Yet another strike that even the workers don’t support
Dear local government workers,
As everyone knows, educational standards in this country have been falling for years but I would have hoped that between 600,000 of you someone would have a calculator to hand or at least be able to do some basic sums. Civil service unions have already threatened to strike, which would disrupt benefits offices, museums, the coastguard service and courts. Now you lot have decided to hammer refuse collection, council tax processing, school cleaning and dinner services. Unfortunately for you, this is completely ridiculous for two reasons.
Reason number one: what makes you think that government has enough money for a 6% pay rise? They cannot borrow any more money, they cannot spend any more money – this country is in a complete mess. You have been offered 2.45%, which is more than many public sector workers, but you’re still holding out for 6%. It ain’t gonna happen and you know it, so why inflict misery on many local residents in pursuit of the impossible (and impossibly greedy)? Any extra money that you are awarded will result in cuts to local council services around the UK and increasing your wage demands will result in more services being cut. In a time of economic uncertainty where many people are already vulnerable to the effects of a faltering economy and falling house prices, what makes you think it is acceptable to hurt them even more?
Reason number two: your mathematical prowess leaves something to be desired. Unison, the second largest union in the country who represent you, voted 55% to 45% in favour of “sustained strike action”. This was hardly a spectacular margin of victory. What’s more, only 27% of your union colleagues voted in the ballot – meaning that a mere 15% of Unison members have actually voted for strike action. What kind of union thinks that a vote of 15% gives you a mandate to wipe out local services around the UK? Yes, an arrogant, petulant and ignorant one. The NUT made exactly the same mistake when they kicked off some recent strike action but clearly you haven’t learnt their lesson.
Honestly, you really do embarrass yourself sometimes.
Yours contemptfully,
A.Tory
“Reason number one: what makes you think that government has enough money for a 6% pay rise?”
You can’t really blame vultures for inhaling the scent of a freshly-rotting corpse and thinking ‘I’ll have some of that!’…
This is the way Labour governments end. Crippled, rotting and pulled apart by their erstwhile supporters.
Well, I’m assuming that a pay rise is what they actually want….
Of course they could just be flexing their muscle, knowing that the Labour Party are bankrupt and will be running to the unions in the next few months for extra funding. We may well see the unions setting the policy agenda over the next couple of years in a way that never seemed possible under Blair.
what makes you think that government has enough money for a 6% pay rise? They cannot borrow any more money, they cannot spend any more money – this country is in a complete mess.
Correct – HMG has no additional funds available. However, they could easily fund this pay rise, if they reined in some of the exising spending. Average pay is the total salary bill divided by the number of workers, so any mathematician will tell you that there are two ways to increase it
Alternatively, if the total bill for the public sector dropped a little, I could perhaps fund a pay rise for my employees.
Public spending cuts = union anger and job losses.
Union anger + job losses = another Labour nightmare.
But public spending cuts = taxpayers happier.
Oh, hang on, we only vote for them once every 5 years, and have no choice but to pay up on the HMRC’s demand. Unions choose whether or not and how much to pay them … silly me.
The argument about turnout is irrelevent. Do we say that some Tory council have no legitimacy because local election turnout was so low ?
If we based legitimacy on turnout, then every MEP in the country is a sham! Nonetheless, the low turnout means that many people will now effectively be forced to strike on their union’s advice, even though they may want to stay at work and help provide those services that are so desperately needed.
I know how unions work – they can put enormous peer pressure on you.
If they had not been so ambivalent about the question of a strike that they didn’t even show up to the ballot, then surely they have to accept the will of their peers.
Effectively, an abstention is just saying ‘well, I don’t mind either way’…