As a teacher the thing that is also concerning me is how this will damage the teaching profession. The government seems intent on making teaching a Masters level profession. So for someone currently in sixth form they will need to be at university for 4 years to gain an undergraduate masters, then a year for PGCE - so that's 5 years x £9000 tuition fees / year = £45000 tuition fees + maintenance loans of ~£15000 so a total of £60,000 worth of student debt to become a teacher on a current starting salary of £21.5k. Now that might not be so bad currently (albeit below the national average salary) other than the fact that teachers' pay is currently frozen whilst inflation plods along at over 4% eating away at salaries all the time. Add to that the fact that when this teacher starts work they will be asked to contribute 10% of their salary to their pension contributions (which is a real-money increase of anywhere between £80 - £200 extra EVERY month), whilst being asked to work for longer and receive less at the end of their career. Hmm... starting to become worrying... To continue my thoughts (rant), many teachers may not actually live to the end of their career... A friend retired early recently after speaking to a Teachers Pensions Service actuary. He was told that, historically, teachers retiring at the age of 60 they have a life expectancy of 18 years. For teachers retiring at the age of 65 they have a life expectancy of 18 months. Those final 5 years of stress and long hours are absolute killers, and the government wants teachers to still be in the classroom at 66/68? They'll die in the classroom before they retire. So how exactly does the government expect to attract people to the profession when they are being asked to earn less year-on-year, pay more for their pensions every month, receive less in their pension when they retire (and that's assuming that they actually live long enough to do so...) and be burdened with a 30 year, £60,000 student debt? EDIT: Oh and as for job security - my school has just had one round of redundancies in order to make the books balance this year and there are no guarantees that more jobs won't need to be cut in future years either... *and breathe*
As much as I hate to admit it this does actually work here. Although it also creates another class system from the very start of life that kids grow into. It's not. Also getting your kid into a good school here simply requires money and considerable pressure on them to keep them there (they have to pass the exams to stay sometimes), which is turns them into worker zombies imo. No system is the final answer. :/ Good luck. The world needs better teachers and to encourage more to take up the profession. It needs choice of the good ones, not just the cast offs that can't get a private sector job.
while i can understand teachers arguments i dont see why they should be considered special. Teachers should be expected to work to the national retirement age in line with everyone else thats FAIR everyone is getting hit and while i think the tories are *******s for doing this teachers cant be exempt from it. thankfully im in work but have little job security, i have no pension, i earn less than teachers and my salary has gone down over the last 2 years. Im a technical manager educated to degree level yet im expected to take this one on the chin for the "good of the country" so think me a little bitter but all i hear is "wahh wahh give us what we want or we'll strike" Even the changes they want to make to pension will mean you still A - have one and B - its better than most private ones (unless your a banker !)
Well i'm neither a teacher or a public sector worker but I do work in a higher education environment. Public sector wages are used to purchase goods and services from the private sector and their pension funds invest heavily in the private sector. Their is a cycle here and both sides are independent. Also in the UK for some parts of the country the public sector is the number one employer. Public sector workers there fuel the local economy through their spending.
And this is simply where we disagree. The money in public sector is mostly the money recycled from the taxes paid by private sector (the rest is the international loans). Yes, public sector spends in private sector companies - but where the money paid to these public sector employees or organizations come from ? State budget, which is again filled by private sector. And in the end - unless the active (working) population increases with every generation, no pay-as-you-go system is sustainable if you don't increase the age where you qualify for pension or lower the pension money. PS: Number one employer does not mean he gets the money from thin air. Public sector has to get the money they need from somewhere, and you can bet that the source of that money is not the public sector. I'm not saying that money doesn't flow back to private sector once the public sector organizations or employees get their money from the state, but that public sector can't exist on it's own.
And? Now please add to this thread how much interest we pay on the money we owe as a country. Public sector pensions need to be brought into line with private sector. You all think you are special for some reason. You do a job, like the rest of us.
Then public sector pay should be brought into line with the private sector so instead of paying out in 10 - 30 years we're paying out now. Where is the benefit exactly?
Yes & yes. We are special and I could go into the reasons why but it's not relevant here. There's no reason that I can see why local government workers, teachers, civil servants, etc. should retire at 60. However, I agree that some professions should have mandatory lower retirement ages, e.g. air traffic controllers and armed forces.
In our striving for equality we have gone one step too far in empowering the plebians and now they bring down the system with their stupidity, and by rallying against their own best interests?
Kind of. The socialist in me does not want to go there, but the psychologist in me knows that people can't handle choice. They don't want choice; they just think they do. What they really want is whatever they want, when they want it. They interpret that as 'choice', but it really is being a child looked after by a perfect parent. This is why people vote for politicians who promise to do things for them, rather than politicians who promise to give them the freedom and responsibility to do things for themselves. With choice comes responsibility. People don't really want to accept that.
My question is just why should a scheme that isnt costing us money be cut? We aren't and never have added to the national debt... so why should we take all these cuts to pay it off? We have had our salary frozen to help there - why attack us again? I would rather have my pay cut AGAIN than my pension being cut - at least there is some way back for the salary. And to those moaning they dont have a pension - you can get into private pension schemes (http://www.standardlife.co.uk/1/site/uk/pensions?wt.srch=1&wt.mc_id=A0021 for one). We dont HAVE to be in the TPS, but we do, and we take hit of cash from our accounts each month. Spend some of your wages like we do paying into a pension and you'll have one.
Straight from the TPS website. You do cost money and it needs to be cut. Tax payers are paying towards your pension because your employer is funded by the government which is in turn funded by people who pay tax. Therefore to combat this government wants to make you work longer to make sure you pay more towards your pension and draw less from it when you retire.
I love this : ) I just cancelled my pension contributions, i am on a low salary and classed as 'Support staff' and i am entitled to strike. I though cancelling my pension all together will be more effective than strike action. As my wage is just shy of £14,000 my final pension was looking to be about £3000 a year, with no lump sum and as things are going at the moment id not get it until I was 70! My £70 odd a month contributions are now going toward financing my first property (on my wage i need a huge deposit before anyone will touch me). I intend to live for today and not gamble what little money I do have on something I may never collect on. Money after all being purely promissory in nature (Hence promise to pay the bearer on demand) so ill slave away just to acquire more money, so that I may go on living to earn more money...It’s a double bind and I hate it. Interestingly enough all I was met with was doom and gloom when I tried to cancel it, the business manager at work quite plainly said the action would be idiotic and short-sighted (it’s ok for him as he’s on £70,000 a year and his pension would undoubtedly be worth more than my current annual wage) I’m obviously wired differently to most people (especially those of the council’s pension office). I’m not going to (when I decide to stop working) just fall back on the state as most people seem to do, I’m going to use my own assets and material property to support me in my old age, if that means I have to sell my house/downsize/pay for care then so be it, but ultimately this doesn’t really matter...You can’t take it with you.
Again though you are missing that the government saves by not paying this money upfront to the staff member. Its not costing money any more than paying a teacher is costing money.
Swings and roundabouts. You cannot claim full pension unless you made 40 years of contributions --whether these started small or large. You may be earning a measly £14.000,-- now but your final salary is likely to be substantially more. In a final salary scheme that means the big bucks. But even an average salary scheme, depending on flavour, may be taking into account only the salary of the last 10 years of your working life and calculate an average on that. What I am saying is, it may not matter how much you contributed, but how long you have been contributing. Also keep in mind that your employer contributes to your pension payments. Investing in property can be a decent deal in as much as that too increases in value, but it is a far more fickle game. House prices have been rising over the last decades but they have their ups and downs, and I suspect we are hitting a ceiling quite soon. Moreover, a house can also devalue if it is not maintained well or is damaged by uncontrollable, unforeseen forces such as subsidence or flooding.
Again you're missing that no matter how well set up a system it is, how sustainable it is, how it saves money now, how well run it is, how well the money is invested the bottom line is that the employers contributions come out of the tax payers pocket. Tax payers are a tad squeezed, tax payers may be a tad miffed that public sector workers (not just teachers) get a bloody good pension, government can't have a miffed electorate it's not conducive to their jobs.
You're being played like a violin. Teacher's unions have, over the last five years asked twice to have the pension scheme valued, to find out whether it is actually in surplus or in deficit. Two governments have refused each time. Why? If the government is that concerned, shouldn't it make that a priority? But I suspect it won't, because it already knows the answer. Keep in mind that the sole purpose for messing with public sector pensions in the first place is to reduce a deficit that has nothing to do with the public sector, but very much with the private sector. Bail-outs, mmmkay? So the last thing the government wants known is that teachers' pensions were doing just fine. It needs to plunder some money chest. And preferably with public consent. So what is a government to do? Why, divide and rule, of course! By deflecting the bitterness of private sector workers onto the public sector ones to distract attention from the real, messy problems wrought by private sector greed and give the illusion of a simple, clean solution. Public sector workers are the new Muslims, the new Eastern European immigrants, the new Jews. It's the oldest trick in the book. Really, you should all know better. The public sector did not create the problem. It is too busy stitching the wounds and cleaning up the puke of stupid drunks, teaching parentally neglected undisciplined kids, policing people with no self control. The private sector created the deficit, when it needed bailing out by tax payer money. But you forgot all this when the government whipped you into a frenzy against those bad ol' slacker public sector workers. You are being played like fiddles. You really should know better.
Fear not my hatred of bankers and estate agents runs much much deeper then my levels of 'meh' for the public sector.
^seriously, @nexxo, yes, it is the oldest trick in the book and apparently it works as well there as it does here in the states. in-fighting among the middle-class as resources are dwindling, we eat each other while the super rich (i.e. politically powerful) yawn. after all, it really does appear to be the other side's fault. it's much easier, as in a failing relationship, to lay blame instead of getting down to the work of seeing how we could, if we united, begin to address the real culprit(s). i wonder what it's going to take. the complete errosion of a middle-class or will we pull our heads out of our asses in time? where i live state-run services will shut down on july 1st unless a budget resolution can be reached. and that includes state-funded public and private entities. it doesn't look like it will happen. the republican legislature believes we can all do without the vast majority of our public services and if they have their way, we'll find out the hard way. all to avoid an equitable system of taxation that could resolve a long-term budget deficit. i would urge each and every person here who doesn't know just how much the public and private sectors are interconnected to do some homework: volunteer, ask questions, read, take a class. look beyond the surface and the rhetoric. talk to people who actually work in the fields you have occasion to use and perhaps take for granted daily. we need each other and we need to be unified.
