- The median pension paid to members of public service pension schemes is about £5,600 a year (2009/10). About 90% of pensioners receive less than £17,000 a year, and about 10% are on £1,000 a year or less.
- By comparison, the median private pension income across both the public and private sectors (sum of occupational and personal pension income), for a single pensioner, is about £3,900 a year (2009/10).
- When it started, members of the Teachers’ Pension Scheme put in the same as the taxpayer – 5% each. Today, current members pay 6.4%, with employers contributing more than double - 14.1%.
- NHS employee contributions vary from 5.5 to 8.5%, whereas the employer contributes 14%.
- Civil Service employees contribute between 1.5 and 3.5%, whereas the employer contributes 19%.
The general strike by the British Public Sector unions is a protest against pension reform. Are the Public Sector workers really suffering terrible hardship compared with the rest of the population?
The public sector contributions are about 21% of salary and the private sector are about 22% of salary. In return for this the public sector pensions are 40% higher than those in the defined benefit part of the private sector (a small part of the private sector).
"Private sector employees would have to save 37% of their earnings, to achieve the same levels of pension income as a public sector employee in a final salary pension scheme" according to PriceWaterhouseCoopers.
Of course, relatively few private sector employees receive defined benefit pensions nowadays. Most just take their chances with privately arranged provision, sometimes losing everything if the pension provider fails or losing substantial amounts if the provider has bad results (though strangely seldom gaining from good results).
If the relative values of pensions of all types over the whole private and public sector are compared the public sector is blessed in the extreme, public employees getting almost 400% as much pension as the private sector:
It used to be the case that public sector employees received lower incomes to account for the fact that their pensions were so much higher than the private sector but median public sector salaries are now 16% higher than those in the private sector.(See UK Median Income public sector workers would need a 25% pay cut to bring their salaries into line with the private sector, allowing for pensions).
The public sector has better wages and much better pensions than the private sector. The public sector is supported by the private sector so their demands will further impoverish the people who provide their wages and benefits. Every penny given to the public sector is a penny taken from other workers. Private sector workers should send a clear message to government, unions and public sector workers alike: stop bullying us and stop stealing from us.
So why have we got a general Public Sector strike? The real reason for the strike is that the Public Sector Unions are very powerful and Public Sector employees have an overweening sense of their own importance. Labour spent its time in power bloating the public sector (see Is Labour any more than the Public Sector Party?) in the same way as they spent the sixties and seventies bloating the state owned industrial sector. The result of this state ownership is that the nation is held to ransom by the unions who own the Labour Party. Labour do not play fair, they are a gang of middle and upper class mockney speakers who hope to bribe the public into voting for them by spending billions that the country does not possess on public sector employment so leaving any government that follows them with a broken economy. When they are out of power they make the country suffer by getting their union bully boys to cause endless trouble. The mockney would be hilarious if it were not for the fact that half the country is so rabidly immersed in class hatred that it works. British politics sometimes makes me sick, it goes in repeating cycles of Labour overspend and Tory austerity and the parties themselves are ridiculous. Labour is like a bunch of posturing middle class teenagers wanting to "do good" when they are too nasty, stupid and immature to know the meaning of "good" and the Tories are like middle class mothers, devoid of any wider vision so relegated to getting their mummy's boys to tidy up the mess.
Private sector employees should be outraged by these strikes. The solution to the state owned industries holding the country to ransom in the 1970s was to privatize them.
Institute for Fiscal Studies: Occupational pension value in public and private sectors.
Treasury press release
Pension Trends, Chapter 8: Pension contributions (2011 edition)
UK Median Income
Communism and the education system
Source URL: http://indahrahmadewi.blogspot.com/2011/11/public-sector-strikes.html
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The public sector contributions are about 21% of salary and the private sector are about 22% of salary. In return for this the public sector pensions are 40% higher than those in the defined benefit part of the private sector (a small part of the private sector).
"Private sector employees would have to save 37% of their earnings, to achieve the same levels of pension income as a public sector employee in a final salary pension scheme" according to PriceWaterhouseCoopers.
Of course, relatively few private sector employees receive defined benefit pensions nowadays. Most just take their chances with privately arranged provision, sometimes losing everything if the pension provider fails or losing substantial amounts if the provider has bad results (though strangely seldom gaining from good results).
If the relative values of pensions of all types over the whole private and public sector are compared the public sector is blessed in the extreme, public employees getting almost 400% as much pension as the private sector:
 |
| (Institute for fiscal studies) |
It used to be the case that public sector employees received lower incomes to account for the fact that their pensions were so much higher than the private sector but median public sector salaries are now 16% higher than those in the private sector.(See UK Median Income public sector workers would need a 25% pay cut to bring their salaries into line with the private sector, allowing for pensions).
The public sector has better wages and much better pensions than the private sector. The public sector is supported by the private sector so their demands will further impoverish the people who provide their wages and benefits. Every penny given to the public sector is a penny taken from other workers. Private sector workers should send a clear message to government, unions and public sector workers alike: stop bullying us and stop stealing from us.
So why have we got a general Public Sector strike? The real reason for the strike is that the Public Sector Unions are very powerful and Public Sector employees have an overweening sense of their own importance. Labour spent its time in power bloating the public sector (see Is Labour any more than the Public Sector Party?) in the same way as they spent the sixties and seventies bloating the state owned industrial sector. The result of this state ownership is that the nation is held to ransom by the unions who own the Labour Party. Labour do not play fair, they are a gang of middle and upper class mockney speakers who hope to bribe the public into voting for them by spending billions that the country does not possess on public sector employment so leaving any government that follows them with a broken economy. When they are out of power they make the country suffer by getting their union bully boys to cause endless trouble. The mockney would be hilarious if it were not for the fact that half the country is so rabidly immersed in class hatred that it works. British politics sometimes makes me sick, it goes in repeating cycles of Labour overspend and Tory austerity and the parties themselves are ridiculous. Labour is like a bunch of posturing middle class teenagers wanting to "do good" when they are too nasty, stupid and immature to know the meaning of "good" and the Tories are like middle class mothers, devoid of any wider vision so relegated to getting their mummy's boys to tidy up the mess.
Private sector employees should be outraged by these strikes. The solution to the state owned industries holding the country to ransom in the 1970s was to privatize them.
Institute for Fiscal Studies: Occupational pension value in public and private sectors.
Treasury press release
Pension Trends, Chapter 8: Pension contributions (2011 edition)
UK Median Income
Communism and the education system
Source URL: http://indahrahmadewi.blogspot.com/2011/11/public-sector-strikes.html
Visit Indah Rahma Dewi for Daily Updated Hairstyles Collection
