Re: Strikes Revisited : Wed Nov 16, 2011 10:37 am  

Sal Paradise wrote: In simplistic terms you take a scheme - look at its potential liabilities based on earnings growth and life expectancy of its participents comparae that to its current assets and the potential growth of those assets from its various income streams - the difference is the surplus/deficit of the scheme. This is what actuaries earn their money for. Maybe you could provide evidence of all these companies that have taken an extended pension holiday - we are not talking about paying in for 20 years and having a year off we are talking about extended pension holidays - Royal Mail apart I doubt you will be able produce a handful out of all the companies that have pension schemes. You are the only person I know that think final salary schemes are affordable - maybe you could share your knowledge with the wider world because you are in a minority of one. To maintain these schemes companies are having to top up the deficit - the company I work for put £20m yes £20m into the pension scheme this year. To do that you need to have that amount of surplus cash - in these times of working capital squeeze that is not something most companies have. In doing that it means you have less funds to invest in capital projects that - if you believe Keynes - is what drives growth. In fact what you are doing is sacrificing the future to cover the costs of the past. Do yourself (and us) a favour and have a read of THIS. Although given recent experience of your inability to comprehend even the simplest of messages, I doubt we'll see any benefits from your enlightenment any time soon

Sal Paradise wrote: In simplistic terms you take a scheme - look at its potential liabilities based on earnings growth and life expectancy of its participents comparae that to its current assets and the potential growth of those assets from its various income streams - the difference is the surplus/deficit of the scheme. This is what actuaries earn their money for. Maybe you could provide evidence of all these companies that have taken an extended pension holiday - we are not talking about paying in for 20 years and having a year off we are talking about extended pension holidays - Royal Mail apart I doubt you will be able produce a handful out of all the companies that have pension schemes. You are the only person I know that think final salary schemes are affordable - maybe you could share your knowledge with the wider world because you are in a minority of one. To maintain these schemes companies are having to top up the deficit - the company I work for put £20m yes £20m into the pension scheme this year. To do that you need to have that amount of surplus cash - in these times of working capital squeeze that is not something most companies have. In doing that it means you have less funds to invest in capital projects that - if you believe Keynes - is what drives growth. In fact what you are doing is sacrificing the future to cover the costs of the past. Do yourself (and us) a favour and have a read of THIS. Although given recent experience of your inability to comprehend even the simplest of messages, I doubt we'll see any benefits from your enlightenment any time soon

[DaveO]

Re: Strikes Revisited : Wed Nov 16, 2011 10:47 am  

The Video Ref wrote:

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.

What utter nonsense. I suggest you say that to my wife's face and we can run a sweep stake on how many broken bones you end up with.

Outside of the small protected bubble that they live in their strikes have very little public support.

If there is little support for them is it because people believe tripe like the above. The vast majority of Local Government jobs are low paid and the employees accrue a low pension despite these so called generous terms.

Then we have tube drivers, demanding a whopping quadruple pay for working boxing day. That is a whopping £700 for one day work!

That has nothing to do with the proposed strikes at the end of the month. However anyone of a right leaning political outlook can't complain because if the tube drivers command this wage it is simply capitalism in full flow. They are obviously in demand and so while bankers claim that have to pay huge bonuses to get the staff it appears whoever it is who employs the tube drivers is in the same kind of boat in having to pay through the nose to get the job done.

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.

As has been said many times before the Local Government Pension Scheme is sound and fully funded which means this is a money saving exercise not one born out of necessity due to the scheme being underfunded in any way.

The terms and conditions of the employees who pay into it were set when they took the job and it is simply not right to change these terms when many people have been paying into it for many years and crucially have budgeted for their retirement based on those terms and conditions. If the government wants to change things it should be for new employees only as happens in private industry when final salary schemes are closed.

[tb]

Re: Strikes Revisited : Wed Nov 16, 2011 10:49 am  

Sal Paradise wrote:

In simplistic terms you take a scheme - look at its potential liabilities based on earnings growth and life expectancy of its participents comparae that to its current assets and the potential growth of those assets from its various income streams - the difference is the surplus/deficit of the scheme. This is what actuaries earn their money for.

Right. You don't know. Fair enough.

A pension fund deficit (or surplus) is calculated by taking its current value and comparing it to total liabilities (ie, it measure whether a fund, if it closed today and received no further income from contributions or investments, could pay out all the pension benefits of its members, including those who've just started work at 18, until their death). Future income only comes into the calculation when considering what needs to be done to reduce or remove that deficit.

eg My own pension scheme had a deficit of around £100m at its last valuation. We sat down and negotiated with the employers and scheme trustees a plan for eliminating that deficit over the 20 year period required by law: part of that plan was an increase in employees' contributions, some cost savings, and using different actuarial assumptions about fund growth.

Re: Strikes Revisited : Wed Nov 16, 2011 10:52 am  

Sal Paradise wrote:

Maybe you should re-train - currently a tube driver earns £46k a year

So not £31k for a 40 hour week then? You figures by the way.

Sal Paradise wrote:

that is £22/hour so for an 8 hour shift that is £176, at quadruple time that is £707.

These figures are shifting pretty quick, I used the figures you gave, again.

If LU want to provide a service on Boxing Day then they need to pay, if the price is too high then don't run, it is only recently that the started to run on Boxing Day, the world still rotated when they didn't.

Sal Paradise wrote:

As I said simple maths

Indeed, if you have the right figures that is...

[tb]

Re: Strikes Revisited : Wed Nov 16, 2011 11:03 am  

Incidentally, if you really want to save £900m+ from the LGPPS, there's a very simple way combine the investment funds: this wouldn't require increasing contributions (by employers or employees) or reducing benefits. The only people who would lose out would be the financial services industry currently making a mint (though not as much as they make managing individual defined contribution pension funds) - I can't possibly imagine why the government isn't looking at the idea …

Incidentally, if you really want to save £900m+ from the LGPPS, there's a very simple way combine the investment funds: this wouldn't require increasing contributions (by employers or employees) or reducing benefits. The only people who would lose out would be the financial services industry currently making a mint (though not as much as they make managing individual defined contribution pension funds) - I can't possibly imagine why the government isn't looking at the idea …

Re: Strikes Revisited : Wed Nov 16, 2011 11:46 am  

tb wrote:

Right. You don't know. Fair enough.

A pension fund deficit (or surplus) is calculated by taking its current value and comparing it to total liabilities (ie, it measure whether a fund, if it closed today and received no further income from contributions or investments, could pay out all the pension benefits of its members, including those who've just started work at 18, until their death). Future income only comes into the calculation when considering what needs to be done to reduce or remove that deficit.

eg My own pension scheme had a deficit of around £100m at its last valuation. We sat down and negotiated with the employers and scheme trustees a plan for eliminating that deficit over the 20 year period required by law: part of that plan was an increase in employees' contributions, some cost savings, and using different actuarial assumptions about fund growth.

That is simply not true, there are three main ways of calculating the deficit if I recall from my CIMA days:
Funding - which includes future revenues into the scheme as I suggested normally using future bond yields as a guide
Accounting - which is more in line with your proposition and meets the demands of the various IFRS'
Buyout - usually the most pessimistic

We are both correct - as usual with all accounting - there is no exact science.

Now all these companies that have taken an extended pension holiday!!

[tb]

Re: Strikes Revisited : Wed Nov 16, 2011 11:48 am  

Sal Paradise wrote:

That is simply not true,

Yes. Yes it is.


… as you yourself admit

Re: Strikes Revisited : Wed Nov 16, 2011 11:56 am  

Big Graeme wrote:

So not £31k for a 40 hour week then? You figures by the way.


These figures are shifting pretty quick, I used the figures you gave, again.

If LU want to provide a service on Boxing Day then they need to pay, if the price is too high then don't run, it is only recently that the started to run on Boxing Day, the world still rotated when they didn't.

Indeed, if you have the right figures that is...

I never said that was what they earned - all I did was illustrate how the £720 was a reasonable figure and how it could be calculated - another Mod who struggles with basic comprehension.

Re: Strikes Revisited : Wed Nov 16, 2011 12:00 pm  

cod'ead wrote: Do yourself (and us) a favour and have a read of THIS. Although given recent experience of your inability to comprehend even the simplest of messages, I doubt we'll see any benefits from your enlightenment any time soon Unbelievable you should read back on some of your stuff - still never used your car's breaks in hurry You are hardly posting from a position of superiority!!

cod'ead wrote: Do yourself (and us) a favour and have a read of THIS. Although given recent experience of your inability to comprehend even the simplest of messages, I doubt we'll see any benefits from your enlightenment any time soon Unbelievable you should read back on some of your stuff - still never used your car's breaks in hurry You are hardly posting from a position of superiority!!

Re: Strikes Revisited : Wed Nov 16, 2011 1:02 pm  

Sal Paradise wrote:

... another Mod who struggles with basic comprehension.