6.6 years!

As soon as I read this story I could guess what was coming.

Here's the first quote:

The first stage in Glasgow City Council’s trawl for redundancy volunteers will see letters sent to all 3500 employees aged 50-plus by the end of the month

And the bit that I expected is this:

As part of the deal, employees aged 50 or over with access to a pension will receive up to 6.6 added years’ pension and up to 30 weeks’ redundancy pay, while those with no access to a pension are able to apply for up to 66 weeks’ redundancy pay.

I'd love someone to have given me 6.6 added years' pension but I'm employed in the private sector - by my own company, in fact. Funnily enough my company doesn't have any pension provision for its staff (me) and if it did it would have to generate more income to pay for it. In other words, I'd have to work more hours and pay a lot more tax thus funding government employees who can retire early. The pensions that I do have on top of the state one have all been saved by myself when working in various private sector jobs over many years.

It is quite outrageous that local (and national) government workers can get these hugely inflated pension benefits when retiring early. Here in Edinburgh the Lothian Pension Fund employer contribution rate is over 20% of gross salary. That too is an outrageously high figure and helps explain the parlous state of the national finances. Needless to say, the removal of almost, if not all, of these state employees is a matter of the highest urgency.