Civil servants to vote on strike
This story gives me no pleasure – although I have felt it coming.
It explains “The Government was on a collision course with public sector workers today as the prospect of a national strike in protest at cuts in jobs, services and pensions came a step closer. Delegates at the annual conference of the Public and Commercial Services union (PCS) agreed to a ballot of more than 250,000 civil servants for industrial action.
“Voting will start next week and the result will be known by mid-June, raising the threat of co-ordinated strikes with other workers, including teachers, on June 30.”
I honestly don’t know what the answer is but I am concerned that rural England faces the rough end of the stick.
The rough end of the stick, in terms of both service reductions through the strike (distance from services being an aggravating factor in terms of those affected by a withdrawal of labour) and ultimately job losses in rural areas in the public sector being tough to replace.
It’s the pensions issue which worries me most for the future, in that I cant see how, with the double whammy of recession and demographic challenge, the nation can afford to continue funding public sector pensions into the longer term.
Not that, as a local government pension scheme holder, I feel happy about any of this – like many reading this it is more a case of feeling trapped. We live in very difficult and unprecedented times.