Firstly I should put my cards on the table and say to those who don't already know that I am a <<whispers>> public sector worker. Yesterday many public sector workers went on strike over reforms to their pensions which they feel are unfair. It was either 'a damp squib' if you believe the Government or the biggest public sector strike since yesterday/the 1920s/dinosaurs walked the earth, if you believe UNISON. Personally I'm not particularly minded to believe either of them.
Fortunately, I don't work on a Wednesday so the awkward question of whether to strike or not didn't rear its head. Even if it had, I would have chosen to work as normal. I don't agree with striking. I don't think it really achieves much. While I'm not quite up there with Jeremy Clarkson,slightly ironic considering the majority of his salary is paid by the taxpayer, I do think that there are better ways to try and resolve disputes. To be honest, I'm more aligned with Eleanor Smith, the vice-president of UNISON and a theatre nurse at Birmingham Women's Hospital,who told the press, rather unwisely I would have thought, that she only joined the NHS for the pension. A case study in how to alienate the public perhaps? I also wonder what she would have made of our own UNISON rep who actually went to work because striking would affect his final salary pension when he retires in a couple of years. How's that for solidarity with your fellow workers!
The Boy went shopping in Bath with his friends and was surprised to see many, many of his teachers, supposedly on strike, were enjoying an extra day of Christmas shopping. Surely they should have been manning the picket lines, or lobbying their MPs. At work, the picket line had disappeared by lunchtime.
I'm not sure how many people in the public sector actually realise how much the private sector is suffering. My brother is now entering his third year without a pay rise. The Husband is now working for around £600-800 a month less than he was two years ago. My dad has seen his pension cut by nearly 70% in the past two years. He was told it was either that or the pension fund would collapse. He's accepted the hit because he hopes that it will get better in the future. He can't go on strike because, after all, who'd care? Meanwhile my colleagues gripe about losing their very generous petrol allowance.
Only something like 35% of the private sector even have pensions, compared to around 82% in the public sector. Many private sector companies have no pension schemes and the returns on private pensions are so dire that those that can actually afford them will have to work well beyond the public sector retirement age of 65 just to be able to afford to retire. The Office for Fiscal Studies estimates that a private sector worker would have to pay between 15% and 40% of their monthly salary into a pension to get the same return as an average public sector one.
It's a difficult world we are living in today and everyone is suffering both in the public and the private sector. While I do blame the banks to a great extent for the mess we find ourselves in now, most of us also played our part in the financial crisis by maxing out our credit cards and buying houses we couldn't really afford. It's now time for everyone to pull together, to take one for the team, to do everything we can to dig out way out of this mess. And that's not going to happen while people are still demanding benefits that others can't afford or expecting to retire earlier on a pension that is funded by people who can't afford to retire themselves.
What has happened to that old Blitz spirit that the British used to be so renowned for? Everyone seems so self-centred, not interested in the bigger picture or the greater good, just in what they can get out of it. If we all pull together, act a bit more selflessly and a bit less selfishly, then things might just improve in the future for everyone.
9 comments:
From wartime...before the poster was withdrawn..
YOUR sacrifice will win US the victory...
Sod austerity measures on ordinary people.
We pay civil servants to do their job...they don't need outside consultants.
Likewise quangos.
And benefit packages..if they can do better elsewhere..let them try it!
Well said, well said!
There's a major crisis in lack of pension provision looming in the next 15 years or so - just once all of us in the private sector without pensions start retiring....or dropping dead on the job....
I agree with much of what you say but as someone much wiser than me has pointed out a lot of the bad feeling is down to the government welching on a deal / agreement they made a couple of years ago... we are not allowed to change our minds when our mortgages become unpalatable, why should the government be allowed to mess us around?
Fly, I recently sat through a presentation by a -wet-behind-the-ears consultant who had been brought in to tell us that it's probably not nice to call our colleagues 'kaffir' or 'lesbo' or 'bum bandit'. Gosh I'd never have known! We all sat their open-mouthed while The Boss hissed to me 'don't say anything'. They have also taken on a consultancy to assess the impact of the Olympics on the county. That's easy - NONE. I'd have done it for a fiver!
Vera, thank you. I'm not trying to pick on public sector workers but the lack of understanding I find about the private sector is astonishing
Macy, the Husband will probably have to work until he's 103 and then it's straight off to Dignitas! (You think I'm joking....?)
Steve, I understand what you are saying but I wonder whether, bearing in mind the current state of affairs, it was a deal that should ever have been agreed, or indeed asked for in the first place. The way I see it, if your employer is teetering on the verge of bankruptcy you don't ask for a pay rise, you go on a three day week or do whatever you can to save your job. That's how the private sector works. My employer is the state and it's on its knees so why should I get a pay rise? There seems to be a strange sense of entitlement among some public sector workers, entitlement to regular pay rises, entitlement to a pension, entitlement to retire at 60 when the rest of the country has to work until 65 or 67, that I just find mind-boggling.
Our daughter is a solicitor specialising in pensions law and she would agree wholeheartedly with you, Wylye Girl. Even though she's on a decent rate of pay (she doesn't work full-time because of the family) she says she doesn't know how old she will be before she can afford to retire, but probably at least 70! Her candid opinion is that public sector workers don't know they are born where pension provision is concerned.
I agree with you, Wylye Girl, but I think a lot of the sense of entitlement comes from the top down. If politicians and local government bosses cut their allowances, and privileges, it might be easier to insist that those lower down do too.
Hear hear! in a previous job, the Shah worked for 4 years without a pay rise (frequently bringing work home on evenings and weekends). He accepted that it was a necessity if the small company that employed him was to survive. At one time, he did a brief consultancy job for the DFID and sbsolutely loathed it and everyone there. He regularly spoke of people arriving at 10am and leaving at 4. They had a bar on site and were often too pissed to function after lunch. Then there were the "Fact-finding missions" which only ever took place in the Caribbean..I could go on. In addition, there is a huge cultural problem of entitlement with Generation Y. Friends involved in graduate and non-graduate recruitment speak of arrogant, argumentative kids rocking up for interview, poorly presented, rude and full of attitude. Political correctness has a lot to answer for in the UK...
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