth in the private sector.
I agree with you that the public sector is out of step on pensions. Most companies no longer offer final salary schemes to new employees, and the government still does. That should probably change. But that's not what this strike is about. The issue here is about changing pension arrangements for people already in the job. That's basically a breach of contract and totally unacceptable. No private sector company has yet had the nerve to try to deny its employees the pension package they signed up to when they joined and which they have been working towards for years.
(As an aside - I believe Rentokil Initial are thinking about it, and everyone else is watching to see if they dare and if they can get away with it).
Public sector workers earn more than private sector workers?
Yes on average they do. The Office for National Statistics calculated that the average public sector worker earns 20 per cent more than his or her private sector counterpart.
This is particularly true now that most of the low-paid staff (cleaners etc) in government actually work for private companies providing contracted-out services.
You mean that you don't like the numbers, so you want to add private sector jobs into the total of public sector jobs to bring their average down?
The issue here is about changing pension arrangements for people already in the job.
No it's not, its about new workers. With the rest of the bolshy bastards coming out in sympathy.
You've completely missed (or ignored) my point on salaries. I wasn't saying your figures were incorrect, just that they were meaningless. It is stupid of you to compare the salary of e.g. a public sector teacher with a private sector cleaner. That is what you are doing when you compare average salaries (mean or meadian) in the private sector and in the public sector.
I wasn't proposing adding private sector cleaning jobs into the public sector total to bring the average down. Since the average is a meaningless figure, that would be doubly stupid. I was merely giving an example of why the spread of jobs in the public sector was different from in the private sector, leading to a different average salary.
With respect to your source, I don't think it's presenting the full story. A key stumbling block in the protest is the removal of the 85-year rule which DOES affect existing employees. If it were just about new employees then I'd agree with you completely, but it's not. (BTW I found this link on Google, I haven't yet found something which gives the details in an impartial and precise manner. If you find such a thing I'd love to see it).
You cannot compare like for like since most of the higher paying jobs are of the sort that simply would not exist in the private sector as they are completely useless. Averages are the only way to get the full picture.
You can compare like for like where equivalent jobs exist. You can't argue that averages (which compare different roles) are meaningful.
I've worked for large organizations in both the public and private sectors. The difference between them is much smaller than you'd think; the job of a middle manager in either is pretty similar, and both have plenty of people doing jobs that I consider pointless.
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