“By more than five to one, the British public says the average public sector pension should be increased to at least £10,000, a YouGov poll for the Prospect professionals’ union has revealed. ”

Were they told how much this would cost?

That would be my question also.

People will happily vote for cake and spaceships for all – until they’re told how much it will cost.

Who were these 2500? If you prfere ‘How many were public sector workers (or not)’?

“By more than five to one, the British public says that they would really like some free money from the magical money tree and that anyone that doesn’t give it to them is violating their human rights and is a racist old evil Tory.”

By more than 5 to 1, tories are proving they don’t understand how polling companies work and that yougov conduct reputable polls that can be taken as robust. Instead they’ve donned the tin foil hat and pretended that those polled were either in the public sector or too stupid to understand that pensions have to be paid for.

Why should the private sector fund every kind of governmental perk. Here in Ruin we’ve Brown to thank for pillaging our pensions so that my best buddy and his missus who had the temerity to have kids can’t afford to have a pension. As public sector jobs are now salaried higher than private sector jobs then why should we pay to keep them in indolent luxury?

@6 Glad to see private sector workers still want to drag public sector workers down to their level rather than campaigning to raise themselves up to the public sector’s level.

Tthe average pension currently is £6500 – is that “full career” equivalent or does it simply reflect the fact that a lot of pensioners will have worked for far less than 35 years.

Assuming the £10,000 in the survey would be meant to apply to someone who had worked their whole career in the public sector, it may be that the current situation is already there (or even better???) once adjusted for years in employment?

@7 ahem, Brown’s tax raid on pension funds didn’t exactly help, did it?

“As public sector jobs are now salaried higher than private sector jobs”

Thats because the low paid bits of the public sector (cleaners, canteen staff etc) are run by contracted companies and thus classed as private sector. It makes more sense to compare like with like – so an website manager in a council with an website manager a medium sized firm. Or where there aren’t directly equivelant jobs, at least compare the qualification levels and skills needed.

I think you’ll find the result is a lot more complex than simply saying one is better paid than the other.

How well trained we have become. “How much will it cost?” is the automatic response to everything from providing enough midwives to ensuring that everyone (private and public sector workers alike) receives a decent pension to combating climate change. (Of course, it isn’t applied to the armed forces or trident – the training ensures this.) If the assumed answer is “a lot” the questioner goes off satisfied that he or she has scotched a course of action that would benefit millions, but which might have impacted on his or her tax bill. “My pennies” are enough to see off great public goods that would benefit the population as a whole, and our training assures we see nothing wrong in that. And we call ourselves civilised and democratic?

@9 – yeah, I thought that boat had sailed too.

@8

The “average” pension figure is absolutely meaningless. You can be sure that it includes a lot of people who worked, for example, for a couple of years as a dinner lady.

A career civil servant will be entitled to a pension in excess of half of final salary and many will end up being paid more money as pension than they were paid in salary throughout their career.

But the key to this is, as I said on another thread, that the money to pay public sector pensions does not exist. It has not been put aside and invested in pension funds. it is money that will have to be appropriated from the next generation of workers.

That is why over generous commitment is unfair.

And also dangerous.

It puts a greater debt burden onto our children and the smart ones will go live somewhere else rather than pay it.

As public sector jobs are now salaried higher than private sector jobs

WTF? As someone who moved from the public to the private sector doing basically the same job, I can assure you this is utter bullshit. In the private sector, I get paid three times more for half as much work. The really ironic bit is that a lot of my clients are (or at least were – that side of the business is now drying up) public sector organisations, including the very one that used to pay me a third of what I currently earn to do the same work. And of course, what I earn is nowhere near what they pay… My charge-out rate is now such that for them to hire me for two days costs them more than I used to get paid (gross) in an entire month.

Isn’t compulsory competitive tendering great?

As everyone surely knows by now, average public sector pay is considerably higher than private sector pay. The public sector premium stands at an astonishing 50% – once we take account of the full cost of those gold plated pensions.

Based it on the analysis from the Office for National Statistics, which compares the public and private sectors in terms of both gross pay and total reward (ie including employers’ pension contributions):

The conclusion is overwhelming – for both men and women, for both high and low earners, for incomes including and excluding pensions, public sector employees do much better than private sector. The median full-time employee in the public sector gets nearly 30% more than his/her counterpart in the private sector, once we take account of the employer’s pension contribution.

And in truth, the public sector does even better than the ONS numbers suggest. That’s because the ONS only takes account of the employers’ explicit pension contribution, a contribution that hugely understates the true cost of public sector pensions.

The true cost of public sector pensions as a percentage of salary averages around 25% more than current pension contributions. Which means that we need to gross up the public sector total reward numbers even further. At the median income level that takes the public sector premium up to a staggering 50%+.

All of which is pretty shocking.

But the public sector unions and their supporters have come up with an answer. They say that the public sector premium reflects the fact that public sector employees are on average better qualified than their private sector counterparts.

I’m surprised and encouraged by how positive these findings are, and wonder if this has to do with the difference in how people see central public employees, particularly the civil service, and public-sector workers in general.

I suspect that if the poll was taken again, but asked about civil servants, people would show a lot less generosity of spirit. But demanding that public-sector pensions in general be cut means taking away money for people in your neighbourhood – in fact, given how many people are employed by the state, it probably means taking money from your friends and/or family.

@14

Your experience is different to mine. I was offered two contracts, one in the city and one in the public sector. The public sector role offered me over 33% more than the bank did. The bank said they couldn’t afford mor, hence I am working for the public sector.

Nice to see the old meaningless median wage canard brought in by the usual suspects. As stated earlier all the low paid jobs (cleaning, dinner ladies etc) have been contracted out of the public sector. Hence the individuals employed are lower paid private sector workers. If you look like for like, at least in the area in which I work, that the Private sector has inflation busting pay rises when there is growth, public sector broadly does not, that the average salary for someone of equivalent skills and experience in the private sector is between £5k and £10k higher in some cases more. I am not complaining but a sprinkling of fact that does not suit their argument always seems to rile the right and leads to them using canards.

@7 “Glad to see private sector workers still want to drag public sector workers down to their level rather than campaigning to raise themselves up to the public sector’s level.”

Great lets do that! I presume you have a gold mine hidden upon your person to pay for this?

People will happily vote for cake and spaceships for all – until they’re told how much it will cost.

True. Someone should tell Liam Fox, since he’s trying to save the same spaceships from being cut.

In 1945 we had a country destroyed by german bombers, and an economy where most people had to work 60 hour weeks in shit jobs just to pay the rent, whilst the country was still on rations. Yet we still built a national health service, massive public housing, a welfare state etc, and ran a budget surplus.

If only Atlee had told us where to find this magic money tree.

Who were these 2500?

Demographically balanced sample of the population, picked by a company that has everything to lose if it fails to deliver a demographically balanced sample of the population.

But the public sector unions and their supporters have come up with an answer. They say that the public sector premium reflects the fact that public sector employees are on average better qualified than their private sector counterparts.

An answer based on data which is correct.

Great lets do that! I presume you have a gold mine hidden upon your person to pay for this?

Well, we could return to the split between labour and capital that prevailed in the 1960s and 1970s, lowering corporate profits and raising wages. Just, y’know, a thought.

(I’ve never understood the “we can’t afford to do what we used to do” schtick. Real national income per head is more than double real national income per head in the 1970s – we can do what we like…)

I think this is a brilliant report at exactly the wrong time but sooner or later negotiations have to be opened. It’s a bit more bureaucratic than Turner but it’s a bartering tool.

We can’t treat all public sector jobs as equivalent. This blanket all coverage just exists as a potential exposure to liabilities but as pension funds can change their own terms of reference, it’s probably just giving them a bit of wiggle room. I would hope each individual pension fund would deal directly with the councils that support it. After Whitley Committees ceased collective bargaining has usually been through universal discretion but as pensions should follow the person it gets a bit difficult. Apparently the life expectancy of coppers is rubbish after they retire.

None of the middle-aged people I know has ever explained what THEIR bright idea is for dealing with an ageing population. The fact is that the pension system was designed with the idea that many wouldn’t live to receive it and most of those who did would die soon afterwards.

Nowadays we no longer die from overwork, malnutrition, or easily treatable diseases in the west. Which, naturally, is an overwhelming good. But let’s not pretend an unmitigated one. It has to be paid for by more work and more saving, not by shaking the magic money tree.

@7 cylux

I agree entirely how the hell can a race to the bottom benefit anyone. The reason public sector pensions are being reviewed is because so few ppl in the private sector have bothered to make adequate provision for future pensions thereby placing a greater burden on the state to look after them so instead of being envious of public sector pensions private sector workers should be arguing for better terms in their own pensions.

@29 falco

Here’s a novel idea for private sector pensions try taking some personal responsibility and actually have one and contribute towards it?

@19

@ 26 Skooter

“Here’s a novel idea for private sector pensions try taking some personal responsibility and actually have one and contribute towards it?”

But people slip through the cracks that way. You have households that can barely make ends meet now, let alone make substantial savings for the future. You have homemakers who trust their breadwinner spouse’s reassurances that money isn’t a problem, then are shocked when their partner dies and turns out to have no savings and massive debts.

Also, as irritating as it is that some people earn enough money to provide for their future but decide to blow it all on wine, women and song, are we genuinely happy to let people be turfed out onto the street when they’re made to retire? I think the cure’s worse than the disease.

No one will be in penury on £140 a week. It won’t provide a luxury lifestyle, but then people who save should have more than people who don’t and it’s one of the most obnoxious effects of means testing that they often don’t. I used to see the resentment and perverse incentives tht existed under the old system, I know.

It is about providing a civilised basic pension to those without other provision. As I say, people might be spending decades in retirement, their retired life being almost as long as their working life. Those who whinge about having to work longer have not explained what their genius idea is for a world in which people live to be 100 or more as a routine matter.

@28 chaise

You do realise u have just described the vast majority of low paid public sector workers? Part of their remuneration package is a low contribution half decent pension to reflect the fact that their pay is crap. Don’t fall for the spin that all public sector are on gold plated pensions. A lot if them barely earn enough to get by and very often have to rely on tax credits to survive!

haven’t visited this blog in a while…but I see from most of the comments it’s become a tory blog now…… I won’t bother to return again.

@ 31

We will hold a candlelit vigil to mourn the loss of your input.

@ 30

Huh? I’m arguing in favour of providing pensions for people in the private sector, not against providing pensions for people in the public sector.

@33 chaise

Point taken. It drives me mad when those same ppl in the private sector who fail to join a pension scheme then denegade the public sector pension scheme.