Public sector strikes on Wednesday

And very, very few public sector workers will ever have the sort of massive pensions that the media are constantly pushing at the public.

Certainly dont think that huge bonuses and perks are commonplace in the private sector. Just think that there is a sort of revenge thing going on here, cos they got screwed out of their pensions -by people who WILL be enjoying pensions and perks never attainable anywhere in the public sector.

Seems like it will only be deemed fair when we've ALL been screwed.
 
A couple of stand up guys, yesterday.
 

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Rumble":3bm8lcd9 said:
I'll try and illustrate the real world with an example. A couple of years ago a friend of mine was in a graduate engineering role. The small company he was with was experiencing trouble and asked him to take a pay cut of several thousand pounds. Of course he didn't like it, but he accepted, knowing full well that in the employment market, with a surplus of people with his skills and at his level, he was lucky to have a job anyway. The company survuived, he's still with them and is recovering his salary as they can afford it.

Of course, he could have stuck to his guns, pointed to his contract and continued to pick up his original salary for a couple of months more until the company went under.

Now try telling that story again, but substitute "small company" for "heavily indebted, deeply troubled country" and "graduate engineer" for "unskilled administrator/cleaner/immigration form filler outer" etc.

I know there are many worthy, and some underpaid, people in the public sector. I would never belitte the contribution of the (front-line) emergency services. Unfortunately, it's all the much-more-easily-replaceable people that constitute the waste of resources. And it's those people who should be embarrassed and ashamed about kicking up a fuss.



Going by your example.... Do you really think if and when things improve the government will turn round to me and say 'thanks for helping us out of a hole. We're minted again now so here's a bumper pay rise and we'd like to reduce your pension contributions'? No, no they won't. I don't expect to profit when the world's a happy place but I also don't accept being shafted because of the actions of others.

I asked earlier who you expected to pay for your state pension when you retire as you're not saving for your own? I take it you will be claiming the state pension at some point?
 
They say never talk about politics as people get hot under their collars and vent their fury. Also you get an idea of the politics of people whom up to this point you thought were stand up liberal folk and now you realise they have extreme views that make you question why you like these people.
I'm a pay into a public sector pension, my union encourages us to strike, my wages are below the national average and my workload at the moment at least is huge and thus in order to stay on top and not have a mental meltdown I will have to work on strike day. I support why we're striking but I dont believe it will make one jot of difference and as is seen on here there are loads of folk who dont support us for whatever reason.
We have chosen a bad time to pick a fight and unless we get much more militant we will be ignored. The British are not the Greeks or the French, we dont fight the government in the street we just grumble a lot and accept it :roll:
So enough politics, forget each others views, what will be will be and lets get back to oldschool bikes ;)
 
BoyBurning":s07ukq3t said:
Maybe Marky, but...

...very, very few of the private sector workers I know have ever had the huge pay bonuses and perks etc. alluded to in this thread.
Many moons ago, now, I moved from a public sector job to a private sector job.

My reasons at the time were money and career progression - reward for skill and ability, that sort of thing - rather than aspiring to progress up some ageing, perhaps out-of-date, middle management structure, that was probably just there on ceremony as opposed to true required process or structure.

And in true, Norman Tebbit fashion I got on my bike - or more factually, got off my bike and into my car - but the sentiment was the same, leaving the metaphor intact, even if the devil wasn't in the detail.

So I effectively gave up a very good pension, but the company I then joined, also had a very good pension, albeit I would be paying more in contributions than I had in my previous public sector job.

The job I moved to was essentially the same type of skilled role (much the same type of work, no more responsibility or grandiosity). As part of that move, I did negotiate a little more money than I was currently earning - I effectively got a little on top (couple of k) of the gross of my existing salary+overtime/on-call payments from my previous job, as my base salary in my then new, shiny, private sector job.

Within a short period of working in that private sector job (less than a year), I was promoted with a pay rise - that was unprovoked or asked for by me (it was based on them wanting to try and keep me there and feeling threatened that I may choose to move on, at a key time when they felt they needed my (supplementary, at the time to the main type of work I was then employed for) new skills to their area - not that I'd made any overt comments or hints about moving anywhere - it was entirely their initiative, that at the time was something of a (albeit pleasant) surprise.

Within a couple of years, I was golden-handcuffed (read: a reasonable payment up front, to be followed by another, towards the end of that "vulnerable" period) again, just to keep me working there, and not leaving for somewhere else, during a period where the company was effectively up for sale. And once again, that was entirely unprovoked from my end - it was once again a complete - albeit very pleasant - surprise.

Not long after that, I was also golden-handcuffed over the Y2K period - again a payment up front, followed by another, some time later. And again, the rationale was the same - to try and keep me there (well not just me, individually, there were others, too, in both instances).

A couple of years later, I was also given an unsolicited pay raise (reasonably sizable) - I'd not asked or even hinted that I was clamouring for extra money. At that point, it was given on a "harmonisation" rationale - keeping various people on a par, within a bigger organisation (pay rates weren't public knowledge, anyways, so people would only have known what others were earning, if they discussed it in a Frank and Earnest fashion...). At the time, I found it quietly amusing that both my line manager and department manager both claimed it was their initiative to give me the rise, during semi-formal meetings with them, separately, where they both claimed credit for it.

Now it's not all been unsolicited bonuses and pay rises - in much of the last decade, things have dried up considerably - and none of those bonuses were any true comparison to the sorts of bonuses people talk about in, say, the banking or finance organisations.

All the same, it was a stark difference to the sorts of rewards I could expect - for the same type of work that I did in a public sector role (actually, the work I did in the public sector role, was probably more challenging).

That's not to say how much better I've found the private sector to the public sector. In truth, there's a fair part of me that looks back to my early days with more than nostalgia (but that's not really about the conditions or rewards, perhaps more the time, circumstance, and location). And true to form, the people I used to work with, are now themselves, private sector workers as they have been privatised and transitioned to work within private sector companies.

As to people pointing at the private sector, and maybe specifically the banking and finance industries, well surely they have a point. Being lectured that the private sector answers the inefficiencies of the public sector, when many public sector people have their roles, contributions, and rewards scrutinised and effectively targeted for attack, and in stark contrast, they can see the dynamic, example-setting, private sector example of the banking and finance industries - ones which are considered, largely, the jewel in the UK's industrial crown, and the epitome of an ideal business model - effectively fail under their own steam, but because they are so large, and involve the finances of so many, are considered too big to actually let fail...

When they then see that private sector principles don't always hold true - that the old market principle of living or failing on success doesn't always apply, and in some circumstances, the public sector finances have to be used to such a huge degree to prop up private sector companies (to the degree they're now, pretty much, public sector "companies") - but uncannily, they seemed to find it hugely irritating that tax payers felt they had just cause to scrutinise and criticise come bonus season time. I suspect, the public sector posters, here, then probably find it quite galling to be told that the private sector answers all the ineffeciences and problems with their organisations.

But then I'm just hypothesising on behalf of the public sectors workers posting in this debate (shrug).
 
technodup":1uksxepy said:
I don't have time to read all of this thread but got the gist from the first couple of pages.

There's a nice article here http://www.devilskitchen.me.uk/2011/11/ ... akers.html which sums it up for me (the slant of which may be apparent from the link :LOL:).

I'm with Reagan. Sack them all.
You know what's most funny about that article / page?

The bit in update 3:-

"What genuinely makes me sick is when people who are protected from the consequences of their own incompetence, inefficiency and stupidity try to blame private companies for not paying enough. Only public sector morons do this as they are used to a world of money growing on trees called the private sector, and they have never been affected until now, by the realities of the economics of the world."

Given what happened over the banking crisis, pot, kettle, black springs, gazelle-like, to mind.

There's some corkers in that paragraph... "world of money growing on trees", "realities of the economics of the world", "protected from the consequences of their own incompetence, inefficiency and stupidity". How soon people forget, and hand-wave over the huge tidal wave of public sector funding needed to bailout the banks when the ship was bloody sinking, and it was too Titanic to let sink.
 
Neil":3po7zmhh said:
You know what's most funny about that article / page?

The bit in update 3:-

Given what happened over the banking crisis, pot, kettle, black springs, gazelle-like, to mind.

How soon people forget, and hand-wave over the huge tidal wave of public sector funding needed to bailout the banks when the ship was bloody sinking, and it was too Titanic to let sink.
I don't think anybody thinks 'the bankers' are without blame. But as I understand it the number of them actually responsible is rather small, certainly compared to the public sector as a body. And importantly given the investment in the banks is just that, an investment, with the potential to profit at some time, which is an alien concept to the public sector.

And talking of banks, there are thousands losing their jobs across the sector, maybe not the persons culpable but still worth bearing in mind when we're talking about job security, pension terms and contractual agreements in the state sector.
 
technodup":vo65w2vu said:
Neil":vo65w2vu said:
You know what's most funny about that article / page?

The bit in update 3:-

Given what happened over the banking crisis, pot, kettle, black springs, gazelle-like, to mind.

How soon people forget, and hand-wave over the huge tidal wave of public sector funding needed to bailout the banks when the ship was bloody sinking, and it was too Titanic to let sink.
I don't think anybody thinks 'the bankers' are without blame. But as I understand it the number of them actually responsible is rather small, certainly compared to the public sector as a body. And importantly given the investment in the banks is just that, an investment, with the potential to profit at some time, which is an alien concept to the public sector.
In fairness, big chunks of the public sector are SERVICES - we shouldn't be expecting profit.

Perhaps modernisation, perhaps using principles from the business world to streamline and re-engineer process where it helps the SERVICE, but not profit. Better SERVICE.

That's been a big problem in this dogma, that business principles are best and always apply.

My reason for citing the banking sector, though, being the attempted lecturing of the public sector, on being out-of-date, out-of-touch, on somebody elses' money, and over here.

Now true enough, I'm sure most areas can stand to improve - but when I look at the schools my kid goes to, the hospitals that treat my kids, the police that I would call if I have a problem with crime, what I want is better service, not run like an ever expanded version of McDonald's school of business.
technodup":vo65w2vu said:
And talking of banks, there are thousands losing their jobs across the sector, maybe not the persons culpable but still worth bearing in mind when we're talking about job security, pension terms and contractual agreements in the state sector.
Are there actually many / any job sectors that have any true job security any more?
 
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