Wednesday 1 October 2008

pay restraint?

From the letters page of today's Independent newspaper

Now that banks are being taken over by the Government, can we expect banking executives to be subject to public-sector pay restraint?

Geoffrey Payne
London W5

It would be nice to see how bankers manage on a 2% increase to my salary that I'll be getting this year. Certainly no £1M bonuses in the Civil Service!

4 comments:

Ralph said...

I was a government worker, Peewit, and we did OK here in the States. We didn't get rich, of course, but we civil servants are just about the only ones in this country who have health insurance that approaches the convenient European model you enjoy.
That's one reason it's such a crock when blowhards on Capitol Hill go on about the evils of "socialized medecine." As government workeers, they're on it!

Peewit said...

Our plus point as civil servants is our Guaranteed index-linked pensions which do partly compensate for the relatively low pay. I myself in the schem of things am not that badly off as I am a fairly senior grade but if I were to leave and go and work for an accountants I could easily triple my salary in one go

Ralph said...

Forgot to mention we have the indexed pension as well. And workers get automatic cost-of-living adjustments every year.

ib said...

I lost out entirely on a private pension I took out in the 80s and 'froze' when I subsequently ran into financial difficulties.

A 2% salary increase in the civil service in this climate of a soaring cost of living is ridiculous, as are those annual bonuses paid out in the financial sector. The same directors of those companies running up a huge gross deficit and turning to the tax payer to underwrite their losses.