Live text updating seems to be all the rage now, especially for those trying to keep up with sporting events online or on mobile internet. The influence is spreading though, and the UNISON website includes a rolling strike update at which I am – quite frankly – appalled.
Now I don’t support the strike action and as a Councillor I can only apologise to local residents who have seen services – many of them essential - disrupted today and tomorrow. However it is one thing to go on strike, but to gloat and take great delight in the misery that the strike is causing is a different ball game altogether.
That unfortunately is exactly what the UNISON website is doing however. A grisly roll-call of schools, nurseries and services for the elderly which have been closed down due to the strike action. It’s an ugly spectacle.
I don’t believe that this strike is the right way forward but I know that the vast majority of those local government staff on strike today do not take that decision lightly. Most staff on the picket lines today – never mind the local residents hit hard by the strike – will be appalled by the language used by the UNISON hierarchy. Most staff are acutely aware of the knock-on problems of striking and use industrial action with regret. The UNISON leadership are striking with relish and they are letting their own members down at the same time.
Hat tip: ConservativeHome
Hi
Ian sorry to be rude,beleive it or not you do have my respect. But your comments sound so much like the conservatives from the 70s. Striking is not an easy choice,taken normaly as a last resort.We are in a situation where pay is falling so far behind infaltion. The wages the majority of these people earn are a pitance. And sorry i still have a little of my socialist tendancy stuck inside. I was god forbid a union rep and a good one. Had many a fight with the bosses.Bit like being in council
Regards joe
Ian I know you have your views and I have mine. I look upon the strike from both angles, can we afford high wage increases and an inflation spiral. I wonder what your view is though on the wages us politicians seem to want to lavish upon outselves.
The government’s mismanagement of the countries finances and the subswequent blame on that old scape goat the global economy has in turn brought about the union unrest we see today. You can read the fact Labour are cancelling their spring conference due to no money as a sign that they cant even manage their own funds.
The other side of the argument was one I was immersed in as a civil servant. The facts are the governments preferred measurement of inflation in running in the 3% territory and they are offering a wage rise in the 2% region (apologies for my rounding off), this does in any spin amount to a pay cut.
No one likes to strike, but I know that you can work all day to make a service run but when the end of the day comes and you have to go home and cant afford the bills, you wont find your line manager coming to pay them.
I work now in the private sector, in an office of people in their 20′s who know nothing of union rights, who are to scared to speak out as they may loose their job and you are not helping with your anti union slant on things.
I am well aware Joe that most workers do not take strike action lightly – re-read my final paragraph from the post above.
Most local government workers will have wrestled with their consciences before deciding to strike – it must be very frustrating for them to then see the Union leadership ruin the credibility of their arguments by gloating about the disruption caused. The UNISON leadership – who don’t work on minimum wage and aren’t forgoing two days pay – have let the members they claim to represent down very badly.
What is so appalling about the Unison web feed Iain? Why do you call it gloating when a Union points out how important their members are to our lives? When, having negotiated themselves silly to no avail they finally reluctantly went on strike. £6 an hour is not a living wage. 20p an hour is not a realistic rise for people at these levels. That amounts to the EXTRA cost of driving for about six miles – since six months ago.
What would you suggest these workers do?
Without entering the fray directly on the issue of public sector salaries and union demands for higher wages (in relation to inflation and increasing living costs), it seems to me that if local government and the public sector cut its costs by getting rid of the vast army of employees doing insignificant and meaningless non-jobs then it might then be able to pay the rest of its neccessary and valuable employees doing real jobs the inflation-linked wage rise they seek.
Our Labour-run Salford Council wastes millions of pounds every year. Perhaps if the Labour Party stopped flushing Salford taxpayers’ money down the drain then there might be the money available that the unions seek. Consider that not so long ago Salford’s Labour council wrote off £3.2 MILLION in council tax and rent arrears (and compare that to Tory-run Trafford which wrote off just £40,000). The list of Salford Labour’s crimes of profligacy and waste goes on and on and is well-documented. Hasten the day when the Conservatives run Salford Council and watch the wastage become a distant memory of ‘the bad old days when Labour ruled and the City of Salford was a mess’.
I suspect that if Mr. Lindley was running Salford Council – and not Mr. Merry – then the City’s finances would be rather healthier and crises such as the one at present might be more readily resolved. This strike is completely the fault of the Labour Party which has run this city and this country into the ground. It is time for John Merry’s head to be hanged (in shame) along with all his Labour pals. Labour has failed in Salford and the present strike is simply the latest evidence of this reality.
Hi ian
Well even unison are having a go. Wonder if John comes out in support of you. That would be on for the books.
joe