Public Sector Pension Strikes – A JOKE !

Moby

howee wrote: »

So you think the tobin tax would be a success do you lol. We can all bash bankers lets blame them for this mess it has nothing to do with my and your personal debt and the fact we have for the last 10yrs spent more than we earned. London overtook NY as the worlds financial centre a few years ago why tax London to death and encourage banks to move abroad. Do you think France are not very envious of the position London is in?

As the world power moves east we will find it harder and harder to compete for manual jobs / manufacturing etc. Where we can compete is in area we can use expertise, like them or loath them we have workers in an industry who are actually the envy of the world. We need Cameron to protect them/this.

After last night this statement looks distinctly hollow. We are now effectively sidelined as a second rate influence in Europe. The French German led axis of 17 countries will now forge ahead with their own plans, about 9 other countries will also follow leaving us sidelined. In future any Chinese, Brazilian, Indian, American business interests will go to the 17 when trading. The rules and decisions will be made by them!.......but don't worry we'll always be able to say that Cameron has protected the City! This approach is utterly wrong. He has been hamstrung by his own xenephobic constituency to the cost of all of us. He hasn't protected the City anyway....the French German axis will bulldoze through new legislation in any event! All he has achieved is to sideline us into 'splendid isolationism'. We are becoming a second rate tin pot country ruled by xenophobic little Englanders who don't give a fig for the rights and quality of life of the people that live here. Wages, conditions of service, employment law will all be eroded in the interests of competition. The spivs and speculators will continue to make a killing and hard working people will live in continual fear of unemployment. Unbelievable and really sad IMO!

I do not understand why the unions are not happy with the proposal being announced. They are supposed to be negotiating on behalf of their members, they should be the ones passing the information onto their members but for some reason they do not seem to want to do that. Are they afraid that such information will erode the support for the union actions.

In this whole debate we have not heard any suggestions from the unions on how to move forward, we only hear their outrage at this and that and how they are not happy. They seem to do it just to get their members wound up, as I have said before they just seem to want a fight and the ability to flex their muscles rather than reach a settlement.

This is totally wrong. As a union member I have been briefed alll along by my union negotiators regarding the progress of talks and the positions reached. What you have to consider is that there is only one party at the table negotiating genuinely...and I assure you its not this Govmt! I know you won't accept that ....but there it is if others are interested!

On a sideline i see the workers at Unilever are going out on strike today regarding their pensions. Now it escapes me for the moment is Unilever in the private or public sector?? I also see the Chief Executive of Unilever has just netted a share bonus of 1 million....perhaps he'll use it to do up his barn conversion to compete with some of his mates on here;)

MikeR71

howee wrote: »

When will 'some' not all of the PS accept that the deal they are going to get is FANTASTIC compared with what you can get if your in the private sector?

The key words here are "compared with".

When will a pensioner who can only afford to spend £10 a week on food accept that his/her situation is FANTASTIC compared with so many other pensioners in some parts of the country who can only afford £5? He should be glad he is getting £10 a week, right? How dare these greedy oldies want more, right? They should have died long ago!!! What do they think we are? One of the richest countries in the world or something? We should be living like those people in the Balkans!

Yes yes, we hear you howee. The answer to the country's economic woes are to downgrade the PS and create more poverty stricken elderly on means tested benefits than we already have. This makes far more sense than trying to push the private sector pensions as this would mean having to take on our rich friends at private companies that donate their money to our political party.
In time we can also scrap the benefits arguing that we can't afford it. I am sure if your favourite politician tells you often enough that we can't afford it, then you will believe it. This way we will also solve this hideous problem of people (apparently) living longer, right?

At least this way we appear to be "fair" and everyone WILL be happy!

sheffield_lad

Moby wrote: »

After last night this statement looks distinctly hollow. We are now effectively sidelined as a second rate influence in Europe. The French German led axis of 17 countries will now forge ahead with their own plans, about 9 other countries will also follow leaving us sidelined. In future any Chinese, Brazilian, Indian, American business interests will go to the 17 when trading. The rules and decisions will be made by them!.......but don't worry we'll always be able to say that Cameron has protected the City! This approach is utterly wrong. He has been hamstrung by his own xenephobic constituency to the cost of all of us. He hasn't protected the City anyway....the French German axis will bulldoze through new legislation in any event! All he has achieved is to sideline us into 'splendid isolationism'. We are becoming a second rate tin pot country ruled by xenophobic little Englanders who don't give a fig for the rights and quality of life of the people that live here. Wages,

Spoken like a true union man lol, you are getting a tad too excited about what this means, no one is going to stop buying British goods, we all think that Britain does not manufacture anymore but we are actually the 6th biggest manufacture in the world.

What Cameron has done is woke us from the sleep walk which is constitutional Europe. No one ever voted for this we voted for a trade agreement.

The world is our trade partner not Europe we can trade with everyone.

JohnB47

Le73Uq86Uv wrote: »

I hope these private sector people send back thier state pension when they reach the age.

After all you don't want to be pulling the country down and taking tax payers money do you?

Or if they can't bring themselves to hand it back, at least they might think "well, at least I'm not getting as much as I should have done, because the millionaire government in 2010 decided to link the state pension to CPI rather than RPI, so perhaps I'm not too big a sponger".

Zelazny

Le73Uq86Uv wrote: »

I hope these private sector people send back thier state pension when they reach the age.

After all you don't want to be pulling the country down and taking tax payers money do you?

Yeah, 'cos it's not like we've been paying many times their value in NI contributions or anything...

dshart

Moby wrote: »

On a sideline i see the workers at Unilever are going out on strike today regarding their pensions. Now it escapes me for the moment is Unilever in the private or public sector?? I also see the Chief Executive of Unilever has just netted a share bonus of 1 million....perhaps he'll use it to do up his barn conversion to compete with some of his mates on here;)

Notice how this does not headlines on all the papers and has not caused national disruption, how the rest of the private companies are not out on strike as well. Did you have to make alternative arrangements for your kids today because of this strike? Did your travel plans get disrupted? Are you starting to see the difference.

DCodd

dshart wrote: »

Notice how this does not headlines on all the papers and has not caused national disruption, how the rest of the private companies are not out on strike as well. Did you have to make alternative arrangements for your kids today because of this strike? Did your travel plans get disrupted? Are you starting to see the difference.

But surely that is the point of withdrawing your labour?

In this case Unilever will see the disruption and loss of production. It shows them that they wholly rely on their workforce, Current and future to maintain their profitability.

In the case of the Public sector worker, it showed everyone the levels of support provided by the Public sector to the private sector.

I see no difference really.

J_i_m

Ding ding! Round two. Or so it seems.

Lastst proposals mean that my personal pension contributions will not be going up for perhapps another year yet. I should probably be embarrassed and expect abuse from all corners.

Zelazny

DCodd wrote: »

But surely that is the point of withdrawing your labour?

In this case Unilever will see the disruption and loss of production. It shows them that they wholly rely on their workforce, Current and future to maintain their profitability.

In the case of the Public sector worker, it showed everyone the levels of support provided by the Public sector to the private sector.

I see no difference really.

The point is in who you are inconveniencing.

Unilever employees go on strike - inconveniencing their employer

Public sector workers go on strike - inconveniences everyone.

As we can see from things like http://www.tutor2u.net/blog/index.php/economics/comments/labour-market-days-lost-through-industrial-disputes there's an awful lot more industrial action in the public sector than in the private (bear in mind as well that the private sector is a lot bigger than the public, but the public sector loses a lot more days to industrial action).

If strikes become a regular occurrence one solution that seems to make most sense is to privatise everything that would be adversely affected by strikes...

dshart

DCodd wrote: »

But surely that is the point of withdrawing your labour?

In this case Unilever will see the disruption and loss of production. It shows them that they wholly rely on their workforce, Current and future to maintain their profitability.

In the case of the Public sector worker, it showed everyone the levels of support provided by the Public sector to the private sector.

I see no difference really.

Why did all the different unions for the different public sector workers all decide to strike on the same day. The did it to cause maximum disruption and try and hold the government to ransom. They could have chosen other ways to show their feeling without the inconvenience to the rest of the general public.

If the union members at some other company similar to Unilever decided now to come out in support of them the strike would be deemed illegal.

Well as many private sector pensions are also suffering maybe the whole private sector should go on strike to protest it. Somehow I do not think they will let that happen.