strike

[StraferJack]

Look. Another senseless leftie* being irresponsible

* as in, not a leftie at all

[Chippy Minton]

There's no "pervading feeling the public sector should suck it up" - a new BBC opinion poll this morning shows almost two thirds of people believe the strike is "justified."

[Jeremy]

Pugwash Wrote:

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> I am a front line worker and work frequently from

> 10 am - 7./7.30 pm most evenings. Since earlier

> this year we have lost 4.5 posts in our team and

> the work load has increased 25%. In order to catch

> up with our paperwork, it is nothing unusual to

> find people in the office at weekends just to keep

> on top of things. We do not get paid overtimem. As

> we deal with very vulnerable people, often

> palliative, others disabled, others being abused,

> it is also emotionally draining. We frequently

> have to visit homes which are covered in faeces,

> blood and vomit, sometimes infested by vermin and

> fleas. We have been threated with violence and

> verbally abused, but are not allowed to seek

> redress from our employers. I and my colleagues

> have good salaries, but under the new proposals

> will need to pay another ?1000 plus per year and

> get a lower pension. We accept that we need to pay

> more and are willing to do so, but when you are

> advised that the pension you may eventually get in

> 10/15/20 years time, is significantly lower, than

> what is quoted for today........ -

I don't consider 10-7./7.30 to be a particularly long working day. And believe me, plenty of private companies have had a lot of redundancies, leaving the remaining staff to take on extra work. Weekend working is not uncommon - overtime is almost unheard of (perhaps unless you do shift work). Most people have seen their pensions plummet in value recently. We are all facing the reality of working until we're 70 and paying everything we can into our pensions.

What is so special about the public sector?

[*Bob*]

Chippy Minton Wrote:

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> There's no "pervading feeling the public sector

> should suck it up" - a new BBC opinion poll this

> morning shows almost two thirds of people believe

> the strike is "justified."

Nice conflation! I believe the strike is "justified" - but my 'pervading feeling' is that they ought to suck it up. One does not discount the other.

[alice]

by above response to Pugwash's post and many many other comments above - it seems the government and its mate,the media have been highly successful in recreating the old them and us scenario. divide and conquer. If you work for a wage/ salary whether in public or private organisation - you're one of the workers. both groups are interdependent.

[Huguenot]

Both groups are interdependent, but it'll be the private workers paying for public sector early retirement...

"We're all in this together, so long as you're paying" ;-)

http://www.cartoonstock.com/newscartoons/cartoonists/mba/lowres/mban1707l.jpg

[alice]

nice cartoon but

[david_carnell]

Attaching a winky emoticon doersn't make your argument more valid, you know. It's just a sign of teenage immaturity and a desperate wish not to offend when you're being a berk. ;-)

You know that by cutting a nurse?s pension you will do nothing to boost the pension of a shop-worker or any other private sector worker?

And what exactly do you mean when you say you want public sector pension provision to be more like that of the private sector?

How about some key facts from the ONS this time to dispute your arguments:

Two in three private sector workers are not members of a workplace pension scheme;

Private sector pension provision increases sharply with pay, while in the public sector it is much more evenly distributed;

Two in three public sector staff earning between ?100 and ?200 a week are in a pension while only one in seven private sector employees in the same wage band are in a pension;

Pension provision in the private sector varies hugely between sectors, with four in five workers in the energy sector having a pension, but only one in 16 in the hospitality sector having one;

While senior public sector staff are in the same schemes as the rest of the employees in their sector and often pay bigger percentage contributions, top directors in the private sector (FTSE 100 directors) have pensions worth nearly ?4 million on average.

So in summary......to make public sector pension provision like that in the private sector we would first have to take pensions away from two in three public sector workers, concentrating on the low paid. Next we would have to take the public sector?s top earners and give them much bigger pension pots.

Making public sector pensions as unfair as those in the private sector does nothing to increase fairness.

Private sector workers should be angry not at public sector workers but at their employers and successive governments who have allowed private sector pension coverage to decline so sharply.

*hat tip to Left Foot Forward for some of the stats and language*

[Jeremy]

alice Wrote:

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> it seems the government

> and its mate,the media have been highly successful

> in recreating the old them and us scenario.

I don't see how you can deduce that from my post. I was pointing out that a lot of people in the private sector have also had to go through redundancies, increased workloads, diminished pensions and later retirement. Times are tough for a lot of people - so you can understand that not everybody will have sympathy for those who are striking.

[Marmora Man]

Making public sector pensions as unfair as those in the private sector does nothing to increase fairness.

But this argument isn't about establishing fairness between public & private sector pensions it's about whether the country and taxpayers can afford to continue to provide pension arangements for the public sector that:

a. Are not available / affordable in the private sector

b. If they were to continue would further diminish the opportunity for private sector workers to pay into a half way decent private pension - thus making the disparity you affect to be concerned about still wider.

It is the cost of government that is being borne by the private sector, it is the cost of government that needs to reduce. Changing public sector pension arrangements is but one part of a major cost reduction exercise that the country needs to go through.

[david_carnell]

But Mamora Man, is that not symptomatic of your general political dogma rather than anything more objective?

As a libertarian you'd rather government was providing hardly any services at all let alone providing pensions.

The big danger is that you make the schemes so unattractive to new entrants a whole generation and more misses out on any pension and the schemes become ever more unsustainable due to a lack of new investment. A self-fulfilling prophesy.

[DaveR]

david_carnell Wrote:

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> But Mamora Man, is that not symptomatic of your

> general political dogma rather than anything more

> objective?

Pot. Kettle. Guess what colour?

Two separate issues. No need to run them together. Both good ideas.

1. Incentivise both employers and employees in the private sector to improve pension provision.

2. Amend pension provisions for public sector employees to better reflect current and future economic realities and share the burden between taxpayer and employee more equitably.

[StraferJack]

More " apples and oranges", I'd say

Carnell might be many things but a fringe player he ain't. Whereas by his own admission marmora man is out there on the libertarian, small-state edges.

Maybe I'm wrong, maybe a sizeable number of people believe as he does. But I still wouldn't say he and Carnell are different sides of the same coin

[Marmora Man]

SJ - I'm not arguing from ideological grounds. Mine is a mathematical argument. To expect 60% of the working population to find generous final salary scheme pensions for the other 40% of the working population is neither sustainable or fair.

Private sector pensions are funded from the investments made by the pension fund into which they pay. Public sector pensions are funded from current taxes - essentially a long running Ponzi scheme managed by the government. Ponzi schemes tend to collapse when new investors recognise the scam which is, roughly, where the country is now, except that some people - including you seem to be arguing that the private sector should continue to pay into this particular Ponzi investment plan forever and without complaint.

[Loz]

"The current model of public service pension provision is clearly not tenable in the long-term. There is a clear need for reform."

-Lord Hutton

[david_carnell]

"For too long nurses have been undervalued, restricted in what they could do, with too few career opportunities in clinical practice. For far too long, nurses have endured a pay system that has held them back - both professionally as well as financially."

- Lord Hutton

[Loz]

DC,

I agree. Lord Hutton is obviously a wise man. That's two quotes where he has spoken utter sense.

[nashoi]

MM

Whether something is generous or not, is not a mathematical argument.

[Marmora Man]

nashoi Wrote:

-------------------------------------------------------

> MM

>

> Whether something is generous or not, is not a

> mathematical argument.

It is when you are comparing one set of numbers with another.

[StraferJack]

Speaking of ponzi schemes, who took responsibility for this particular creation ? I mean everyone bought into it at one time, so they must be known? Or was the scheme sound until it's custodians dropped the ball so spectacularly?

If I was going to take the hit for my pension without complaint, I'd like to know that the people responsible were at least taking responsibility

Good to see part of the private sector (at Unilever) start to make the same noises too

To quote Leonard Cohen :

Everybody knows that the dice are loaded

Everybody rolls with their fingers crossed

Everybody knows that the war is over

Everybody knows the good guys lost

Everybody knows the fight was fixed

The poor stay poor, the rich get rich

That's how it goes

Everybody knows

Everybody knows that the boat is leaking

Everybody knows that the captain lied

Everybody got this broken feeling

Like their father or their dog just died

Everybody knows the deal is rotten

Old Black Joe's still pickin' cotton

For your ribbons and bows

And everybody knows

or to quote from Bodie off the Wire:

""The Wire: Final Grades (#4.13)" (2006)

Preston 'Bodie' Broadus: I been doing this a long time. I ain't never said nothing to no cop.

[sighs]

Preston 'Bodie' Broadus: I feel old. I been out there since I was 13. I ain't never fucked up a count, never stole off a package, never did some shit that I wasn't told to do. I been straight up. But what come back? Hmm? You'd think if I get jammed up on some shit they'd be like, "A'ight, yeah. Bodie been there. Bodie hang tough. We got his pay lawyer. We got a bail." They want me to stand with them, right? But where the fuck they at when they supposed to be standing by us? I mean, when shit goes bad and there's hell to pay, where they at? This game is rigged, man. We like the little bitches on a chessboard.

Off. James 'Jimmy' McNulty: Pawns. "

[DaveR]

I always turn to Leonard Cohen for an original take on macroeconomics

"Carnell might be many things but a fringe player he ain't. Whereas by his own admission marmora man is out there on the libertarian, small-state edges"

How 'out there' you are depends largely on where you start. If you start as a smug, relatively comfortable, educated, middle-class, urban, Guardian reading, trendy specs wearing South of England liberal cliche then MM probably looks like Newt Gingrich.

[StraferJack]

"If you start as a smug, relatively comfortable, educated, middle-class, urban, Guardian reading, trendy specs wearing South of England liberal cliche "

You might have "smug, relatively comfortable, Guardian reading" althought I would debate smug

But the other things aren't true of me

And I'm not saying MM looks like Newt based on this thread - there was one a while back where he expanded on his libertarian values

and then there was this

None of which is to denigrate MM in any way btw. I admire his ability to remain calm and present his views without becoming emotional and sometimes wish I could do that. And when he takes occasional leave of the forum, the place is worse off without him

But boy do I disagree with him!

(and the laughing len quote was for his benefit, as he will know, hime being a huge Cohen fan)

[Marmora Man]

S-J,

You know that by quoting Leonard Cohen it will please me - but it pleases me also to see you acknowledge the ponzi scheme nature of public sector pension provision.

I assume it came about when state pensions were introduced by Lloyd George back in 1908 (?). Then, as ever, it was a vote winning political wheeze - offering a state pension to all those over the age of 65, safe in the knowledge that very very few lived to much beyond that age anyway. The "take" from National Insurance was far greater than the payout in state pensions. Over time NI moved from being theoretically hypothecated tax to cover pension costs to gradually become just another tax and we all forgot that pensions weren't properly funded - politicians and the tesaury usually hate hypothecated taxes anyway - so chose not to draw attention to the fact.

As an aside - I'd support any politician that simply incorporated NI into current tax rates - so that we had greater clarity on real tax rates.

Would be interesting to see if an actuarialist could devise a scheme whereby from a given date pensions for public sector staff were properly funded with personal and employer contributions invested as in the private sector, with the government picking up the gradually reducing cost of funding the ponzi scheme pensions for another 50 years. I assume Lord Hutton looked at this - but don't know.

[Huguenot]

As MM has pointed out, it didn't need to be a Ponzi scheme when it was first created.

In 1910 the life expectancy in the UK was 50 for men and 55 for women.

It has been politically untouchable to mess with the pension since, it guaranteed losing an election.

As usual joe public (alongisde some of the guys on this thread) have refused to recognise that it has been increasingly unwieldy, but refuse to pay for it with more taxation.

D_C persistently lays this down as a 'government' obligation to pay 'deserving' workers - a complete red herring. It comes from tax - either the tax goes up, other spending goes down, or the public sector pays for their own early retirement and inflated pensions.

Those are the ONLY three options.

What do you want it to be?

D_C wants to transfer money from private workers to public workers, and has some completely bizarre idea that private sector workers can demand higher pensions and early retirement too!! With f**king WHAT money???

[DaveR]

SJ, the point is that to you, MM is way out on the fringe. That view defines where you are, and IMHO reveals your blinkered view of the political spectrum in a classic liberal way i.e. I don't know many people who think like that ergo it's a fringe view. D_C is every bit as hidebound to his own dogma, but is, dare I say it, both, less open about it and less articulate.

MM is only unusual in that he sets out his views clearly and unashamedly, and they are based on evidence and experience.