Pensions reform: What public sector workers really think

Patience wears thin.

For the vast majority of Public Sector troops – those under (say) £40k p.a. These people are generally (in my experience) not the sharpest knives in the drawer. They are often the ones who couldn’t make it into or cut it in the private sector. Trying to explain and rationalise with these people is very likely to be a nil sum game. True, I am well aware that there are exceptions, but I refer to the majority – probably card carrying union members (and bolshie to boot) who know the rules backwards and have been content to live off our taxes for years. A good dose of unemployment will no doubt help to concentrate minds. The Labour party is wetting its pants as it knows that the nation will realise that all these people are their clients and the disruption will reflect poorly on them. The general public is getting heartily sick of shelling out for the public sector who seem to demand more and more for less and less. Their benefits, holidays, working hours, sick leave are conditions that won’t be found in the private sector in equivalent grades. I believe they are treading on very thin ice – only they don’t have the wit to realise it.

Posted by: Harry Katz

Blame the bankers

Teachers and hospital workers would not be required to work longer and pay more for less money in retirement if it hadn't been for the financial services industry cocking everything up. They have every right to be angry and resist this attack on their value...

Posted by: Ken Durkin

you can't balme the bankers,,,,

I suggest that the banking crisis is the catatlyst for these cahnges not the cause, which simply put is that medical science is keeping us alive for a lot longer so there are fewer in work to pay for those who have retired.

Posted by: John Piper

Public Sector Pensions.

I'd love a guaranteed & inflation-proofed pension when I retire. Unfortunatley I have worked in the private sector since 1976 and my scenario is as follows ; my 1st employer has underfunded the pension scheme as the Labour government allowed them to take a contribution holiday so the fund is not sufficient to meet future liabilities, my 2nd employer has just won a High Court Review to restrict annual increases to 2.5% once the pension is in payment regardless of the rate of inflation, my 3rd and 4th employers have paid nothing into a pension scheme for me unlike the public sector employees who can receive as much as 9% of their pay into pension from the tax-payer. In addition, Gordon Brown instigated a tax grab on private pension schemes when Labour came to power in 1997 so why do elemnets of the public sector think it's not fair?

Posted by: John Morgan

MP's Pension Benefits

Can anyone tell me if Public Sector Pension reform will start with the MP's Scheme, after all, 'we are in this together'.

Posted by: Gary Capstick

Move into the real world

It's very easy to blame the bankers for the current ills of the country. For the record, the financial crisis and the banking crisis are not the same thing. It cost the country circa £60 billion to bail out the banks. That was at a time when we already had a deficit of £150 billion in the economy. The finger of blame falls squarely at the ministers son from Kirkcaldy. Gordon Brown promised the end of boom and bust. He created the Financial Services Authority to watch over the banks. Gordon Brown's tenure as Chancellor of the Exchequer can simply be described as fail fail fail. Now we have unions balloting members for strike action when the members clearly don't understand the issue. Would the unions be doing this under a Labour government. I think not. The revised public sector pension is still significantly better than is available in the private sector. Trade Unions are playing with the long term financial future of it's members for political point scoring. I think it is extremely unfair to question the intelligence of a public sector worker just because they earn under £40,000 per year. Plenty at that grade could tell you how the tax credit system works inside out. I wouldn't have a clue, but I know how their pension scheme works. We are standing by and being deceived by trade unionists who are having their strings pulled by that bastion of financial management, the Labour party

Posted by: Andy