Pensions Under Assualt from the Bean Counters

In our neck of the woods we all had a visit from Price Waterhouse Coopers. This was about 2 years ago. Some clever men and women with clipboards came and asked us what we do, how we might improve things. They wrote it down into a Word Macro and then charged the hospital a fortune. I went to a regional meeting and it turned out that PwC had been into every hospital in the region. Word on the street (no doubt wrong) was that some hospitals had paid up to £1 million to get someone else to talk to their own employees!

Now they have waded into the 'we're having a miserable time in the private sector so you can lose your pension too' debate, reported here by the BBC.

It may be worth noting that in 2006, Keiran Poynter, the previous Chairman of PwC took home £2.5 million (I can't find the figures for the current one strangely). The 793 partners earned an average of £716,000 each. Of course pay and conditions are vital tools in recruitment.

Oddly enough PwC has 16,000 employees in the UK so their partners represent 4.6% of the work force. The NHS has 1 million employees and 40,000 consultants or 4% of the workforce. If senior management are included too it comes to less than 4.6% of employees. Yet our pay and conditions are far too good. Even if our pension contributions are 35% above the private sector their salary is 716% greater than ours. I know which I'd settle for.

Bean counters. They simply can't see beyond the numbers.