Why so defensive j26?
My invitation was to
... (feel free to play with the numbers and check my sums)...
The bank time is way off - its generally 30 minutes on the week you're paid, and since most are paid fortnightly, it's about a quarter of what you calculate. Also, civil servants recruited since 1st October 2003 must be paid into their bank account, and don't get bank time, so it's a perk that will die out in in time. Given the expansion of the public service in recent years, that means that possibly up to a quarter of the public service of are already ineligible at this stage, so again your figures would need to be amended to reflect that. ...
Have a shot at it, although I think you will find by perusing older threads on AAM that my numbers stack up.
Come up with a number. If you can pick holes in my assumptions and calculations you must have some idea of a number.
... As for privilege days, I believe they only apply to the civil service (I could be wrong). The offices remain closed for an extra day at Christmas, so every civil servant has to take it - there's no real opting in or out to it...
I worked in the public sector as contracted employee for a period and I was granted privilege days based on "custom and practice" in the role I was fulfilling, so your brlief is misplaced.
... Many businesses give holidays over and above the public holidays at Christmas time, and also give bonuses (which we don't get), ...
If you read the previous posts in the thread you will see that in the private sector any holidays employees take over and above public holidays come out of their annual leave entitlement.
Bonuses may be granted in the private sector (they will be taxed as well unlike the hidden perks under discussion here), but they will be tied to the performance of the individual and the organisation as a whole. If there's no money in the kitty, bonuses won't be paid.
Having worked as an employee and an employer in the private sector, I have been on both sides of the equation -
- work hard, long hours, tough times, little money, no bonus
- work hard, long hours, better times, some money, bonus paid.
... However, that doesn't seem too bad when you look at, say solicitors offices, many of whom have already closed, and will remain closed until January...
But solicitors run their own businesses, surely they can decide when they close for annual leave, and I guarantee you that if they remain closed from now until January its because they know they won't have much to do.
... so I don't really see why the public service should be singled out...
The thread title might be a useful hint, i.e.
"Re: Time off for Christmas shopping in public service."
... As for the "shopping time", again I don't know how prevalent that actually is. I seriously doubt teachers get it anyway. It could be just a civil service thing again, so your base figure of 275,000 could be way off.
Again come up with a number. Biffo, when he had the Finance portfolio, put the number at 260,000 in 2004/5 for the public service as a whole.