| Muse have 'greatest riff of century' Rock trio Muse have been voted as having the greatest riff of the 21st century. telegraph.co.uk |
Father 'devastated' at Red Cap acquittals John Miller, whose son was one of six Royal Military Police soldiers killed by a mob at an Iraqi police station seven years ago, has said he is devastated by the collapse of the trial of the alleged killers. bbc.co.uk |
Chris Tarrant fined for speeding Chris Tarrant was given six points on his licence and fined £525 after he was caught speeding twice in 21 minutes on the same stretch of road. telegraph.co.uk |
The public sector pensions battle | Phillip Inman With pension reforms on the way, the public sector unions must not defend the better-off in the name of ordinary workersWho would be a public sector union leader? The pay might be decent, but the axe-wielding this week and Lord Hutton's report on public service pensions means it's going to be a tough two years. Job losses that could top 750,000. The closure and outsourcing of whole local authority departments, entire universities shut down, pay freezes across the board.If George Osborne marries his spending cuts with Hutton's message of higher pension contributions, lower benefits and longer working, Unison's Dave Prentis and his fellow union leaders will be forced to square up. On the face of it the unions have a strong hand. Militancy should be guaranteed.If we only look at the retirement issue, a decade of private sector pension cuts have brought an obscure and little-understood subject to the fore. Workers know the value of retirement guarantees. They can grasp the loss of income when they retire when ministers talk about "reforms". With pay freezes, job losses and further privatisation already a reality, cuts to pensions will, as Prentis said, "be the straw that breaks the camel's back".At Westminister they are emboldened. As many officials point out, the child benefit fiasco showed the government is proving inept at planning for conflict and is already displaying a weak core. The comprehensive spending review, clearly shown to be regressive, is another spur for industrial action.Yet two barriers stand in the way. Job cuts, which are already underway, will be piecemeal, without any obvious flashpoint for industrial action. Then there is the pensions debate, where unions have found themselves preparing for battle after their leaders have fallen over themselves to vacate the high ground. The high ground, in this case, relates to the case for a sustainable retirement system.If Prentis et al defend final salary pensions they lay themselves open to Hutton's charge that unions seek to defend the generous salary linked benefit rewards management above those of shopfloor workers. Arguably, it is the overly generous promises to the higher paid in the public system that is helping send costs through the roof.The main beneficiaries are those in the higher echelons of the NHS, the teaching professions and the police. If a worker's entire retirement income is calculated on their last pay cheque and their length of service, a long unbroken record of service and escalating pay rises in the last 10 are crucial to a lucrative retirement income. Step forward the male middle manager. And there are plenty of them. If they retire on £50,000, which is not uncommon, they could receive a pension of £30,000 a year. Compared to a banker's bonus it sounds modest, but to provide a pension at that level costs at least £1m.When Hutton says we need to think about moving all public sector workers to a career average scheme or its equivalent, he is explicitly attacking the huge sums paid to these managers. A clerical worker, by contrast, could spend most of their working life on £16,000 a year and retire on the same amount plus the occasional inflation-linked pay rise. A career average pension would pay them roughly the same as a final salary scheme.So why are the unions prepared to man the barricades for the public sector's fat cats? A cynic might say leaders such as Prentis are conscious of their own super-sized pensions. Public sector senior directors sitting on the other side of the negotiating table also want to keep the final salary link for their own benefit.A more generous interpretation puts the union leaders at the top of a pyramid of members who fear changes to their pension as simply a way to replenish the exchequer without attacking the banks. That may be so. However, the contradiction in the union's stance will undermine public support and play into the coalition's hands.There is another opportunity with the Hutton report to secure public sector pensions on a realistic footing and avoid the terrible fate of most private sector workers. Mark Serwotka, head of the Whitehall union PCS, agreed to a career average scheme for 450,000 civil servants. Can unions, most of whom privately agree final salary is dead, avoid fighting for the better off in the name of ordinary workers?Public sector pensionsTrade unionsSpending review 2010Public sector cutsPensionsPublic services policyPublic financePhillip Inmanguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds guardian.co.uk |
Economy may never recover from banking crisis, warns OBR The economy, more damaged by the banking crisis than previously admitted, will grow more weakly and may never fully recover, the new Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) said yesterday. timesonline.co.uk |