Public Sector strikes

If you are of a socialist persuasion, please look away now.  This will likely seem hurtful.

In fact if you are of a Conservative ministerial persuasion, also look away, as you probably won't like this, either!

I have posted here before about public sector strikes  http://bit.ly/1jj5yCz and here about the tube strikes http://bit.ly/1oMwA4o but essentially the problem comes down to two things.

Firstly, 'pilgrims'.  I have written before, here http://bit.ly/XHPGin  and here http://bit.ly/1qQ7e7y about these.  For those that don't know, a 'pilgrim' is a union official that essentially works full time on union business while employed (and paid)  by a public sector organisation.  This costs the taxpayer, twice.  First to pay for the union organiser and second to pay someone else to do the job that he/she was actually hired to do!  The cost to the taxpayer is estimated to run into the 100's of £millions level.  That is money that could be used to reduce taxes for working people - people like those that struggled to get to work yesterday, because of the public sector strikes.  Money that could repair potholes, or provide adequate care for the UK's elderly - but please, after Mid Staffs, not in the caring or their version of the word, NHS - or money that could reduce the debt burden that the country has.

Just as importantly, if action is taken on pilgrims, then the public sector workplace might actually become a place of work!  Somewhere where the class warriors of the union movement have to actually do some work rather than sit around agitating for change and salary increases.

So, Angus Maude, George Osborne and David Cameron - Action Please!  This shouldn't require an act of parliament - there was none passed to get these parasites into place.  What is needed is clear guidelines sent to all ministers and Permanent Secretaries that this practise must cease forthwith and, no later than August 31, all such posts to have been abolished.

Yes the unions will howl.  So will their paid lobbyists - Labour MPs - but here's something for Angus, George and David to consider, my money is on you never being able to get their votes, anyway!  So be like Nike.  Just do it!

Re-reading the above, I realise I have just wasted 15 minutes of my life!  Maybe I have the makings of a pilgrim or union official myself!  Why wasted?  Because Conservative politicians simply won't tackle this issue.  Just like they won't tackle the high salaries paid in the public sector nor the cosseted pension schemes that public sector workers enjoy.   

Face it, we have Conservative politicians - certainly the leadership - that do not follow Conservative policies or pay only the flimsiest of lip-service to same.  In the USA, people have a term for those Republicans that act in a similar fashion.  They call them RINOs - Republicans in Name Only.  What can we call such British Conservatives?  Polite answers only, please!

Opinion polls regularly show that the people of Britain 'get it'!  They understand that, as a country, we have been living beyond our means, for years.  They know that change will be painful.  They know too, that taxing the 'rich', ever higher amounts won't be sufficient, in the long run.  The cause of the government debt problem isn't on the revenue side.  It is on the spending side.  Deep cuts need to be made in welfare, health and local government spending.  Let me repeat that - deep cuts.  And these cuts MUST be on personnel levels.  These cuts need to be made to the bureaucracy not to the front line - so in health, tear out layers (plural) of management not nurses or doctors, -  in education, remove all of those local officials, yes all, provide direct funding to the school governing body at an agreed figure - let's call it £5,000 per pupil per year and then let the headmasters/mistresses and the school governors decide how to utilise those funds - in local government abolish planning departments, abolish community outreach departments in fact abolish and abolish.  Just leave local government with a few basic tasks - repairing local roads, administering social housing (until this can all be sold-off), collecting household waste and, no that's it.  Just those basic tasks.  These wouldn't require a bloated and over-paid bureaucracy.

This isn't about bashing the unions.  Seeing them with a significant reduction in membership (they mostly represent public sector employee) would be a happy by-product.  Seeing them having to use their own funds to pay for these pilgrims is a scandal that must be righted, immediately.

This though, is about having the courage to do what Britain so desperately needs - a strong government doing what is right for today's and tomorrow's Britons.  Not sure that the Conservatives have the stomach for it so it will probably need to wait for the inevitable financial crunch to happen.  Then we can blame outside forces and the 'gnomes of Zurich' and the Euro and all the rest - anyone but our spineless politicians and the rest of the elite, not forgetting of course, the biggest culprits - ourselves for letting this happen!.


 

Pilgrims - Action at last

More than two years into a so called austerity programme, the Conservative-led coalition is finally getting around to looking at the scandal of 'pilgrims'.

These are union officials, almost always full-time, employed within and paid by the public sector.  However, they work full-time on union activities.  So the already over-burdened tax-payer has to then fund an additional worker to cover for the work that isn't being done by the 'pilgrim' and for which the 'pilgrim' is also being paid by the tax-payer.

Think about this for a moment.

These union leaders pay lip service to probity and the need for transparency and berate the business world for a perceived 'too-cosy relationship with the government' and 'having their hand in the public purse'.  All the while, they are having their officials paid for, not by their members but by the general taxpayer.

Consider this further, we, taxpayers are paying people to sit in offices that we provide so that they can scheme and plot ways to disrupt the services that we pay them, and their colleagues, to provide.

Read that again and see if there is any kind of rational sense in that.

So - the 'action'?

Francis Maude has launched a 'consultation exercise' to address the estimated £36 million cost of this.

Other estimates, by the Sunday Telegraph, put the amount in excess of £100 million when all forms of such 'pilgrims' activity were considered - that is, in all forms of the public sector, NHS, Education, local government, etc.

Frankly, what is to consult about.  If any consultation was needed it should be with the taxpayer.  Something along the lines of, should we continue to close libraries and hospitals and lay-off front-line public servants or should we take the money from that which we waste on 'pilgrims' and use it to pay for those services or (very radical) should we use this to start to reduce the burden of taxation on you the taxpayer!

I know what I want!

Mr Maude - don't consult, LEAD, less jaw-jaw and more action today.  Do you really think that the likes of the Marxist  Mark Serwotka, from the Civili Servants union is EVER going to be persuaded?  Do you?  Take the Nike approach - Just Do It!

Labour, Cuts and the Unions

Labour is apparently in conflict with its trade union backers because it has now 'apparently' come out in support of public expenditure cuts and 'endorses' public sector pay restraint and goes further and suggests that public sector workers might take pay cuts to prevent job losses.

Labour now 'apparently' supports public expenditure cuts.  However, in certain of its confused and conflicting statements it still maintains that the cuts being implemented, against Labour's opposition, by the Coalition, are too deep and too fast.  That sounds like trying to be both pro and anti cuts.

Interviewed on the biased BBC, by Nick Robinson, Ed Miliband was asked

QUESTION: "Some people think this is curious because it gives you an excuse to say: 'Well we oppose this cut', only to say a few weeks later, 'actually we back it, we've got to live with it'."
ANSWER: "No, it's not about backing the cuts that are being made. We don't want these cuts to be being made. It's not in the interests, for example, of safety on our streets to be having the speed of cuts we're seeing in policing. Or in the interests of the economy to have the overall pace of cuts - that's why we say too far and too fast.

Make your own mind up as to whether Labour back or oppose the cuts and then let Ed know what he should say!


Labour 'endorse' pay restraint.  Well maybe the leader and Shadow Chancellor now do

Ed Miliband recently said:

It's a hard choice, but when you are faced with the choice between protecting jobs or saying the money should go into pay rises I think it's right to protect jobs," he said.

"In the end there's no easy choices in government... I think is absolutely right that we say we've got to prioritise employment."

Several Labour MPs have reportedly criticised the move, among them Austin Mitchell, who supposedly called it 'barmy' and accused Mr Miliband of "weakness".

Mr Miliband said Mr Mitchell was "wrong", adding: "We are absolutely determined that Labour shows we would be fiscally credible in government."

I can't help think that this is a smokescreen and the following backs up my thoughts.

Labour suggests that public sector workers might take pay cuts to save jobs.

I believe this is a cynical attempt to encourage the public sector to hunker down and weather out the economic storm that we are facing.  This is in the mistaken belief that doing so will be temporary and will be lifted when (if,?) Labour returns to power.  The Labour leadership (and their union counterparts) know full well that the country simply cannot afford and will not be able to afford the public sector to ever get anywhere near as big as it was under Labour. 

I am sorry to all those 'diversity officers' out there, and  all the other low-value adding but oh so right on and nice to have positions which get in the way of people living their lives and taking responsibility for their own lives, but you need to find a new career - the country cannot afford to employ your services and pay from the public purse.   


Call me cynical but I can't help but feel that the bluster from the unions is manufactured.  Leaked letters?  Public letters to The Guardian.  I smell an orchestrated campaign.  Goes something like this:

• Labour needs to build economic credibility with the Public.
• Labour to public back cuts because Public endorse and see necessity for cuts.
• Labour to endorse pay restraint in public sector because the Public think that the public sector should share the pain and have been cossetted by Labour.
• Labour endorse 'negotiated' deals that see public sector pay cuts to 'protect' jobs.
• Unions to express outrage, publicly, with letters to the press and privately, with letters that get leaked.
• Cue the two Eds standing firm and saying we have to be responsible and economically credible and then saying things which undermine their earlier stance (the latter is unintended but neither Ed really want to upset their union backers)

London Tube strike and the Labour Party

Today, when many capital city retailers were hoping to benefit from additional footfall and business, the great city of London is held to ransom by an over-privileged and exceedingly small group of union members.  Families and friends wanting to visit each other are unable to do so.  Why?

The around 3,400 London Tube drivers include 2,200 who are members of the Labour Party supporting union called ASLEF.  This union was obliged, by legislation passed under Conservative governments to ballot its members regarding industrial action.

Of these 2,200 cosseted individuals (annual salary fast heading towards £52-55,000 a year or twice national average salary) less than 1,000 members could be bothered to vote (42% to be exact) and these die-hards then voted overwhelmingly 92% in favour of strike action.

Over what are they striking?  This is a long running dispute because the union demand no compulsion about working on December 26 - only volunteers - and they demand extra pay (quadruple) for those that do volunteer to work - that is instead of the time off in lieu and extra pay that they already receive.

Londoners, don't expect to hear condemnation of this strike from the Labour party.  Now that so very much of its funding comes from the Unions, it cannot afford to upset its paymasters and remember that it was Union votes which 'won it' for Miliband.

Also Londoners should not expect any condemnation from Glenda Jackson, Labour MP for Hampstead and Kilburn or Jeremy Corbyn Labour MP for Islington North both, per the ASLEF website receive support from the union.  Jeremy, according to his website is far too busy asking questions about Libya and Columbia and Iran to be interested in anything so mundane as that which would actually directly affect his constituents!

I think that it is time for the Government, led by the Conservatives to step in and spend a few moments away from the international economic crisis (which after all, doesn't seem to be affecting the Tube drivers economy) and swiftly bring in legislation to the effect that for any strike action to be legal, a majority of all members eligible to vote, must be passed.  So, greater than 50% of the membership not just those who bother to vote.  Consider the low turnout that was seen for the public sector strikes that occurred at the end of November 2011 - poorly supported, all around!

Cameron and Co.  - What do you think you might risk by such legislation?  To paraphrase Nike - Just Do It!