Now PwC Wants Our Pension

In my little neck of the woods we all had a visit from Price Waterhouse Coppers. 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 partly wrong) was that some hospitals had paid up to £1 million pounds 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 loose your pension too' debate, reported here by the BBC.

When I was 25 I attended a course at King's on the Strand. It had cost me £1500 and was every night and every Saturday for 4 months. I was taking home £950 per month working as a doctor and lecturer. I was working about 80 hours a week and my rent was £850 per month.

Every night at 7pm I walked past the then Arthur Anderson Consulting, I watched countless men the same age as me drive out of the garage in brand new TVR's and Porsches going home as I was about to attend my course until 10pm.

Now, I wasn't bitter because I realised that I would have shit pay and conditions until I was about 38 and then my life would become reasonable, I would be paid more and I could anyway look forward to a good retirement income if I made it that far.

But it seems I was wrong.

Now I'm not saying that the private sector puts in any less effort. But the average doctor would have had an excellent chance of going to Oxbridge, turning out a good degree and getting a job in the City. I work with quite a few medical students who did just that, saved a few million after tax and are now studying medicine as a hobby.

If I was looking at the pay, conditions and pension arrangements that PwC and the rest of the private sector would like visited on the NHS then there is no way that I would have chosen medicine. I would have picked business or the City. I'm sure many others would think the same way.

What needs to therefore be considered is just what sort of people will be recruited into medicine. In Russia doctors pay and conditions have been very poor for many years. The Russian health service has some of the lowest outcomes on the planet. In America the ludicrously expensive health service has the best paid doctors in the world. It's outcomes are also the best. I don't suppose these facts are entirely unrelated.

It may be worth noting that in 2006, Keiran Poynter, the last Chairman of PwC took home £2.5 million. 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 5% 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 5% 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% higher. I know which I'd settle for.

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