Re: Strikes Revisited : Tue Nov 15, 2011 7:58 am  

I can't wait for my pension to come through - I'll get loads of money that I won't spend any of EVER (thereby not paying VAT, fuel duty etc, or contributing to any companies turnover or profits). As soon as my pension arrives, I'll be able to stop eating, knowing that just having a pension will keep me alive for years. Nor will I watch TV, turn any light or heat on.

Nor will it matter when inflation pushes prices up, as I won't need anything.

The money will just sit there and effectively be taken out of the economy.

It will be fantastic. When I die, I'll have as much money as Abramovich. Brilliant.

Re: Strikes Revisited : Tue Nov 15, 2011 10:19 am  

The Video Ref wrote: With another 'day of action' approaching two articles have today caught my attention: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-15722791 http://www.google.com/hostednews/ukpres ... 271814444A What is it with public sector workers at the moment? Their pay and pensions are, generally, far superior to their private sector counterparts yet they are complaining about paying slightly more towards their pensions, or working for a couple more years. Outside of the small protected bubble that they live in their strikes have very little public support. Then we have tube drivers, demanding a whopping quadruple pay for working boxing day. That is a whopping £700 for one day work! Public sector pay and pensions is unsustainable in its current format. The previous Government realised this, but was too afraid to do anything about it for fear of losing key voters. Or maybe they just don't want to work it and this is the way of saying no. I was once asked to go on a rota to check out a newly commissioned boiler house over Xmas, the gaffer asked how much I would want to do the Xmas day stint, I said £10,000 (back then 10k was a lot of money for a days work ), he said I was mad if I thought he would pay that, so i said 'do it yourself then' Some muppet did it for double + day off. You never get those days back.

The Video Ref wrote: With another 'day of action' approaching two articles have today caught my attention: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-15722791 http://www.google.com/hostednews/ukpres ... 271814444A What is it with public sector workers at the moment? Their pay and pensions are, generally, far superior to their private sector counterparts yet they are complaining about paying slightly more towards their pensions, or working for a couple more years. Outside of the small protected bubble that they live in their strikes have very little public support. Then we have tube drivers, demanding a whopping quadruple pay for working boxing day. That is a whopping £700 for one day work! Public sector pay and pensions is unsustainable in its current format. The previous Government realised this, but was too afraid to do anything about it for fear of losing key voters. Or maybe they just don't want to work it and this is the way of saying no. I was once asked to go on a rota to check out a newly commissioned boiler house over Xmas, the gaffer asked how much I would want to do the Xmas day stint, I said £10,000 (back then 10k was a lot of money for a days work ), he said I was mad if I thought he would pay that, so i said 'do it yourself then' Some muppet did it for double + day off. You never get those days back.

Re: Strikes Revisited : Tue Nov 15, 2011 11:26 am  

cod'ead wrote:

Is it?

Where do your figures come from? They're certainly not in the links you provided.

When I worked in a unionsed environment, the norm for Bank Holidays was double time + a day in lieu, have things changed?

That seem a reasonable sum if they earn £15/hr which equates to 31k for a 40 hour week - so for a 12 hour shift at 4 times that is £720. I would think 31k is probably an understatement of what the basic salary of tube train driver earns.

Simple maths really.

It depends on how you calculate opportunity cost?

Re: Strikes Revisited : Tue Nov 15, 2011 11:41 am  

tb wrote: With all due respects: b*llocks. Public sector pay has been frozen for two years, following decades of below inflation rise. Even the Hutton report accepted that public sector pensions are sustainable. Before the 2007 reforms to the schemes, the costs of pensions were expected to peak at just below 2% of GDP around 2020, and then fall again (the Baby boom generation is a bulge, not a permanent increase). After the 2007 reforms - which were negotiated, unlike the current attempt at diktat - that peak has already happened (the cost peaked iin 2009 at around 1.8%, iirc, and is already falling). The 2007 reforms cut the future costs of pensions by 10% (Hutton's figures) - and the Chancellor's unilaterial decision to base future increases on CPI rather than RPI* inflation has cut future costs by another 15%) Incidentally, some figures on the two largest schemes: The NHSPS is a 'pay as you go' scheme where pensions are funded by current contributions - over the past 10 years or more, contributions have exceeded payouts by £2bn a year, money that goes straight to the Treasury. The LGPS is a 'funded' scheme - contributions are invested and pensions paid out of the investment funds: the scheme invests about £4bn a year in the UK economy - the various invesment funds are currently responsible for a total investment in the UK economy of £140bn. The scheme has enough funds to pay out its commitments for the next 20 years, even even if it received not another penny from either contributions or investment income[/b]. Both schemees are 'cash rich'. What Hutton refused to answer was whether public sector pensions were 'affordable' -saying that was a political question. And a point to note about the proposal to increase employees' contributions by an average of 3.2% wages (an average 50% or so increase in the amount people will be required to pay): not a penny of that will go into the actual pensions schemes. In the pay-as-you-go schemes it will go straight tot he Treasury. Ind the funded LGPS, it will fund the £900m reduction in councils' block grant. The proposal is nothing more than a 3% tax levied for being in a pension scheme and used to pay for reducing a deficit which is the direct result of the banks and financial services industry screwing the economy in 2008 (a tax, incidentally, is being levied at the same time that the government keeps floating the idea of a 10% tax cut for high earners). But the big danger is that if you increase contributions by that amount, you discourage people to join the pensions scheme and make provision for their old age, so they will rely more on taxpayer** funded benefits, increasing future costs to government, and at the same time risk making the schemes themselves unsustainable if not enough people are paying in. * There's a particular irony in the Euro-sceptic Tories opting for CPI. RPI is an index designed to measure UK inflation as it affects people who buy things. The CPI index was invented purely as a measure to make like-for-like comparisons across the EU (which is why it doesn't include, eg, housing costs - housing 'markets' being different and therefore not comparable across the EU). Still, here's Freancis Maude being roundly shown to be talking through his posterior on the 'unaffordability' issue back in the summer. ** Taking both active members and deferred members into account, the pensions schemes in question cover about 20% of the workforce, in both the public and private sectors, who are - of course - taxpayers themselves. On and some mythbusting: Though I'm sure you'll ignore the arguments and facts, and simply dismiss the source. http://www.unison.org.uk/pensions/mythbuster.asp An alternative view - the quality of the scheme depends on the element supported by the employer i.e. tax payers, the majority of which is derived outside of the public sector. The issue for most in the private sector is their schemes are unsustainable without contributing more themselves so why should the public sector be exempt - again the scheme's main funding is coming from these tax payers. The balance between the employee/employer contribution is out of kilter hence the need to re-balance - can't really see what the issue is? This is happening in virtually every private pension scheme. All pension schemes are cash rich, Maxwell apart!! - it is their ability to meet the potential long term liabilities that is the issue!! All the actuary calculations used by Hutton assumed employer contributions at a given value. The government can no longer afford to support the levels of contribution in the current climate. Like most companies didn't have the profitability to support cushy final salary schemes so they simply curtailed them.

tb wrote: With all due respects: b*llocks. Public sector pay has been frozen for two years, following decades of below inflation rise. Even the Hutton report accepted that public sector pensions are sustainable. Before the 2007 reforms to the schemes, the costs of pensions were expected to peak at just below 2% of GDP around 2020, and then fall again (the Baby boom generation is a bulge, not a permanent increase). After the 2007 reforms - which were negotiated, unlike the current attempt at diktat - that peak has already happened (the cost peaked iin 2009 at around 1.8%, iirc, and is already falling). The 2007 reforms cut the future costs of pensions by 10% (Hutton's figures) - and the Chancellor's unilaterial decision to base future increases on CPI rather than RPI* inflation has cut future costs by another 15%) Incidentally, some figures on the two largest schemes: The NHSPS is a 'pay as you go' scheme where pensions are funded by current contributions - over the past 10 years or more, contributions have exceeded payouts by £2bn a year, money that goes straight to the Treasury. The LGPS is a 'funded' scheme - contributions are invested and pensions paid out of the investment funds: the scheme invests about £4bn a year in the UK economy - the various invesment funds are currently responsible for a total investment in the UK economy of £140bn. The scheme has enough funds to pay out its commitments for the next 20 years, even even if it received not another penny from either contributions or investment income[/b]. Both schemees are 'cash rich'. What Hutton refused to answer was whether public sector pensions were 'affordable' -saying that was a political question. And a point to note about the proposal to increase employees' contributions by an average of 3.2% wages (an average 50% or so increase in the amount people will be required to pay): not a penny of that will go into the actual pensions schemes. In the pay-as-you-go schemes it will go straight tot he Treasury. Ind the funded LGPS, it will fund the £900m reduction in councils' block grant. The proposal is nothing more than a 3% tax levied for being in a pension scheme and used to pay for reducing a deficit which is the direct result of the banks and financial services industry screwing the economy in 2008 (a tax, incidentally, is being levied at the same time that the government keeps floating the idea of a 10% tax cut for high earners). But the big danger is that if you increase contributions by that amount, you discourage people to join the pensions scheme and make provision for their old age, so they will rely more on taxpayer** funded benefits, increasing future costs to government, and at the same time risk making the schemes themselves unsustainable if not enough people are paying in. * There's a particular irony in the Euro-sceptic Tories opting for CPI. RPI is an index designed to measure UK inflation as it affects people who buy things. The CPI index was invented purely as a measure to make like-for-like comparisons across the EU (which is why it doesn't include, eg, housing costs - housing 'markets' being different and therefore not comparable across the EU). Still, here's Freancis Maude being roundly shown to be talking through his posterior on the 'unaffordability' issue back in the summer. ** Taking both active members and deferred members into account, the pensions schemes in question cover about 20% of the workforce, in both the public and private sectors, who are - of course - taxpayers themselves. On and some mythbusting: Though I'm sure you'll ignore the arguments and facts, and simply dismiss the source. http://www.unison.org.uk/pensions/mythbuster.asp An alternative view - the quality of the scheme depends on the element supported by the employer i.e. tax payers, the majority of which is derived outside of the public sector. The issue for most in the private sector is their schemes are unsustainable without contributing more themselves so why should the public sector be exempt - again the scheme's main funding is coming from these tax payers. The balance between the employee/employer contribution is out of kilter hence the need to re-balance - can't really see what the issue is? This is happening in virtually every private pension scheme. All pension schemes are cash rich, Maxwell apart!! - it is their ability to meet the potential long term liabilities that is the issue!! All the actuary calculations used by Hutton assumed employer contributions at a given value. The government can no longer afford to support the levels of contribution in the current climate. Like most companies didn't have the profitability to support cushy final salary schemes so they simply curtailed them.

Re: Strikes Revisited : Tue Nov 15, 2011 12:12 pm  

Sal Paradise wrote:

That seem a reasonable sum if they earn £15/hr which equates to 31k for a 40 hour week - so for a 12 hour shift at 4 times that is £720. I would think 31k is probably an understatement of what the basic salary of tube train driver earns.

Simple maths really.

It depends on how you calculate opportunity cost?

31k for a 40 hour week? Sign me up...

Also a 12 hour shift for a tube driver? What planet are you on?

Re: Strikes Revisited : Tue Nov 15, 2011 12:15 pm  

Sal Paradise wrote:

All pension schemes are cash rich, Maxwell apart!! - it is their ability to meet the potential long term liabilities that is the issue!!

Which they can at the agreed levels, the extra the workers are being forced to pay is not going into the pensions pot, it is going into the treasury account to pay for other things.

[tb]

Re: Strikes Revisited : Tue Nov 15, 2011 12:17 pm  

Sal Paradise wrote:

An alternative view - the quality of the scheme depends on the element supported by the employer i.e. tax payers, the majority of which is derived outside of the public sector. The issue for most in the private sector is their schemes are unsustainable without contributing more themselves so why should the public sector be exempt - again the scheme's main funding is coming from these tax payers.

The funding for all pension schemes, including the final salary schemes of, say FTSE100 directors which deliver real gold plated plated pensions with accrual rates of around 1/20ths (ie work for 10 years to earn a pension of half your final salry) comes from the people who pay for the good or services being produced. Whenever you buy anything, from the private sector or from the public sector, though taxation, part of what you're paying for is the labour cost of producing those goods or services, and that includes pensions.

And, to reiterate, public service workers are taxpayers too.

Sal Paradise wrote:

The balance between the employee/employer contribution is out of kilter hence the need to re-balance - can't really see what the issue is? This is happening in virtually every private pension scheme.

The 2007 reforms addressed this.

In the NHSPS through a 'cap and share' arrangement setting a fixed limit on employers' contributions and ensuring that any future increase in costs through longevity would be met by increases in employees' contributions. The current government has abolished this.

In the LGPS, the mechanism is the three-yearly valuation of the scheme, exactly the same as in the private sector.

Sal Paradise wrote:

All pension schemes are cash rich, Maxwell apart!! - it is their ability to meet the potential long term liabilities that is the issue!! All the actuary calculations used by Hutton assumed employer contributions at a given value. The government can no longer afford to support the levels of contribution in the current climate.

Yes it can. It chooses not to.

instead it would rather tax public service workers for paying into a pension scheme while talking about a 10% tax cut for those wtih an income greater than £150k a year

It's worth noting that the approx £4bn the government wants to raise from the tax on pensions contributions - and that's all it is – is equal to the amount cut from the tax receipts by reducing the top rate of corporation tax. And it pales into insignificance compared to the £20bn lost to the exchequer through tax evasion and avoidance.

As I pointed out earlier, the costs of public service pensions are falling - down 10% as a result of the 2007/8 reforms, down another 15% as a result of Gideon's unlilateral switch from RPI to CPI for annual increases of pensions in payment.

As Hutton said: public sector pensions are sustainable - 'affordability' is a political choice. Have a listen to Maude floundering on this very question in the R4 interview I linked to.

Sal Paradise wrote:

Like most companies didn't have the profitability to support cushy final salary schemes so they simply curtailed them.

The companies that took contributions holidays when funds were in surplus do have the profitability to support defined benefit schemes - and indeed maintain truly cushy final salary schemes for their executives. They simply chose not to pay more when the consequences of their contributions holidays helped produce deficits (and like surpluses, deficits are cyclical and depend on the state of the stock market - and only need addressing over 20 years, in law), instead shifting the burden onto the taxpayer, who will have to pick up the cost of post-retirement benefits for workers denied a decent pension by their employers.

Out of curiosity, do you have any idea what a pensions fund deficit actually is?

[tb]

Re: Strikes Revisited : Tue Nov 15, 2011 12:22 pm  

Big Graeme wrote:

31k for a 40 hour week? Sign me up...

I hate to say it but I thin he's about right on drivers' wages

Big Graeme wrote:

Also a 12 hour shift for a tube driver? What planet are you on?

He's talking the usual bllx on that, though.

Re: Strikes Revisited : Tue Nov 15, 2011 12:23 pm  

Why don't more people apply to be tube drivers?

Everyone says all they have to do is sit in a train press accelerate and brake and get £30-40k a year plus a nice pension so whats stopping people applying, doing the training and rolling it in?

Re: Strikes Revisited : Tue Nov 15, 2011 12:24 pm  

tb wrote:

I hate to say it but I thin he's about right on drivers' wages

Sorry I was using his methods of understanding a post.
For a year maybe not a 40 hour week.