Strikes
Today in England teachers, train drivers and some civil servants are going on strike.
Are you striking? Are you affected by it? Do you support it? What do Shippies think?
My son is in Year 10 and doing Drama for GCSE. His class had a long planned trip to the theatre booked for today. Their teacher is striking but will still be taking them on the trip as she didn't want them to miss out. To me that sums up that it's not about inconveniencing those in their care but about longer term issues of how that care is funded and supported.
Are you striking? Are you affected by it? Do you support it? What do Shippies think?
My son is in Year 10 and doing Drama for GCSE. His class had a long planned trip to the theatre booked for today. Their teacher is striking but will still be taking them on the trip as she didn't want them to miss out. To me that sums up that it's not about inconveniencing those in their care but about longer term issues of how that care is funded and supported.
Comments
Another daughter works and has a child at school. She has to take a day off, losing more parental leave and in the meantime a specialist medical team already down to 4 out of 14 has lost it's acting lead (daughter) with a potential impact across 2000 beds.
None of us disagree with strikes but ...
... the government shouldn't be forcing workers to take massive pay cuts.
Whereas the last by-election held had a turnout of around 26%.
The ministers for each department say they have an open door but only for things they want to talk about
Yes, prison has a door.
Well, "having no choice" here means that the alternative is horrible. Quite close to Hobson's choice.
I am reminded of Judge Dredd pointing out that the person he'd just arrested for damaging a cleaning 'droid to hide from a Block War had the alternative of jumping out of the window. "40 floors? It would have been suicide!" "Maybe, but it's legal".
Some choices aren't real ones.
When was that ever on a manifesto?
Quite. There are other methods of redistributing the tragic commons of course.
Who?
Official Treasury estimates put it at £32Bn. It would be unrealistic to expect it all to be collected but some of it clearly is. And the Government is against even trying.
Moreover the economic illiteracy is bloody annoying. If the Government met and negotiated appropriate settlements because of the knockon economic effects and increased revenue, the actual cost in cash terms to the government would probably be negligible.
I am in the odd position of being inconvenienced by strikes (train, primarily) and being balloted for strike action at the same time.
It would be silly to suggest that all strikes are always justified, but right now, I strongly support the strikes that inconvenience me.
AFZ
Indeed, even if they tried a little and got 10%, that £3b pa of my original typo would be enough to give a half decent pay rise across the public sector.
It serves the government's purpose to quote the gross amount they'd need to pay rather than the net. Even the fact that about 25% of a salary increase will come straight back to the Treasury through income tax and NI doesn't get a mention, much less the knock on economic effects that generate even more revenue indirectly.
It's that £350m per week on the side of a bus all over again ... convenient to give the biggest number for political capital even though in that case it was incorrect as well as misleading.
...of course, given the large number of MPs with second jobs, describing them as public sector workers is perhaps over-generous.
MPs also don't get to decide their own pay. I'm also not sure why having more than one job makes someone not a public sector worker - if someone has a job as a teaching assistant and a second job as a cleaner, are they suddenly not public sector workers? It's very common for low-paid public sector workers to have multiple jobs.
Also, note that since 2009 Scottish government ministers (who will also be entitled to a 1.5% pay rise) have refused to accept a pay rise with what they would have received being added to the pot available for services to the public - this is fairly symbolic, because the amount concerned is a drop in the ocean compared to the overall budget (it'll be a total of about half a million quid a year now), but an important symbol.
If MPs refuse to take their pay rise, that would be a similar symbolic move - it would only free up a million, but that's a step in the right direction.
I think @Jane R might be alluding to those MPs for whom the vast majority - by orders od magnitude - of their income does not come from their MP salary.
Though unlike other public sector jobs, their pay hasn't been frozen for large parts of the last decade.
You think MPs are low-paid? I am well aware that many public sector workers have to take second or third jobs to make ends meet. Most of them would get the sack if they were in the habit of swanning off to their other jobs in the middle of their normal working hours. Most of them would also be expected to refrain from taking jobs that involved conflicts of interest.
That has always been my impression of local strikes.
Where did I say that MPs were low-paid? Although actually compared to equivalent private-sector positions, MP pay is comparatively low.
Surely the solution is to raise wages for everyone, not lower MPs' pay? It's like the subsidised food thing - the issue is that other workplaces don't usually have that and they should, not that it's morally wrong for MPs to have that.
I'm fully aware that some second jobs do create a conflict of interest and/or interfere with Parliamentary work, I'm just saying it can't be all of them.
A second job can only take time out of that.
Only if the "job" involves any work rather than being a thinly disguised bribe.
Well, yes. Nice little earners like non-executive directorships.