Council strike: support it or not?

Poppy9

IvanOpinion wrote:

Sounds a bit like my endowment policy at the minute

Mine too (and I mean two too!)

IvanOpinion wrote:

However it may all be academical since according to a report on the radio last night pensions schemes have recovered massively in the last two months (that might just be governmental hype though .. bury the head in the sand and hope it goes away )

No doubt the Councils will take another payment holiday for a few years then to appease council tax payers (Oh that's me) to leave future Council pensions in the sh*t (Oh that's me too)!

Never mind we should all stand at the next General Election as the MSE party. Just think of the pensions we will all get then.:D We need a slogan though.

Pennywise

Poppy9 wrote:

So would you accept it if a life assurance company that you had paid into for 20+ years wrote to you to say they will not pay out the 100k promised on your death but only 50k as times are hard and their funds have not performed as required and it would be unfair of new policy holders to make up your shortfall?

That's exactly what happened with Equitable Life - thousands of people, including myself, effectively lost our pension pots - the value of mine fell by over half. Where once I was on target for a comfortable retirement, I now have to work a lot longer or accept a poorer standard of living. How's that for fair? It's the same with many private company pensions - the companies have gone bust (no doubt some because of govt ineptitude) and those approaching retirement have virtually lost all their pension. How's that fair.

But I do think we need to move the argument on. It's getting far too "public versus private" - the Govt are pitting one set of employees against another. We really need a consensus across ALL types of people to force the Govt to create a level playing FOR ALL.

Poppy9

Pennywise wrote:

That's exactly what happened with Equitable Life - thousands of people, including myself, effectively lost our pension pots - the value of mine fell by over half. Where once I was on target for a comfortable retirement, I now have to work a lot longer or accept a poorer standard of living. How's that for fair? It's the same with many private company pensions - the companies have gone bust (no doubt some because of govt ineptitude) and those approaching retirement have virtually lost all their pension. How's that fair.

It's not fair and if you had been given the chance to protest action the taken by the private companies by striking would you have?

Snapelover

Well after our council decided to strike four weeks ago today, leaving us with a stinking green wheelie bin for four weeks, they had to empty a very overflowing bin and remove six black bin bags full of rubbish. Hope they weren't getting any overtime for today.

Poppy9

Had an email from Unison today. Strike action has now been suspended following a meeting during which it was agreed to talk about protecting current members of the LGPS.

The email also refuted allegations made by a staff member that the bin men had overtime to collect the backlog of rubbish from the last strike day. A private company was brought in to collect the rubbish but they took 3 times as long as the council staff!!

Snapelover

Poppy9 wrote:

The email also refuted allegations made by a staff member that the bin men had overtime to collect the backlog of rubbish from the last strike day. A private company was brought in to collect the rubbish but they took 3 times as long as the council staff!!

Does this mean that as well as paying for a refuse collection which didn't happen the council tax payer is now going to end up stumping up the cash for the private contractor too?

Poppy9

Snapelover wrote:

Does this mean that as well as paying for a refuse collection which didn't happen the council tax payer is now going to end up stumping up the cash for the private contractor too?

No. The council binmen who did not collect your rubbish on the strike day didn't get paid. The council saved 1 days pay (and oncosts) for all it's workforce who were on strike. This saving more than covered the cost of bringing in private contractors to do one service area as the majority of jobs were not covered by private companies.

Sorry to disappoint you but you will have to find another reason now to criticise the council:rolleyes:

Snapelover

Poppy9 wrote:

Sorry to disappoint you but you will have to find another reason now to criticise the council:rolleyes:

But I am still out of pocket as I paid for a day's refuse collection which did not happen.

Fortunately, there are many other ways I can criticise our council:p

Poppy9

Snapelover wrote:

But I am still out of pocket as I paid for a day's refuse collection which did not happen.

Fortunately, there are many other ways I can criticise our council:p

But that wasn't your question.

Does this mean that as well as paying for a refuse collection which didn't happen the council tax payer is now going to end up stumping up the cash for the private contractor too?

Your question was was are you paying for a collection that didn't happen by the council binmen but by private contractors. If your collection didn't happen full stop then it's obvious that you are not paying for a private contractor too!!

If you are saying that your council didn't employ private contractors to clear bins then in theory Council tax should be lower next year as there will be savings this year from strike action which they should put into reserves as this years budget should be fully funded. Remember to ask your elected member at election time what happened to the savings.

Each council makes it's own arrangements so not all councils would have chosen to employ private firms with the savings generated by strikers to carry out the work.

Snapelover

What I am saying is:

I paid full council tax for 2005/06. For one day (the day of the strike) we did not get any local government services (including missing out on a refuse collection) - so by rights we should get a refund in our council tax for 2005/06.