As the UK public sector workers strike we need to ask three questions - is this right, is the fair and will it work.
The plain truth is that something needs to be done - the UK must pull back from its spending commitments and this will involve fewer people being paid less. Politicians need to be honest about this and deal with the fallout of which these strikes are a part.
This current coalition governments position (informed by the conservative dogma rather than the liberals) on public services is that they should be provided by the private sector wherever possible with the government picking up those services that cannot be made profitable by private business. Much of the current strategy for dealing with the financial crisis appears to reflect this bias.
Successive governments have had a policy of paying public sector workers well below the market rate, but that did not matter. Up until say 10 years ago people entered the UK public sector as a vocation, to serve and the payoff beyond the joy of public service - A good pension. Thatcher and Blair changed this thinking - Thatcher believed that in the main public sector workers delivered little of value. She and governments since have used public sector recruitment to dig themselves out of negative unemployment figures and service particular communities with unemployment problems. These people may not be as committed to public service and there has been a rise in the sort of people who have a job in the public service because the could not hack it anywhere else. You have probably met some of these in your dealings with central or local government.
That is not the case with most people though. Many have given long and loyal service only to find their pension is being plundered to pay for the mistakes and the political aspirations of their political masters. They are being asked to pay for today's mistakes but when the current crisis is over the new devalued pension will give governments wriggle room to either deliver tax cuts or build up a war chest for high value projects.
So it is right that this strike go ahead - government have to listen to these people and should do so gracefully and perhaps have negotiations not agree to them as a tactic and do nothing. In addition these people while protecting their jobs are also protecting the quality and range of public services. Services Government would prefer not to deliver. For their pains they are painted as greedy lazy bureaucrats who are better of than the private sector, spoiling for a fight with politicians for the sake of conflict alone.
Is it fair? To be honest government, unions and the public would all rather not be here - however it is not fair of the politicians to feign care for the impact upon the public to mask that these strikes are inconvenient to their political objectives. It is not fair that the public will not get their public services today but it is difficult to see how to manage the strike in any other way ( if the public are not impacted government ministers have simply ignored the issue claiming that as the public do not care there is no issue). It is never fair is to have money stolen from you and this is what the raid on pensions and wages amounts to. It is understood that public servants have to play there part in the recovery but the government has given no commitment to look at this again when the economy is stronger.
Will this work? If the government had been straight - argued for cuts in the short term on the basis of reframing the deal when the outlook was better then this would have worked - public servants are better than politicians at running the country - they do it every day, even when the politicians attention is elsewhere. They not politicians have already made billions in savings to offset the countries debts by cutting back, reorganising or cancelling projects that are needed - but not approriatte now. If the government had been honest about a change of political philosophy requiring smaller government - this would have worked too. But using the credit crisis to achieve political objectives this will not work.
They may achieve the political objectives but their focus is wrong for dealing with the crisis - they will employ the wrong tools, use the wrong strategies. I cannot help but think that the strike is somewhat irrelevant to this main event but that the things the unions are fighting for cannot be saved without convincing the politicians that there is a better way. But what is this better way?.> CM
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