I think we, Joe Public, have a responsibility to support strike action

[OverSharon]

listening to teachers say that better teacher funding will mean better quality education over time has made me ‘realise’ (shower thought epiphany) that’s true of everything.

if we support strike action, we support people being happier at work, instead of the public sector feeling like they are required to work for us whether they like it or not.

…my opinion: it’s actually all of us that are bearing the brunt of the cost of keeping inflation down. The physical and emotional cost. If we begrudge strike action, we continue to allow the government not to think of other ways to tackle inflation. If they can’t raise wages, lower our cost of living.

What surveys are you basing that on? YouGove says overall that they’re not, and Sky News recently had an article saying only 37% support the unions.

yougov.co.uk/topics/politics/articles-reports/2023/01/31/what-affects-support-strikes

It varies from sector to sector (nurses striking is more popular than train drivers, for example). But I’m curious to see the evidence of your assertion that every survey shows the public supports the strikes.

Our school is advertising for an early years assistant to help the children cope with lunchtime. So the person needs to be there 5 days a week but only for 1 hr a day.

Pay is £1k per year. Yep. £1k.

Fulltime teaching assistants are on £11k - £14k. This is in the south-east in a town where a 3 bed semi-detached house costs £700k - £1.5m.

I support the strike but I am so so sad about what the Conservatives have done to education. Apparently it isn’t an election issue. It should be.

At the beginning of this CofL crisis government said that people should and can negotiate better pay.

Turns out they only meant of you didn't work for a government paid profession.

In that case they meant we'll freeze pay further, agree but not fund and if you actually follow our advice we'll make it illegal to negotiate or to strike if we refuse to negotiate with you.

Agree we should support them. We should be on the streets too!

Ps train drivers nah fuck em. Their pay is good for an easy job that will be automated one day.

I’m not looking for a popular idea though. I’m looking for a better common understanding of the issue. Either there’s an answer and we can find it, or we can understand what the hold up is. Right now I have neither going for me.

So do you think that wages will rise to meet inflation eventually and we are just delaying the inevitable?

Inflation busting pay rises will increase inflation even more.

My comment wasn't connected to yours. It was directed at a PP who suggested snap polls directly influencing the decisions made in our democracy was the right way to govern.

So where do you see that normalising? It can’t keep shooting up for two decades? Or can it? I genuinely don’t know.

Based on what?

Whilst the government ministers keep pushing the "We can't bake in inflation" idea in the media, there is no credible research to suggest that public sector payrises would force inflation to remain higher. It's government propaganda.

No, we don’t have a responsibility to support them, nor can we cope with the further inflation that would result from their demands being met.

Love Joe Public

Fair enough. But I’d still be keen to hear your alternative?

The striking, the backhanders to friends, the IMF predictions, the NHS falling apart - none of this is happening in a vacuum. It's the result of years of Tory government and an increasingly brazen set of politicians who see no consequences for favouring multi-nationals with their policies and their friends with the country's coffers.
I'd vote them out. I'd suspend anyone involved in the process that allowed them to siphon billions to their 'friends'. I'd criminally charge the MPs involved. And I'd charge the MPs involved in the shambles of a Covid response with corporate manslaughter.
If I give billions of pounds of my company's money to a friend - I'd get sacked and investigated for fraud. If my role was supposed to be keeping certain functions running and thriving (eg education, the NHS) and instead I ran them down and let my competitors make inroads - I'd be sacked and investigated. The government should be held to higher standards - not less. They need to be held accountable or else we're heading in an US situation where there are no workers rights, where the NHS is sold off to the highest bidder and health decisions are made by pharma companies, etc.

@WinnieFosterReads anecdotally, about 5 of my friends / family support these strikes. The vast majority do not.

I don't support the strikes either. These people have far better terms and conditions re sick pay and pensions than a lot of people in other jobs. And their pay is reasonable too.

I don't support the strikes

There seems to be a bit of an agenda to get everyone fighting amongst themselves. Strike action is going to intensify - here in Scotland we had a single day, then another union had a single day, then the unions coordinated a day. We now have 16 days of strikes where each school will be closed for two non consecutive day. Next round is 20 days of strikes with two consecutive days.

This is going to escalate in England too, so you all better prepare childcare or lobby your MPs to agree to the pay deal. Or suck it up.

Then why are they all quitting/why is nobody signing up?

I will point this out over and over.
Unless you decide to spend your whole pay rise on a foreign holiday booked with a foreign company, most of the pay rise increase will end up back with the government anyway.

@OverSharon thing is, we're in an economic downturn for many reasons. Not all related to the government. The private sector isn't receiving inflation busting pay rises. Why should the public sector be immune? It's hard to be that sympathetic when unions are asking for double digits max

I can see why you may think that, but this hasn’t been true in over 15 years. Speaking as the daughter of a woman who retired from teaching last year, and is not even retirement age. She would just rather live on nothing than go back to that environment.

@PatientZorro well said

Not all strike action is the same, though. I support the teachers but not the rail workers, because the rail workers have already been made a pretty reasonable offer but have ridiculous expectations so keep turning them down.

But don’t you see they’re asking for that because that’s how bad off we all are… things are so bad with our government, the government can’t even be bothered to pay its own workers properly. If Rishi Sunak was Jeff Bezos, Amazon would be in administration.

I think in this particular scenario, ‘strike action’ as a whole is actually representative of our collective disgust at having to live on a shoestring for as long as we’ve had a Tory government. Or at least that’s how it feels to someone who has never been a Tory supporter.