RANT!

[caddyman]

I was going to write a long screed grumbling about pensions, the government’s attitude, the way it has moulded the public’s attitude, the stupidity of the unions and the targeted envy of the private sector and the whole ‘something for nothing culture’ that’s grown up over the years.

I started researching a few numbers:

37% of women and 42% of men of working age are accruing rights in private pension plans. In 2009 there were 3.6 million people in private sector pension schemes and 5.4 million members of public sector schemes.

The number of people in work in 2011 is around the 29.2 million mark, of whom about 6 million are in the public sector.

Presumably then, over half the population are just expecting the state to keep them alive when they retire, without being involved in an occupational pension scheme in either sector, or in any shape or form.

Given that all Government effort has gone into demonizing the public sector, today’s strike is pointless. There is barely any support for it within the public sector, much less from without. Incredibly, the Government has managed to make relatively ordinary pensions look bad by showing how generous they are compared to wider pensions. Nobody seems inclined to ask why private sector pensions have been allowed to atrophy to the point that it is plausible to hold up the public sector as benefiting unfairly.

I for one can’t see the point in losing a day’s pay for the privilege of catching up with unpaid overtime at a later date. Better by far is to turn up and do exactly what we’re paid for. “Work to Rule” as it used to be called; just do the hours you’re paid for and go home. If you run out of stationery as they have in some of the rump Government Offices (for yes, they have closed, but the functions continue at a reduced level), don’t supply your own, don’t work unpaid overtime, only do precisely what you are paid for and no more. The entire system would grind to a halt far more effectively and then people would be able to gauge whether or not they want the services provided or not.

On the wider point concerning the necessary cuts in public expenditure generally, I’m not even against them, per se. There’s a lot of things the public sector does that it doesn’t need to do. It’s the wholesale, untargeted and frankly ideological self congratulation that underpins the unseemly glee behind the process. I’m not sure that I even object in principle to the haste the cuts; we knew before the General Election that they would needed. What galls is the feeling that no thought has been given to anything other than the actual overall numbers. It doesn’t matter where the cuts fall as long as they do fall.

I am not enjoying the process, but I recognise that it has to take place and that like many poor saps before me and for many more to come; I am just in the wrong place at the wrong time. What I do ask, though, or rather what I wish (and I realise that it’s a futile wish even as I make it) is that those people who are railing about so-called pampered civil and public servants take a look at precisely who did what to get us to this point. Who caused the economic downturn and how? Who voted for a government that spent more than it could afford? Who wanted the services, but not pay for them?

And who is telling you what to think and what is their agenda? Ladies and Gentlemen, we are being divided and conquered and no-one seems to care. Society is becoming ever more sectarian and we as long as this pertains, we won’t even get our Bread and Circuses.

On a final note: In 2008-09, the average income for pensioners in the UK was £29,328 for a couple, £15,808 for a single man and £13,728 for a single woman.

http://www.statistics.gov.uk/cci/nugget.asp?id=1274

If you think that a teacher, with the “best” provisioned pensions in the public sector is getting too much, I submit the following. Go away and check:

The Hutton report found the average pension payments - including workers and dependents - in 2009-10 were as follows:
• Local government worker: £4,052
• NHS worker: £7,234
• Civil servant: £6,199
• Teacher: £9,806
• Member of armed forces: £7,722
It concluded that 10% of public sector workers received annual pensions of £17,000 or above, with retired policemen and fire officers most represented in this category compared to other sections of the workforce. It found that 1% of workers got payouts of £37,000 a year - two thirds of those were NHS doctors and consultants.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-13775278

Comments

[fractalgeek.livejournal.com]

In the private sector, pensions are mostly "funded" - ie you build up a pot of investment while working, and the actuaries try and get the level of contribution right, principally around lifetime, working lifetime and investment income. Big Gordo nailed the last one bigtime when he removed many of the pension reliefs on reinvestment as one of his first acts, and after that, things have gone downhill. The other big thing is that most schemes rely on people leaving their schemes early, as this keeps benefits down and well defined.

In the public sector, largely pensions are unfunded - the contributions of those now pay for pensions directly, and you hope the pool of people paying and what they pay grows. (If done in private investment, this is a Ponzi Fraud...). Go for a workforce living longer, and getting smaller, and the same amount of income has to be spread thinner, or you have to raise contributions - or plough more in from general taxation, which is just actually pulling more from those already paying.

The union that covers my work negotiated a reasonable deal, which was to preserve existing benefits as much as possible, but accrue new ones under the new terms. We didn't strike for "Nothing can change", because we were given the figures, and it was a huge hit on take-home - and working for a firm where there are far more pensioners than workers, we couldn't support that.

[agentinfinity.livejournal.com]

It's a very strange thing, working in the public sector for an older people and physical disabiltiy team. I get to see things from different sides. At the end of the day, someone picks up the bill - unless we want to live in a society where we leave our elderly to rot. I think that it would make more sense for people to be supported in preparing for their future old age rather than leaving them to claim it all in benefits later. The money spent on these services is by far the biggest expense of councils - I think in Herts it is over twice as much as is spent on Children, Schools and families. There are some good thing happening which are money saving- such as initiatives to keep people out of residential care actually being quite empowering, but at the end of the day, people get older and thnigs go wrong in the most unpredictable ways. There isn't necessarily a solution to the problem - it's all just very expensive.

I very much agree with the divide and conquer thing you said. Why do people want to drag everyone down with them? There's nothing to stop anyone joining a union and fighting things collectively but instead, people shit on each other and everyone loses... appart from big businesses and bankers and share holders. Hurrah for them. It's a shame that collective action has become associated with hardcore socialism and bloated Labour states, because these things needn't have anything to do with each other.

[fractalgeek.livejournal.com]

Lots of good stuff. The only thing that I absolutely would not agree with from the current protests is saying that the status quo can be maintained. I'm paying more, for less benefit, but that's what was decided. My firm is putting in more money too. Indirectly, that means less profit for other shareholders - who are mostly pension funds. It's all a balance.

[larians.livejournal.com]

I don't think that it is a case of dragging people down with them, it is a case that people don't want to be paying for other people to have a much better deal than they themselves get.

Less than 20% of the private sector work in 'big business' as defined by having over 250 staff. The vast majority work for small businesses that cannot possibly match the 20% annual pension contributions that are being paid for in the public sector.

In order for all 23 million private sector workers to have the same £9806 per year pension, the average teacher pension that Caddyman quotes above from the BBC website, then there would need to be a total pension pool of £6.8 Trillion pounds.

This problem is nothing to do with the Banks, Bankers or Big Business, not least because the major shareholders in these organisations are Pension Funds.

The bank bailouts themselves (in terms of actual money spent, not potential liabilities) was £66 billion, less than 1% of the amount needed to fund a national pension of £9k a year and we are due to recoup that money when we sell our shares.

The problem with our national pensions is that people are living as retired individuals for 4 times longer than anticipated when the schemes were established and we are only just starting to do something about it now.

As Fractal Geek has pointed out, Gordon Brown just made things worse when he scrapped the tax relief that pension funds used to enjoy and thus killed off the last gasp of final or average salary pensions in the private sector.

While I do think that there is a problem with Executive level pay and the possibility of a cartel like situation with renumerations committee's, the amounts involved will not even register on the overall pension problem. I am not saying that they shouldn't be dealt with, but they shouldn't be a distraction when looking at pensions.

[agentinfinity.livejournal.com]

I agree that there are massive problems created by an aging population and there are also massive problems with getting that aging population to work for longer - there are already a shortage of jobs for younger people. I couldn't believe the average age of people in my current workplace. It kind of made sense of my own struggle to get decent employment since graduating.

However, I am happy for teachers to get a bigger pension than me, I'm happy to pay for it - their job is an almighty pile of stress and many of them have to retire early because of this (especially in secondary). Some people deserve bigger pensions for their service to society. The same goes for nurses.

These things are not really valued enough anyway, but if, when you retire, you can say "I taught someone to read" or " I saved someone's life" that counts for more than "I enabled my boss to buy a new sports car".