@pluk with respect the police aren’t allowed unions but you have a guaranteed job for life, no need to worry about redundancy, full sick pay and a pension someone in the private sector could only dream of, retirement after 30 years service on 2/3 of final pay, so could be as young as 48 when you retire...
Maybe that last part has changed over the last few years for new recruits but you still are in a lot better position than most right now.
It's certainly one of the most secure jobs around in that you can't be made redundant in the traditional sense, but beyond that you're a good decade or two out of date... and that's before the relatively high likelihood of being in a position where you've no right decision to make so whatever you do leads to the hindsight police telling you you were wrong in your split second decision and not only do you lose your job but you also go to prison. Or maybe die at the time if you got it wrong.
- full sick pay is kind of true, for 6months, then nothing even in the highly likely circumstances that it was doing the job that broke you.
- the pension is nothing like you describe and hasn't been for years, it's very comparable to the private sector now. There's no final salary, you work until you are at least 60 or later (which due to the physical nature will be an impossibility for many approaching that age)
The disruption to your life is massive, the hours are insane and saying no to basically any change in shift is not an option and a lot of extra hours are not paid (I don't mean at an enhanced rate, they are actually not paid). It consumes your life and is dangerous, and that's why the benefits were strong, to acknowledge and compensate for that.
When a lot of those benefits were taken away it wasn't just for new recruits, it meant officers nearing retirement suddenly had to work years extra (many over a decade), all the time paying more money into a pension that'd pay significantly less by the time they got there. You try doing that to another emergency service or unionised group and see what happens! It's recently been ruled in courts that the changes were unfair and ageist so compensation ahoy, but it's a great example of how they see they can treat us.
As a late starter I wasn't really effected in terms of working longer, but it's still a huge hit on what I was supposed to receive in retirement. Also as a late starter I had a previous career in the private sector so have seen both sides and can assure the chasm in conditions and benefits you think is there really is not.
All a bit off topic I know, but it doesn't come away from the point I was trying to make that it makes good business sense to not encourage ill people to come to work and make everyone ill. Travelling abroad somewhere against government advice, Corona related or not, should obviously come with personal consequences, but travelling to places that are deemed safe at the time but then you get caught out while you are there can't really be foreseen any more than staycationing and getting exposed to it here in a busy tourist town, which is surely where pockets will occur as tourism picks up. It comes to a point where it could be argued the only non-selfish thing to do is put yourself back into quarantine, but that's clearly silly.
It could well be argued that the net loss to the economy of a relitive few people getting caught out and not able to work for a couple of weeks having been abroad is going to be a lot less than the decimation of the whole of the travel industry for the longer term and the job losses that comes with if no one travels at all. Not so selfish then, is it?
