This is the first time in my life I can make such a statement as I am fundamentally opposed to strike action in the public sector.
My opposition of strike action started when I was a small child. My Grandmother had been a nurse in her professional life, she was also a Welsh Conservative from a mining community and had strong views on strike action and the personal and professional compromise she had to equate. Being in a vocational profession, which many in the public sector are, she recognised the impact on her patients that she had faced during times of industrial action and could not justify in any terms patients who lost dignity due to lack of nursing care. This had a huge impact on me and I was fully signed up to the notion that private sector industrial action was wrong from an early age.
My own parents followed labour when I was younger but could rarely explain to me the whys and wherefores of politics and I became frustrated by the negative undertone and lack of personal and financial accountability I saw in the party and policies.
In the late 1990's I worked for a short time for a company in the private sector where I saw industrial action costing hundreds of thousands, even millions of pounds. At this time I saw shop stewards who at times seemed ill informed and ill-educated militantly leading people into strike action which cost money and cost jobs. My mind was made up, there must be a better way?
2011 here and now and the biggest teachers union and other public sector workers are about to go on strike. I'm not striking myself, I don't belong to those groups but I do have a huge amount of sympathy for the majority of those who will be out on strike and these are the reasons why.
- Many public sector workers are equally or better qualified than many of their contempories in the private sector yet are paid less in salaries during their working years and receive typically less in reciprocal benefits such as private health insurance, car schemes etc
- The changes are too widespread, too big and too quick to be implemented
- The summer strike will not majorly affect the education of children preparing for life changing examinations or transitional moves
- There has been little or no compromise from the government alongside a host of other educational changes that are ill thought out, rushed and having an impact across the board such as the removing the BSF capital investment programme, academy policy, teacher training changes and changes to the inspection framework
- Attacking public sector pensions on the basis that they are better than the private sector does not mean that pension provision across the board becomes acceptable but rather the public and government are making a statement that dignity, care and well being in old age is not important. This is also shown in the shambolic care and state benefits system for older people in society that the government is yet to address.
- The government know this for them is a battle for the taxpayers support and not about the moral high ground or the financial deficit. The PR/spam machine is in full swing!
- The young in the profession will soon be saddled with huge tuition fee loans, with the cost of pensions set to rise by so much and diminished benefits, how many NQT's will be able to make increased pension contributions or see it as important. In the long tern this leaves the tax payer with a much higher bill as it will need to provide state care and provision.
- I am a parent and value how hard teachers work with my own child, pension contributions rising by up to 50%, the retirement age jumping, (let's face it how many private sector workers will be faced with 30 4 yr olds in a reception class unable to read and write or 30 15 yr old teenagers who can't be bothered to learn when they themselves are 68?) Is this what is best for our children whether or not demographics tell us we are living longer?
