Eoinomics and teachers' pensions
Posted by Christie Malry on November 29, 2011 at 7:36 am
Public pensions are not gold plated, and £6k p.a. is not an unreasonable sum to pay nurses, teachers, doctors, cleaners, firefighters and police personnel in their retirement.
This is a favourite trick of the left, and it's an extremely devious one. The £6k figure isn't sourced (of course it isn't, this is an Eoin article), but happily we know it because it's a number unions bring up in pensions debates. It's the average annual pension for a retired member of (some portion of) the public sector pension schemes.
Now, think of a nurse, teacher, doctor, cleaner, firefighter or policeman. You'll probably think of someone who has worked in that area for all of their life. But there are plenty of them that don't. They work in the sector for a bit and then go do something else - perhaps have a baby, or move out of the public sector altogether. When they retire, their pensions are included in the average pension of a public sector worker and, in doing so, drag down the average. So it's daft and totally misleading to just look at the average figure without digging behind it some more.
While many people might think £6k is a fair pension for a career public sector worker, they might be horrified to find out that the true figure is 2-3 - or in some cases more - times that amount. I'm also sure that they wouldn't think it reasonable to pay someone who had worked in the public sector for only a few years that sort of pension. In addition, their answers might have been different if they had been given some information on the size of private workers' pensions.
Finally, I read somewhere that the 'gold plating' originally meant the fact that their pensions are underwritten by the state, and can therefore never fail to be paid; private sector pensions, until recently, had only their employer behind them. Even with new regulations, private sector defined benefit pensions are only guaranteed up to 90% of the benefits and only up to a capped amount.
the hijacking of what 'gold plated' actually means has been terrifyingly successful... and very few people seem to be pulling the unions (or whoever) up on this. i mean, ffs, gold plating, in real actual life.. rather than spats about pensions.. is about protecting things from corrosion. i'm not sure what bugs me most.. the derailing of the debate, or the flagrant disregard for the english language.
This makes me spit with rage when I hear it quoted, by the platinum+diamond-plate pensioned trade unions leaders and left wing MPs who understand precisely the deception. Trouble is that many of the unwashed in the audience who cheer, clap and stamp are unwilling and sadly, by dint of learning difficulties and public education failure, unable to comprehend the logic.
Finally, on the topic of the public sector, seems a good place for me to express a serious wish of mine:
Mark Serwotka – guy needs a damn good kicking.