Public Sector Strikes

There are a good many hard working, decent, respectable people doing jobs of real utility in our public services. There is an overwhelming majority though, who are doing jobs with no useful outcome (hardly their fault though), others who are incompetent, lazy and unreliable. These people tend to shout the loudest too.

Currently we have the farce of trades union conferences. This is when a bunch of politically active, communists get together to provide the 'leadership' their members expect. These highly paid union bosses are of course interested in their members welfare in the same way that Stalin loved his people. At the conferences they say what they want, not what is affordable or reasonable. They are childish.

Naturally, the 'delegates' at the meeting are delighted by what they hear. This is the current situation. A government (strangely a Labour one and even more strangely one led by Tony Blair) hired millions of unnecessary public sector workers. Their pay was increased for no discernible reason and their pensions lucrative. Holiday entitlement was at the forefront and sickness was treated as an entitlement to extra holiday. Being sacked was unlikely.

Naturally, in the real world none of this was 'sustainable' (that is a word the Left will understand, is it not?) and the sector of society that actually pays the bills could not afford the largesse of New Labour. Then, when another bunch of carefully cultivated mates of Labour, the bankers, displayed how woefully inadequate and out of control they were, we were all pitched into the most frightful mess. and Gordon Brown's particular inability as a Chancellor, let alone PM was thrown into the harsh light of day.

So cutbacks are absolutely essential, painful or not. Enter the mindset of the public sector worker (referring only to the majority). Not contributing to the national wealth but rather being a drain on it, both in cost and the mindless rules and regulations they use up their time devising, they have no concept it seems of reality. In their view, the pensions they have, being wildly above what they fund themselves should be left untouched. Their retirement age should remain lower than the private sector and they should not be subject to redundancies either.

The answer is to strike. Obviously. This of course achieves only one thing generally; they get on the news. Teachers can severely inconvenience the people trying to work to pay the wages of these pampered souls, but otherwise a public sector strike usually passes completely unnoticed. With often some clear benefits. The teachers union boss thinks that the government isn't negotiating so they are right to strike. But what does she think the government should do? Why leave everything as it is. (Or maybe a little extra pay/holiday/pension would be nice).

And of course the attitudes and talents of people who 'work' in the public sector often doesn't translate well into the private sector, so they cannot get jobs there. A company that needs to produce quality products and make a profit isn't likely to able to afford a professional 'meeting attender', who needs to fly regularly to foreign (hot) countries on fact finding missions and who is in seemingly poor health, going by their sick record.

No, the public sector must feel the pain as much as the rest of the country (and might be fitting because I bet most of them voted for Labour), though I accept that they do have a right to complain that the government isn't savaging the top earming Quangocrats as they very surely should.