Who pays for better public sector pensions? (From The Wiltshire Gazette and Herald)

Who pays for better public sector pensions?

6:00pm Thursday 24th November 2011 in Letters

It was interesting to read Janet Fellows’ views (letters, November 17) and how she has “worked very hard for 20 years” and “deserves” her pension. Who doesn’t? I have worked in the private sector for 40 years so I doubly deserve mine.

She seems to have no grasp on where pensions come from, and how market forces determine our pensions. The public sector has only just come to terms with the loss of final salary pensions, long since abandoned in the private sector as unsustainable.

She believes a Day of Action will change investment performance over the past 20 years.

Average salary public sector pensions are still better than the private sector, and public sector workers haven’t grasped the fact that the landscape has changed and you have to put in more to stand still. If they want more, who pays? The taxpayer and private sector workers on less generous pensions.

I support the government’s efforts to protect private sector workers from funding better public sector pensions.

Bob Williams, Langley Road, Chippenham.