‘Gold plated’ pensions a myth
9:15am Thursday 20th October 2011 in Comment
I work in administration for Adult and Community Services and I want to bring to your attention the myth that local government workers get gold plated pensions when they retire.
I am 57 years old and my predicted pension will not be enough to live on; nor is what I would call a “gold plated pension”.
The average pension in local government is around £4,000 a year — £2,800 for women.
The NHS is £7,500, which includes higher paid consultants and doctors, but for a woman this falls to around £3,000 — neither is this Gold Plated or exactly a fortune.
I have paid into the pension fund even when times have been hard and I could ill afford it at times but I continue to subscribe to enable me to hopefully have some sort of security in my “old age”. However, the proposed increase in my contributions will become ill affordable, especially when everyone is feeling the fallout from the recession and to make public service workers pay another three per cent on top of the six to eight per cent we already pay is totally unfair.
This is just a tax on public sector workers as I understand not one penny will be paid into the pension fund, but will go directly to the Treasury to reduce the county’s debt . Yet again the public are paying for the problems caused by the banking world.
That is why I am supporting strike action on November 30.
Wendy Harrison Bolton
