http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-15610722

Erm, and if they don't?

That said, I'm not even a member of our union because it's run by absolute jokers and funded by the clueless...

The government seems to expect workers to just take any crap dealt out to them without question. That’s n attitude that is use as wrong as being “hellbent” on striking.

No one wants to strike, BTW. You lose pay. At times it seems that it’s the only way that people feel they can be heard. All this negotiating appears to be nothing more than a spot of theatre where nothing actually changes.

Apparently public sector pensions schemes are actually generating a surplus. I don't see how that makes the government's case anything but untenable.

Civil servants work for years on lower pay, restrictions on their private affairs and no employment benefits of any kind*, and then the government tries to rob them of their one actual perk - namely a half-decent pension at the end of it. Public sector pensions may be then private providers, but if you factor in the lower pay, lack of employer-provided medical insurance etc, I expect it all balances out.

*unless you happen to be in the upper echelons, where you'll maybe get a Blackberry after forming a business case for having one.

It's more basic than that - the pension scheme members signed a pension agreement when they joined the scheme. That's a legal contract. You can't change a contract arbitrarily, you need either the agreement of both sides or you have to compensate the side that is losing out due to the change in the contract. The government is proposing to do neither.

Jon

I agree with him.

I think we're striking at work that day. At the moment, I'm non-union, but this will probably change in short order.

Lol at public sector workers earning less than their private sector counterparts. Massive lol. Lol until my [LIFTED] head explodes. Lol, lol, lol [LIFTED] lol.

*raises eyebrow*.

It is undoubtedly true that in some circumstances the gap no longer exists. Certainly not at management levels - the old 'you have to pay the market rate to get the best talent' argument - and also in some highly skilled areas. It's also true that in some more white collar areas private sector pay has been squeezed down to the level that public sector workers were previously stuck with; there are now a lot of people in both sectors on statutory minimum wage for example.

In this particular dispute though, that isn't really relevant. The core of the dispute is that the government have said they are going to change the terms of public sector pensions and negotiations with the 'other party' in the pension contract have failed. You can't expect someone - anyone - to just accept that a benefit of their employment will be cut without some sort of trouble. If the private sector workers have already done that, more fool them. Why should they expect public sector workers to be equally stupid?

Basically, the private sector had higher wages, the public sector better pensions. The workers in the private sector gave away their better wages. That was their mistake. Nobody else's.

The only people 'hell bent' in all of this are the government, who seem hell bent on reducing public spending in all areas without, apparently, looking at all at the ways of bringing in more money at the other end instead. Along with cutting pensions, they seem to have cut corporation tax, which next to nobody was actually complaining about. How come we're getting a lot of noise about the former but next to none about the latter?

Jon

Yes my comment was slightly off topic, but in my defence I'd been in the pub all afternoon.

I disagree - I have worked both Industry and Public sector (where I am now) and think the pay is very similar. Restrictions on "private affairs" are similar and have seen no difference in my benifits

Arse.

If you say so but its the truth

I was talking about DA, I'm under no illusion some Union members have their own political ambitions.

The problem there is with your deployment of the present tense. Generating a surplus now is not much use when the dirty rats have every intention of outliving that surplus and then some. If they all promise to play Russian Roulette on their 80th birthdays, that would fix the problem. Or, if we are willing to entertain extreme scenarios; they all promise to raise a minimum of 3 children each.