I understand why private sector pensioners might feel aggrieved, and the fairness argument is reasonable. If the conditions under which a pension scheme exists change, then a review is appropriate, but until very recently TPS members were being told the scheme was affordable. Nothing substantial has changed in that respect.

always talk to your union rep' - private sector workers are allowed to join Unions too you know.

But teachers renegotiated our pension only four years ago. We're already paying more. I think we're mostly pissed off because they are having another go at us so soon.

I'm 41 and I find my job exhausting (yeah, I know... poor me...) I cannot even begin to imagine doing this at 68 years old. I'll probably drop dead from stress before that anyway, which is presumably what the government would prefer.

*inserts smiley thing here*

Had a nice chat with a very helpful man in the parking enforcement office.

The parties comprising this coalition were indeed voted for by 59% of the turnout, but that's not the same as this government or its policies being voted for by all those people. Nobody got a say on the coalition agreement.

We might have hoped that the Libs would contain the damage - and maybe they have, although the mind boggles at what the Tories would've done with a mandate. But no. We have Danny Alexander talking about new strike legislation. We have Vince Cable (VINCE CABLE!) talking about cutting the redundancy notice and constructive dismissal rights of workers who have been employed for less than two years.

I voted Lib Dem, and I certainly didn't vote for that shit.

People with longish memories might remember that I was cautiously optimistic about the coalition initially. I'm now in a position where I literally have no-one to vote for. I will never vote Lib Dem again. Labour are worse than useless. Tory are beyond the pale - I couldn't even consider it.

But the government were not voted for by 59% of the electorate and that's the point of the OP. Turnout is declining for elections, especially local and European ones, but the likes of Maude are not saying that it somehow reduces their legitimacy as politicians. Yet plenty of Tories have made it clear that they would like to legislate to make similar low turnouts in union ballots a reason for invalidating those decisions.

Utter hypocrisy

Why would I support it? Ours is worse than useless. In the time I've been there working conditions have gradually got worse, less breaks, we don't have an automatic pension set up etc. And they want me to pay them to get worse conditions? No thanks.

Now I'm all up for paying for a union if it did more than decide to strike once in a while, but that, and come up with more and more ludicrous ways of holding on to their job (funded for by staff) is all they seem to do. Much like MPs in that respect then...

when they fit in with our own views and prejudices.
If you look at what Vince Cable actually announced on Wednesday, as opposed to what the Indy is speculating that might happen two days earlier, you'll see that only significant reduction of workers rights is the increase in the time before an employment tribunal claim can be made for unfair dismissal from one to two years. Most of the other changes are fairly technical and the more contentious are only being "consulted about" - which strikes me that the Lib Dems have forced the Tories to kick them into the long grass.

I think the Tories probably wanted this, as driving a wedge between "the taxpayer" and "the public sector" (as if those groups were mutually exclusive) would serve their cause quite well, in theory.

Strikes are a really blunt instrument, but they do a job (no pun intended), and it's hard to see what the alternative is. Workers only really have strikes in their armoury of defence against what they see as employer abuses.

I was interested to see the BBC survey this morning which showed a 61% support rate for the strike, incidentally - so maybe we're once again approaching a time where mass support for withdrawal of labour isn't a pipedream.

But I do understand people's concerns, and I sympathise. It does mess a day up, and it's particularly shit for freelancers who don't have an employer to be understanding of their predicament (not that all employers are). FWIW, although I'm not striking, I'll be at home, since my daughter's school is out. It does throw a spanner in the works, but I think the government's calculation that they'd be on the right side of public opinion is shaky at best.

take it - or we'll make it even worse, what else can they do but strike ? In the end withdrawel of labour is the only option left.

Anyway, what's the problem - I thought they were going to keep the school's open with the army ? (Once they've all been child protection checked of course). And the airports / border control - the army can do that. And doesn't the army have a medical corps ? So they can keep the hospitals going. And the air ambulance - well, there are loads of army helicopters sitting around doing nothing. Dinner ladies and cleaners ? Sounds like a job for the army !

are pretty much the same as yours on this issue. There is a special kind of hypocrisy that expects one set of people to abide by one set of rules, while you yourself are treated in an entirely different fashion.

The fact is, we don't have quorate elections in this country in general. If the government don't like that, tough. I don't see them having a huge amount of success trying to steamroller that one through, especially a government with no legitimate mandate of their own anyway.

Public sector pensions are prohibitively expensive to provide for. They are getting proportionately more expensive. So they are taking up proportionately more of the public spending budget. At what point does the stance of fighting to never change these things become selfish and greedy?

the cost PEAKED in 2010 and is now DECLINING.

Currently 1.9% of GDP, will be 1.4% of GDP by 2060.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/13974542

Maybe those (like me !) with private pensions should query why they get such a terrible return? Couldn't be anything to do with large commission on selling the pension, bloated salaries of the CEO's of the company providing them, and more interest in share dividends than pension values ?

comes to a six-figure total.

Police pension, civil service pension, rental income from aa grace & favour flat he was able to buy for buttons. Plus what he gets paid in govt consultancy fees when they wheel him in from time to time.

Oh and the winter fuel allowance which normally goes towards a nice claret for Christmas.

OK he's no doubt in the minority, but these are the inequalities that should be addressed first.

on the whole population though does it? If the country cannot afford something, shouldn't it realign the spending?

Please note, none of the above is suggesting that our current financial predicament is fine - that's just a different problem. As far as spending goes, we are where we are and we need to address it. Again, I am not supporting the current governments approach. Only that public sector pensions are appropriate to be part of a review of spending.

That's where I came in, and indeed, where I'm going out.

That ended up beneficial to both sides. Factory owners eventually found during the late Victorian era that a skilled and motivated workforce makes more profit than a starving and downtrodden one - though you'd never guess any of this from the Daily Heil etc.

Strikes are part of a negotiation around the value of labour - they should be a last resort (but bad unions and bad managers were having to deal with them all the time) - but withholding labour is not some form of criminal or negligent act. NECESSARILY. Bosses are encouraged to go in and get the best possible deal for themselves, its completely essential to private sector management culture now (mind you see where its got us...)

The whole thing broke down under the weight of militancy, weak management and poor political leadership in the 60s & 70s.

But the London Match Girls strike was a win/win - and very important in British history. The Dagenham Ford strike in the recent Bob Hoskins et al film ditto.

But of course strikes being used as first resort destroy good companies - almost as effectively as the CFO taking over the running.. :-).

The sewing machinists' strike at Ford's Dagenham plant in the late 60s was certainly a major factor in the Equal Pay Act of 1970. To that extent I think it can have been said to have 'worked'.

Edit: oops, sorry, just read Fake Geordie's post a little more carefully and note that he'd already mentioned the equal pay strike.

The factory he worked at in the early Eighties didn't have union representation, just a "workers' committee" that rubber-stamped whatever the boss wanted. They went on strike to be allowed to join a union, and won. Better pay & conditions all round.

I'll cut a long story short, as the man said:

I worked in the 'Process Department' of a factory manufacturing pharmaceutical products (under licence for an American parent company). Amongst the least pleasant tasks was overseeing the huge stainless steel vats in which a product was mixed that contained some very caustic ingredients. The process by which the product in question was manufactured depended upon the manual addition of certain ingredients, including the nasty ones, at very specific points in the mixing process, at very specific temperatures. Think Heston Blumenthal, or A level Organic Chemistry, and you get the drift.

My pal's machine had a dodgy temperature gauge. He reported it as faulty. The company did nothing. He reported it again, but nothing happened. He could get a reading by tapping the glass manically, like a weather forecaster with OCD, but otherwise it gave wildly inaccurate data.

He reported it again and ventured to suggest that it was too unreliable to ensure that he could safely perform his job. Nothing was done, and he was informed that if he didn't want to perform his job, someone else would.

One afternoon, mixing up a batch of Horrid Gunge, he added the caustic ingredient at what he believed to be the correct temperature; it boiled on contact with the existing mixture and shot out of the vessel in a hideous bubbling arc. He ducked, and the jet of noxious spume landed on his back. He spent 6 weeks as an outpatient of the local burns unit.

His employer (my employer!) stumped up his salary during this time. They refused to pay any compensation, despite the history of the case.

The factory was very well unionised, especially in the 'Process Department', with its preponderance of relatively dangerous roles.

We struck, and pretty much the whole workforce came out too.

Reader, he got his money. I've been a union member ever since.

Baroness Warsi tried making the same point today, without irony, despite the fact that precisely 0% of the electorate voted for her.

who now have the record time between an election and the agreement over who will govern - but don't actually have the coalition agreement quite sorted out yet - so still in effect no government.

That's more than a year now.

If the Lib Dems had wanted to stick to their principals Cameron would have had a minority government and ~ 6months to convince people he was right before another general election was required. I doubt that the NHS and schools reforms (not talking about pensions here) would have been rushed in quite so quickly - as they would have brought the government down.

The ConDem government is a lot more Con and very little Dem - in effect handing over a mandate that had not been earnt (IMO OOAA).

In principle it's -exactly- the same sort of thing except there is a little less compulsion in a strike ballot.

If the government decides to increase your tax burden and gets the legislation through, you are legally obliged to pay up, even though you maybe didn't vote for the party (or parties) in power.

If your union holds a ballot for strike action and, having voted in favour, then goes on strike you are not -legally- obliged to go out if you disagree. The worst the union can do is expel you for strike-breaking. Of course your fellow members who supported the strike might not like you so much after, but then people who are paying their taxes may not like someone who refuses to pay theirs.

Combine the extra contributions, the change in index related increase and the extra years of having to work and we are talking thousands at a time when the cost of living is going up considerably.The government has already imposed a pay freeze which is causing many people to feel they have already done their bit.

To reiterate the point many of these schemes are adequately funded by the existing contributions and they remain affordable.

He isn't 'allowed' to retire after 30 years. That's the contract he signed. He will have contributed 11% of his pay for 30 years. That's the deal he signed up to. The Fire Service have much the same deal. But they also have the right to strike.

You've just said that you are going to be a scab / blackleg worker / strike breaker, call it what you will. You seem to be happy to take all the benefits, but unwilling to defend them for others. Is that a moral position ?

I don't see why those who are willing to stand up and defend their employment rights should be esxpected to applaud your stance. Their attitude doesn't seem that hard line. If a union holds a ballot and the membership vote is to strike then those who don't are by definition "scabs".

Where people have seen retirement age go up - which does amount to getting less out than they had anticipated when paying in, and a 2year pay freeze (which in real terms is a paycut) they may well question why it's their turn again so soon. It could seem that maybe a tax on millionaires wouldn't be such a bad idea. Reform of MPs salaries and pension rights would also send out a better message - we're all in it together rings a lot truer when there's a bit of that old fashioned "leading by example" idea. Instead it's terrible whinging on the 50p rate for earnings over £150,000 and the terrible hardship it causes.

As others have pointed out your friend in the police only took what he signed up to. And if it's such an easy job (like being a fireman is an easy job), with a sky high pay I have to wonder why you didn't pick it for your career ?

I've said it elsewhere - but why not again - why should the worst pension providors be the benchmark of what a pension should be ? Maybe the private sector workers should consider what they could achive if they organised their labour within a union ?

You either love them or...

I'll close the door on my way out.

Are you sure it wasn't his ex-wife who said that?

Why would Chris Huhne qualify that statement by only applying it to public sector workers?

Include MPs, Bankers, etc in fact everybody and it might have some credence.

Meanwhile over in public sector pension land you have to take that assertion over longer lifespan and examine your options very carefully.You have to consider whether to take an increased lump sum at retirement and a smaller pension or a reduced lump sum and a larger pension. You Bet Your Life! Quite literally!
In taking the decision don't forget to factor in any possible changes in policy thrown in by future Governments as yet unannounced.For example changing the way in which they calculate the rate of inflation in future years meaning previous calculations are now incorrect and shafting people who've already retired and the pension promises made to them.

600,000 jobs to be lost from the public sector - do you really think.... what am I saying, of course you do.

600,000 jobs gone/to go
redundancy payments capped - without negotiation
Pay freeze for 2 years - without negotiation
Pay cap at 1% for 2 more years - without negotiation
These pay freezes/caps amount to an ~8% salary cut over the 4 years.
Pensions - retirement age up, payments increased (by ~50%) and payments out decreased - with the threat of take it or we'll make it worse. Is that really negotiation ? Take the kicking, or we'll kick you twice as hard ? Where's the economic argument behind that ? It's just plain and simple bully-boy tactics.

There is no money in the kitty is the wail from the ministers. Is this true ?

Gove now has £600million to spend on free schools that virtually no-one wants. At a time of austerity it seems there's still money for political dogma.

Gove has also committed the education ministry to providing a commerative King James bible to every school (with a special introduction by....Michael Gove) at a cost of £375,000. He'd like sponsership, but they are committed to doing it.

So in less than 5 minutes I've just found £600,375,000 of totally wasted money, that wasn't so hard.

I work for the School Improvement Service of a local authority. In the one half of my job, last year the teaching interventions I ran led to large and directly traceable over-performances in two schools' English A-C rates. 70 kids who previously wouldn't have got Cs or above. It's the difference between further education and not. In two further schools, this year and last I entirely restructured the way they handle the vast and vital quantities of assessment and behaviour data that all schools generate and have implemented new systems that will allow them to monitor and assess and thus improve the life chances of, oooh, 3,000 inner city kids, taking them from a place where they had to work largely on hunch to a place where they're able to perform instant, quality-assured analysis of pretty much any facet of every pupil's school life. Sounds dry, if you're an idiot, but good data is the difference between a school performing well and not.

Yesterday I received my redundancy consultation letter.

But it's ok, because I'm a council bureaucrat and won't be missed. But thanks for the thought.

Why can't we have a 'down' arrow too? I'd like several thousand here.

It's always best to remember that there is absolutely no waste whatsoever in the private sector, where all resources are used to the maximum possible extent of efficiency at all times.

as schools don't tend to go bust. My understanding is that they have to be really crap or commit some heinous crime before they get sacked. I know some teachers have posted on here and I'm sure trying to control, let alone teach half a dozen different groups of teenagers every day must be very difficult but in terms of job security, there can't be many more careers which offer this level of continuity of employment.

Although the average Somalian, for example, would be only too glad to take their place in the bookstore. Ultimately, the argument that there's always someone worse off than you, so quit moaning is a counsel of despair that drags us all down to the lowest common denominator. Do I wish that workers across the board got a better deal? Of course - but we can only have a direct impact on the conditions offered by our own employer. By defending and improving them, it indirectly helps raise the standard for everyone. Think global, act local.

Any of them thought about training to join the teachers in the unthinkably wonderfully rewarded profession? Still recruiting graduates.

btw Many public sector workers are fully aware of the plight of poorly-paid private sector workers and their pension arrangements. We're married to them. For all that it still looks like a serious and drawn out pay cut even to the ever-sceptical Mrs SPT. I'm in the world's least militant union and even we were on strike today. We absolutely do need to take a hit, like everyone else but a properly negotiated one with some actual detail about what we're signing up too.

Life expectancy roughly goes up one month every quarter. Or more than 10 years in the past 40. No one really expected that when pensions were set up (or when we signed up). Of course it might stop going up - or it might accelerate. That by the time I retire at 70 (my estimate) my life expectancy will have gone up a futher 5 years. Increasing life expectancy is a great thing - but we just cannot afford to pay for it unless people also work for longer.

This does not mean I agree with the government incidentally, but on pensions they have more of a point than they do on the economy in general (IMHO).

(if you did, of course.)

of how things were 15-20 years ago when I first took a job in the public sector (3pm would be a late Friday for several people I used to work with, they'd just stay downt he pub all afternoon). But not now. That sort of thing is as alien to younger members of staff as the idea that we used to work without computers and have to send all our typing off to typing pools, and that people used to smoke in the office.

But then again Mrs SPT would also recognise that description of bits of the private sector she's worked in and more recently too.

The whole public sector vs private sector thing is a false opposition. Public sector workers are as likely to buy it wrongly as anyone else talking enviously of high salaries and bonuses that no more exist across the board in the private sector than massive pensions and unsackable positions do in the public.

It's a fair point Mr FG. But I do think there is a little more of it in the Public Sector. Based on my experiences.

Where this doesn't hold true - which isn't to say it never does. It does depend on what sort of government spending you are talking about. Even the dole ends up being spent in the private sector after all. Nurses buy food in Tesco and drink in the pub - and I had reason to be grateful for that many times as a student.

But your statement - "If you spend wages that the government has paid you, you are not -in the purest sense- creating 'wealth'. You are moving money that has been generated from someone else's economic activity." is simply false. There is another thread on 'infrastructure' on here - these are massive projects run at national level because the private sector isn't big enough or is too risk averse to take them on. Do you really think they don't create any wealth?

Ordnance Survey is a profitable manufacturing/publishing business that performs a vital economic role AND unlocks value in enterprise data for huge numbers of private sector customers, and customers of customers. Maps on computers are everywhere now and they are changing the way people live and do business.

At what point in the chain are you going to say - right THAT bit is private enterprise = profitable = good whereas THAT BIT next to it is public sector and a drain on my taxes. The private sector wouldn't EXIST without the public sector. (I work in the private sector and have done for 25 years)

Government research is an enabler for a very great deal of economic activity that would otherwise just not happen at all. Building roads pumps money directly into the firms that build them and the families that get fed and clothed as a result - but the justification is on the economic activity that is then unlocked.

Your definition of 'creating wealth' is amazingly reductive and to my mind misleading. Its an example of the thinking which has led the accountants who run this country to have flogged off all the assets for fuck all - (sorry to be rude that might not be what you think).

There is no parallel public economy. The only one of them we have is the black tax-dodging economy (where most of our major corporations do business of course - £15 billion dodged last year as opposed to est £1 billion benefit fraud - neither is acceptable)

Public sector spending should be better managed and should be lower - though I think investment in big wealth creating projects is justifiable right now and so does the government. Worth saying that the really grotesque examples of government overspend in recent years in health and defence have all been on private sector companies and consultants, not on armies of civil servants.

I don't think the government should make cars or steel - though the French government and German lande would disagree with me and they're not doing so badly out of it.

DC, the problems have been caused by certain elements of the private sector positively going about Debt Creation? As illustrated by this data:

http://www.gfmag.com/tools/global-database/economic-data/10403-total-deb...

Clearly there was too much of this kind of activity in the private sector and that HAS been a recipe for financial disaster.