Employers are shifting the risk of higher life expectancy and fluctuating investment returns on to staff

Employers are shifting the risk of higher life expectancy and fluctuating investment returns on to staff, introducing money purchase schemes without guarantees Contributions are also falling. Although the most generous private sector employers may contribute as much as 10 or 15 per cent of salary into their employees’ pensions, most pay a few per cent, or nothing. However, while public sector pensions are still excellent, there have been cut-backs. New civil servants must wait until 65, rather than 60, to draw their pension. Local government workers are still fighting proposals to axe the rule of 85 – which allows them to retire at 60 if they have at least 25 years’ service. JOB SECURITY Stephan Bevan, the director of research at the Work Foundation, points out that redundancies rarely existed in the public sector until recently.

If jobs needed to go, employees were almost always moved elsewhere in the government machine But in recent years, the position has changed. “Because of the Gershon review [into public sector efficiency] two years ago, large parts of the public sector – especially the civil service – are now seeing job cuts,” Bevan says. The Government has committed to axing 100,000 jobs by 2008 as a result of the Gershon review, in an attempt to achieve £22bn in savings. “I think job security is still better than in the private sector, although there are still issues that haven’t yet been resolved,” says Dr John Philpott, the chief economist at the CIPD. “But people who might once have coasted in public service jobs, with less focus on productivity and efficiency, may now find they are in the firing line.” JOB SATISFACTION In the 1990s, job satisfaction in the public sector plunged, partly due to low pay, but also as increasing bureaucracy crept into jobs such as teaching and nursing.

According to a recent CIPD survey, this has now reversed, with today’s public sector workers marginally happier on balance than those in the private sector However, Bevan suggests this trend may again be reversing. Pay has improved but, Bevan says, public sector dissatisfaction is rarely about money. ” If you look at surveys that ask why people resign, it’s generally not about money at all. It’s about job satisfaction, feeling you’re able to do your job, and escaping bureaucracy.” In any case, while teachers and nurses have had decent pay rises, these groups are still among the most dissatisfied when it comes to salary. Bevan says that for many, the feeling is that the pay rises have still not been enough to compensate for years of underfunding The manager who returned to the fold…

Jeff Porter is a 63-year-old former social services manager, who has devoted most of his working life to the public sector. Starting as a social worker, he moved into management before moving on to run an NHS hospital in the 1980s. However, after becoming worn down by the political nature of his job, and also curious to experience working in the private sector, he eventually decided to make the switch in mid-career and took a job for a private business that managed nursing care homes. “It wasn’t actually that different to the public sector,” Porter says “It was still bureaucratic. Markets were important, but they weren’t the be all and end all, as I thought they might be.” After three years in his new job, however, Jeff was unexpectedly made redundant. After working freelance for a while, he was eventually attracted back into the public sector by the job security and worked as a director of housing and social services in north London for several years. While the pay and benefits are slightly lower on the public side, Porter says the security of working in the state sector has been a major attraction.