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Strikes among public sector workers begin

Lothian said:
The Government's logic for not interfering in that practice is not being applied to the public sector.
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It's exactly the same logic. Resolve the problem as quickly and painlessly as possible, don't piss anyone off. Thus they don't put strings on the money they give to the bankers, and they make promises they can't keep to public sector unions to avoid labor strife now.

Everyone's happy in the short term. The long term, well, that's someone else's problem. But oops, as far as pensions go the future is now, and the "someone else" is you. Damn that passage of time thing!
 
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WildCat said:
It's exactly the same logic. Resolve the problem as quickly and painlessly as possible, don't piss anyone off. Thus they don't put strings on the money they give to the bankers, and they make promises they can't keep to public sector unions to avoid labor strife now.

Everyone's happy in the short term. The long term, well, that's someone else's problem. But oops, as far as pensions go the future is now, and the "someone else" is you. Damn that passage of time thing!
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Except, they could keep the promises if they had the will. The UK economy is in no danger of collapse, and they've already cut public spending in dozens of areas. And they've already cut pensions by switching from RPI to CPI.
 
stokes234 said:
Except, they could keep the promises if they had the will. The UK economy is in no danger of collapse, and they've already cut public spending in dozens of areas. And they've already cut pensions by switching from RPI to CPI.
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The problem is the UK has other uses for the money, and other people are relying on that money as well. Do you take money from the NHS to fund rail worker pensions, for example?

At some point you have to piss someone off, not everryone can get what they want or have been promised in rosier times.

And it's a funny thing when you start underfunding pensions, the funding deficit grows exponentially with time until it becomes impossible to make whole again.
 
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stokes234 said:
Well, the way the public pension system works is for current workers paying into the scheme to fund those that have already retired. By increasing contributions and raising the retirement age, the government is making the public scheme less attractive, which will mean fewer people will opt to pay into the system in the first place. If the number paying in goes low enough, then there won't be enough money to fund those that have already retired, giving the tories an excuse to scrap the whole thing and bring in the private sector. Scrapping public funding and services and replacing them with the private sector is often referred to as dismantling the state.
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I thought the pension stuff was part of the package...not an opt in/out thing?
I'm trying to remember back to when Mrs Tolls worked for the council.
I really ought to read up on this...
 
WildCat said:
The problem is the UK has other uses for the money, and other people are relying on that money as well. Do you take money from the NHS to fund rail worker pensions, for example?

At some point you have to piss someone off, not everryone can get what they want or have been promised in rosier times.
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Why? Hutton estimated that without changes the percentage of GDP spent on public pensions would fall at 0.1% a year. During the current ‘crisis’ The UK is expecting to pay back borrowing at an accelerated rate.

By all means change the pension agreements for new staff starting out on their careers but there is no financial need for the country to amend existing conditions.

This Government is ideologically a tax cutting Government. They have already frozen public sector pay for three years. They are now looking to tear up all public sector employment contracts and reemploy them with a worse remuneration package in order to fund tax cuts to private businesses.

The ‘reason’ for moving public money from the public sector to the private sector is because of the financial crisis. Even though the public sector had nothing to do with the financial crisis they are the ones who have to bear the full costs. The ‘argument’ being private businesses need to thrive for a healthy economy so they can not bear the burden.

Some people don’t think that is fair that people who caused the crisis and have taken billions out of this country are getting away without contributing while those who enabled the boom through sacrificed wages in return for future benefits are ones facing the full bill.
 
Lothian said:
The ‘reason’ for moving public money from the public sector to the private sector is because of the financial crisis. Even though the public sector had nothing to do with the financial crisis they are the ones who have to bear the full costs. The ‘argument’ being private businesses need to thrive for a healthy economy so they can not bear the burden.
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If you think the private sector is not "bearing the burden" you haven't been paying attention. The private sector employees are taking actual, real cuts in pay and benefits (not just frozen wages and benefits) as well as massive job losses.

Have you picked up a newspaper or even watched the TV news in the last 4 years?
 
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WildCat said:
If you think the private sector is not "bearing the burden" you haven't been paying attention. The private sector employees are taking actual, real cuts in pay and benefits (not just frozen wages and benefits) as well as massive job losses.

Have you picked up a newspaper or even watched the TV news in the last 4 years?
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I appreciate that there may be differences in different countries.UK national statistics office

The whole economy earnings annual growth rate for total pay (including bonuses) was 1.8 per cent for the three months to April 2011, down from 2.4 per cent for the three months to March. This fall in the growth rate was largely driven by lower growth in bonuses across the private sector. The whole economy earnings annual growth rate for regular pay (excluding bonuses) was
2.0 per cent for the three months to April 2011, down from 2.1 per cent for the three months to March.
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I do note the lower growth in bonuses and pay increases across the private sector during a period when the public sector had a pay freeze.
 
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andyandy said:
I would definitely be striking - not for personal benefit, but to make at least some attempt to stand against the dismantling of the state....

viva la revolucion.
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I love the smell of cognitive dissonance in the morning. Smells like... victory!
 
Lothian said:
I appreciate that there may be differences in different countries.UK national statistics office
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Which supports my contention. Notice that the unemployment rate has increased from 3 years ago, and it would be even more if it went back the 4 years I mentioned. Has the public sector lost any jobs in the last 4 years? How many public sector workers lost jobs because their sector/department/whatever was cut?

Lothian said:
I do note the lower growth in bonuses and pay increases across the private sector during a period when the public sector had a pay freeze.
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You are misrepresenting this statistic, it does not mean that workers got pay increases, it simply means that payrolls were higher, likely due to having more workers as opposed to higher pay for the same number of workers. What was the growth in government payroll during this same time period?
 
stokes234 said:
Except, they could keep the promises if they had the will. The UK economy is in no danger of collapse, and they've already cut public spending in dozens of areas. And they've already cut pensions by switching from RPI to CPI.
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Err and the UK is still running a deficit. I suppose we could jack up income tax a bit but there are limits to that
 
Soapy Sam said:
Over the last two hundred years of organised labour , one fact seems to have persistently escaped the unions; The way to improve results is to improve the quality and quantity of production. Better work produces better results.
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But not better pay. Productivity gains belong to shareholders.
 
Bob Blaylock said:
There's a nice little bit of Orwellian doublespeak there.
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Not really. From an accounting POV future revenue cuts are little different from future spending increases.

In fact since tax cuts usualy only impact one area it is literaly possible to fund them through tax rises in other less noticed areas (usualy refered to as stealth taxes). A popular approach by govements when face with populations that want tax cuts but don't want cuts in services.
 
geni said:
Err and the UK is still running a deficit. I suppose we could jack up income tax a bit but there are limits to that
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Yes, we're still running a deficit, and the pope is still catholic. That doesn't mean we keep cutting until the deficit is gone, it means we implement some cuts and then wait for it to run down over a number of years.
 
WildCat said:
The problem is the UK has other uses for the money, and other people are relying on that money as well. Do you take money from the NHS to fund rail worker pensions, for example?

At some point you have to piss someone off, not everryone can get what they want or have been promised in rosier times.
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I'd rather see the superrich who's increase in wealth comes to about 80% as much as the total UK deficit in the last two years start bearing a greater burden, than see the money taken from pensioners on average getting £7000 a year.
 
stokes234 said:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2011/mar/16/public-sector-job-cuts-ons-redundancies

About 130,000 last year.
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" In 2010 there was a 132,000 reduction in public sector employment, a decrease of 2.1%."

You must have a really bloated public work force!

stokes234 said:
I'd rather see the superrich who's increase in wealth comes to about 80% as much as the total UK deficit in the last two years start bearing a greater burden, than see the money taken from pensioners on average getting £7000 a year.
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Define "superrich".
 
WildCat said:
Has the public sector lost any jobs in the last 4 years? How many public sector workers lost jobs because their sector/department/whatever was cut?
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It varies for area to area but government funding is currently being cut by average a 5% year on year. The majority of their costs are wages. There will be some efficiency savings but over four years it is expected that 1 in 10 will be made redundant.
To quote someone earlier. "Have you picked up a newspaper or even watched the TV news?" or even read the article I linked

The number of people in employed in the public sector fell by 24,000 over the quarter to reach 6.16 million but the number of people employed in the private sector increased by 104,000 over the quarter to reach 23.08 million.


You are misrepresenting this statistic, it does not mean that workers got pay increases, it simply means that payrolls were higher, likely due to having more workers as opposed to higher pay for the same number of workers. What was the growth in government payroll during this same time period?
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Hang on a minute ago you were talking about job cuts everywhere now more employed.....
The figures do have a ~0.3% increase in numbers employed and a 1.8% increase in wage bill. I am not misrepresenting anything. The government payroll decreased because they lost workers and those left had a pay freeze.
 
Lothian said:
It varies for area to area but government funding is currently being cut by average a 5% year on year. The majority of their costs are wages. There will be some efficiency savings but over four years it is expected that 1 in 10 will be made redundant.
To quote someone earlier. "Have you picked up a newspaper or even watched the TV news?" or even read the article I linked

The number of people in employed in the public sector fell by 24,000 over the quarter to reach 6.16 million but the number of people employed in the private sector increased by 104,000 over the quarter to reach 23.08 million.
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I see that, you apparently have a very bloated public work force. No wonder finances are in such a mess!


Lothian said:
Hang on a minute ago you were talking about job cuts everywhere now more employed.....
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Believe it or not, but unemployment can go up even as the number of working people increases. This happens when more people are entering the workforce than there are jobs created.

Lothian said:
The figures do have a ~0.3% increase in numbers employed and a 1.8% increase in wage bill. I am not misrepresenting anything.
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Sounds to me like hiring is slowed and workers are working longer hours. They're not getting a higher pay rate, but they are working more hours.

Lothian said:
The government payroll decreased because they lost workers and those left had a pay freeze.
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The article linked earlier said the 130,000 public job cuts acconted for 2.1% of public sector jobs. Which means that you had over 6.1 million public sector jobs in a country of just 62 million. So nearly 1 in 10 UKers work for the government, and as a percentage of the total workforce it has to be far higher.

Do you really think such a public sector workforce could be maintained in perpetuity? You can't just grab stuff from the colonies any more...
 
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