Stirring up a hornets nest?

[DorsetJasper]

Sorry Artschool misunderstood your comment

Unfortunately my wife will have to teach until she is 68 as the pension is worthless til then

All i was saying was a large proportion of New Teachers think its an easy career and its not.

My apologies again to Artschool

[Vince Green]

I don't have a lot of sympathy with their cause. Sure they will have to make adjustments to their plans but who hasn't?

At least they have still got a pension, lots of others haven't been that lucky.

[artschool]

Sorry Artschool misunderstood your comment

Unfortunately my wife will have to teach until she is 68 as the pension is worthless til then

All i was saying was a large proportion of New Teachers think its an easy career and its not.

My apologies again to Artschool

 

apologies from me as well. it's a difficult topic that's affects everybody.

 

I dont know what other options we have or else we will end up like Greece.

Edited November 26, 2011 by artschool

[Laird Lugton]

[sarcasm] Borries01 what you fail to understand is on here most people are gleeful in seeing public sector pensions destroyed when there really is no need. It never ceases to amaze me how the common man eagerly takes his place in the race to the bottom whilst the rich get ever more rich.

 

The first government wrecked the private sector pensions and the second government is hell bent on doing the same to the public sector pension. Just so everyones equal, just so everyones are shiite (biblical term).

 

Now old Francis Maude wants to place more restrictions on unions and their right to strike. An interesting article on the right to strike can be found on the LSE (clearly a communist influenced educational establishment) website: London School of Economics Communist Agenda

 

The best bit about the article was in the last paragraph.

 

Those who demand even tougher restrictions on strikes in this country usually want to have their cake and eat it too. In their view, management should be free to make unilateral changes to work practices, staffing levels or safety procedures, but employees should be prevented from reacting collectively. In a phrase familiar at the LSE, this is the road to serfdom.

 

Sadly I actually believe it is becoming true. The middle classes are shrinking like never before, the report this week on high pay went onto say given another 5-10 years of senior management pay rises we would be back to Victorian levels of wage disparity. What that means for you is working until you're in your late 60's which means you'll probably have a reduced life expectancy (having worked so many years) and with having little or no pension provision. But your masters will be alright.

 

Tally Ho Serfs, race you to the bottom :lol:

[/sarcasm]

 

**I too am opting out as it's consuming far too much time. I don't think the unions will win. I still believe they've been wronged though.

[Wesman]

 

I think your just confused like an Emo chick.

 

****. That made me snot tea.

 

I'm a public sector worker doing pretty important stuff, very physical and pay a lot into my pension. I physically will not be able to do my job when I'm 60. What should I do?

[JustJon]

****. That made me snot tea.

 

I'm a public sector worker doing pretty important stuff, very physical and pay a lot into my pension. I physically will not be able to do my job when I'm 60. What should I do?

 

Find another job from 60 to 70(ish) or pay more to your pension - same as me. I'll become useless in my career at around 55 - I'll go contract working for people and keep ticking over to 65, possibly 75, because the rules have changed. Be prepared for it rather than waiting for it to happen and then wonder how to cope!

Edited November 26, 2011 by JustJon

[pimpkiller]

not wanting to be rude but you know what the government want you to do, die

[Boromir]

****. That made me snot tea.

 

I'm a public sector worker doing pretty important stuff, very physical and pay a lot into my pension. I physically will not be able to do my job when I'm 60. What should I do?

Work harder like everyone else has to and prove your worth it. There was a good offer made and your Union Leader(if your a member) made the wrong decision and your going to pay for it.

 

Hopefully when or if this mess cleans up, should we fix our pensions. We need to sort it out now or there wont be any pensions at all in the future.

[artschool]

Work harder like everyone else has to and prove your worth it. There was a good offer made and your Union Leader(if your a member) made the wrong decision and your going to pay for it.

 

Hopefully when or if this mess cleans up, should we fix our pensions. We need to sort it out now or there wont be any pensions at all in the future.

 

my personal view is that pensions as we know it will be eventually consigned to history, and will looked back at in the same way that the slave trade is viewed now.

Edited November 26, 2011 by artschool

[pimpkiller]

when your children need a life saving operation and the doctors tell them sorry no money, tell your kids "its ok, ive still got my silk incontinent pants"

[Bagsy]

****. That made me snot tea.

 

I'm a public sector worker doing pretty important stuff, very physical and pay a lot into my pension. I physically will not be able to do my job when I'm 60. What should I do?

 

Wesman, your predicament is not a particularly nice one and I feel for you but it is the same for many private sector workers - why should the public sector be any different?

[Wesman]

Work harder like everyone else has to and prove your worth it. There was a good offer made and your Union Leader(if your a member) made the wrong decision and your going to pay for it.

 

Hopefully when or if this mess cleans up, should we fix our pensions. We need to sort it out now or there wont be any pensions at all in the future.

 

I'm pretty sure I work as hard as anyone in the country when I'm called to, I get paid £28k a year and work 48 hours a week. I pay 11.5% (i think) of my wage into a pension. What more can I do?

[Laird Lugton]

Wesman, your predicament is not a particularly nice one and I feel for you but it is the same for many private sector workers - why should the public sector be any different?

 

Roughly translates as "come on down to the pension cess pit of doom, it's rubbish down here but we're in it so you should be too"!

[Wesman]

Wesman, your predicament is not a particularly nice one and I feel for you but it is the same for many private sector workers - why should the public sector be any different?

 

It shouldn't, but how many peoples lives depend on the public sector worker, for example an insurance worker, being ready and able to do ther job effectively? Peoples lives will be put at risk if me and my colleagues work into our 60's.

[artschool]

laird, surely you must recognise that people cannot expect to pay a percentage of there wages into a pension for 30 years and then retire at fifty and go on to collect a pension for another 40-50 years. when pensions were agreed life expectancy was much lower than we can expect today.

 

that is the crux of the problem and to demand more more is simply putting future generations into a form of intergenerational slavery.

[JustJon]

Roughly translates as "come on down to the pension cess pit of doom, it's rubbish down here but we're in it so you should be too"!

 

The private sector, ultimately, pay for public sector pensions - clearly when the private sector struggles that MUST, economically, have an effect on the public sector too? The other option is the private sector gets taxed harder causing those not working for that state an even harder hit?

 

Or am I missing something?

Edited November 26, 2011 by JustJon

[artschool]

The private sector, ultimately, pay for public sector pensions - clearly when the private sector struggles that MUST, economically, have an effect on the public sector too? The other option is the private sector gets taxed harder causing those not working for that state an even harder hit?

 

Or am I missing something?

 

quite correct.

[McF]

I think the title of this post says it all "stirring up an hornets nest" its certainly done that.

[JustJon]

quite correct.

 

artschool for UK President ? (Time for a change in political setup and communism isn't looking good!)

[Willxx]

I would have more support for the govt viewpoint if there was some midpoint - ie if a teacher has been paying in for some length of time be it 10,15,20 or 25 years (to be determined) then their terms of service are set and should be honoured, if NQTs are looking to join the profession then make it clear what their contributions and term of service will be expected to be and have a clearly defined method of how any future amendments will be negotiated -

 

Not

 

Dear Working Pleb

 

Mr Banker has ****** the markets up for us and apparantly we can't rely on ever increasing markets and continual FT highs, sorry lost me a bit there - I was in Cloisters with the Windsors when we did numbers at Eton, and to top it all you beastly ungrateful plebs are insisting on not dying at 60, you've even stopped smoking those nasty little cigarettes we've been poisoning for years which is dashed unsporting! So anyway we have decided that its best for everyone (ie us) if we help ourselves to an extra hundred or so quid every month to cover this and by the way you know that pension you've been paying into - well sorry we used a large chunk of that to covered the Chablis at the G8 bash and we'll need a bit to finish off paying the olympics and all that so we aren't going to pay you as much as you thought we would - Sure you won't mind old bean pip pip off to chastise the huns for having an economy now

[Laird Lugton]

Jeremy Warner of the Telegraph writes

 

Telegraph Link

 

Lord Hutton has proposed some worthwhile, though pretty limp wristed, pension reforms, yet the problem with Britain's ever more dysfunctional pensions system is not so much that public sector pensions are too generous, but the almost criminal damage that has been inflicted by successive governments on private pensions.

I say successive governments, yet the chief culprit is a familiar one – our old friend Gordon Brown, who by abolishing the tax credit on dividends to fund whatever nonsense the public sector priority of the time might have been, set in train the now almost total destruction of privately provided defined benefit pensions, and severely undermined the merits of pensions saving all round. The eminence grise of this policy is now the shadow Chancellor, Ed Balls. No wonder he's not had much to say amid the storm of Labour protest over Hutton's recommendations.

As it happens, the chief justification for public sector pension reform – that public pensions are becoming progressively more unaffordable – is something of a myth, as the detail of Lord Hutton's report makes abundantly clear. Take a look at the following graph, which you can click to englarge.

 

 

What it shows is that even without the Hutton reforms, the cost of public sector pensions on the key measure of affordability (as a percentage of GDP) has already peaked and is set to decline markedly over the years ahead. That's because public sector pensions have already been quite significantly reformed, the two main changes being higher employee contributions and the shift from RPI to the generally lower CPI for indexing purposes.

Office for Budget Responsibility projections, as shown in the bar chart beneath, show much the same thing. Far from rising as a proportion of GDP, the cost of public sector pensions is set to decline even assuming no further reform.

 

 

Now even at 1.4pc of GDP – the projected cost by 2060 assuming no further reform – pension payments will still consume a humungous sum of money. At getting on for a twentieth of all public spending, it's roughly equivalent to what's spent on defence. But the point is that this is more a question of public spending priorities than affordability as such. If public sector pensions are affordable at close to 2pc of GDP (the current cost), then they are most certainly affordable at 1.4pc. This is not a demographic timebomb which if left unaddressed will completely sink the public finances.

There are plenty of reasons for wanting to address public sector pensions, but affordability is not really one of them. What are these reasons? The main one is perceived unfairness. As taxpayers, we all generally accept the case for contributing to universal education and healthcare, but most of us are going to have something of a problem with funding public sector pension benefits which have become far more generous than our own.

Pensions are at root only a deferred form of earnings. The problem is that taking into account these benefits, it is now more remunerative to work for the public sector than the private. This is obviously not just wrong in principle, but is also bad economics, for it crowds the wealth producing bit of the economy out and profoundly limits the scope for introducing private sector efficiencies into the provision of public services. In this sense, the present system of public sector pensions truly is unsustainable, for no economy where it is more attractive to work for the public sector than the private is going to remain competitive for very long.

I'm not going to try and argue that further public sector pension reform is unnecessary and wrong, but there is something plainly unsatisfactory about "race to the bottom" policy, or levelling public sector pensions down to the disgracefully low standards that rule in the private sector.

Having largely destroyed a perfectly good system of private sector pension provision, government now seems intent on doing the same to public pensions too. I exaggerate, of course, but only a little. Hutton could have gone the whole hog and as has occurred in Sweden, attempted to move public sector workers off defined benefit pensions altogether and onto the money purchase schemes that now rule in the private sector. But that would never have passed muster politically.

The bottom line is that far more has to be done to encourage adequate private sector saving for old age, including the reintroduction of the sort of tax breaks that Brown, and now his successors, have tended to target as an easy gain for the public finances. The chances of this happening are, regrettably, about zero.

[artschool]

artschool for UK President ? (Time for a change in political setup and communism isn't looking good!)

 

unfortunately cats are ineligible to stand for office

[Pheasant Feeder]

Public service pensions are not perks. They are part of the remuneration package that I accepted when I accepted the offer of employment.

 

My salary including my shift allowanceis lower than the national average, my cost of living increase over the last few years has been 0.5%. I work shifts including weekends, and bank holidays. I will be getting up at 4.15 on christmas morning to go to work, I won't be on double time, I wont be on time and a half I'll be on single time just like last year as its included in my shift allowance. Yes I only work 37.5 hrs a week on average and because of the shifts I can make the most of my annual leave to get plenty of time off. I have not had the oppertunity to work overtime since last winter when I managed about 6 hours one month

 

I do a dangerous job, dealing with members of the public often in times of stress, in all weathers working outside. Yes there are times when the work load is light and then there are times when I am busy.

 

I accepted all of the above as my terms and conditions of employment when I accepted the offer of employment 6 years ago. I enjoy my job and do not wish to moan about any of the above.

Part of my terms and conditions included the pension. I'm not loosing a perk when my pension is reduced I am taking a substantial cut in my remuneration package, the same as if someone lost the use of a company van/car or had to take a substantial pay cut.

 

The amount I stand to loose is £50k on the value of my pension. I also have to work two years longer and have to pay over £60 a month more. I won't be retiring for another 31 years.

 

Yes my salary is paid for by the tax's of the private sector but guess where I spend most of my salary? The private sector.

 

Whilst not giving the government the savings they need I believe that if the public sector pensions are not affordable then any new employees should be offered a less generous scheme, then they know up front what they are accepting when they take up the offer of employment. It is unacceptable to reduce someones remuneration package permanantly.

[docholiday]

apologies from me as well. it's a difficult topic that's affects everybody.

 

I dont know what other options we have or else we will end up like Greece.

 

 

and thats the bottom line.

[artschool]

Public service pensions are not perks. They are part of the remuneration package that I accepted when I accepted the offer of employment.

 

My salary including my shift allowanceis lower than the national average, my cost of living increase over the last few years has been 0.5%. I work shifts including weekends, and bank holidays. I will be getting up at 4.15 on christmas morning to go to work, I won't be on double time, I wont be on time and a half I'll be on single time just like last year as its included in my shift allowance. Yes I only work 37.5 hrs a week on average and because of the shifts I can make the most of my annual leave to get plenty of time off. I have not had the oppertunity to work overtime since last winter when I managed about 6 hours one month

 

I do a dangerous job, dealing with members of the public often in times of stress, in all weathers working outside. Yes there are times when the work load is light and then there are times when I am busy.

 

I accepted all of the above as my terms and conditions of employment when I accepted the offer of employment 6 years ago. I enjoy my job and do not wish to moan about any of the above.

Part of my terms and conditions included the pension. I'm not loosing a perk when my pension is reduced I am taking a substantial cut in my remuneration package, the same as if someone lost the use of a company van/car or had to take a substantial pay cut.

 

The amount I stand to loose is £50k on the value of my pension. I also have to work two years longer and have to pay over £60 a month more. I won't be retiring for another 31 years.

 

Yes my salary is paid for by the tax's of the private sector but guess where I spend most of my salary? The private sector.

 

Whilst not giving the government the savings they need I believe that if the public sector pensions are not affordable then any new employees should be offered a less generous scheme, then they know up front what they are accepting when they take up the offer of employment. It is unacceptable to reduce someones remuneration package permanantly.

private company that becomes unprofitable= the company goes under and everyone loses their job.

public sector becomes too expensive= outrage from the public sector workers and insistance that their pay remains the same.

 

also the attitude that "I'm alright jack" and it's the new workers who must take all the pain, is very thoughtful.

 

are you aware that public sector workers in Greece are taking PAY cuts of 50 percent?

Edited November 26, 2011 by artschool