Public-sector strike: does it get your support? Please vote in our Facebook poll

[HelenMumsnet]

Morning.

We'd love to know how you feel about Wednesday's public-sector strike action. Does it get your support - or not?

We've put up a little poll on our Facebook page to help us find out. Please do click and vote.

Thanks v much, MNHQ

Just watched PCS Gen sec, Mark Serwotka on Newsnight - I was rather underwhelmed. Are all union bosses this intellectually challenged?

I wouldn't want him negotiating pensions on my behalf. Let alone deciding which issue were worth fighting for.

Swedes - wasn't meant as an attack. Genuine question. IIRC you are Tory - or am I wrong?

jackstarb I have seen Sowotka speak before and found him impressive. Maybe he was having an off day either today or when I saw him.

Argh, missed bit off - meant to put 'or when I saw him he was on a roll'.

I was really pissed off when Gove made that comment about "mothers" having to take time off work to mind their kids. How patronising and sexist.

inhibernation- I am struggling to see your point here. Of course I realize that striking public sector workers may or may not be the parents of special needs children. Do you mean to suggest that we have no right to be upset at our child's distress or the fact that we will suffer financially this month because of this strike through the actions of others. Surely your aim in striking was to cause as much disruption as possible...otherwise what would be the point of striking in the first place. Unfortunately in our case that disruption has meant the distressing our autistic child to the point of sheer panic over the days leading up to this strike when we were told that he would be transported to another school only to be told at the last minute that he couldnt go to school at all. Parents of autistic children..whether striking or not will no doubt recognize how this lack of certainty might affect their child. At this point my husband and I are too exhausted to consider your position or indeed sympathise as we focus on how to get our child back to school tomorrow!

I'm glad I'm not the only one questioning the polls. Off to read this thread properly. Can't sleep!

Swedes - 56% agreed that public sector workers ?have to take their share of the economic pain which means accepting reductions in their pension provision?. Just 28% disagree and 16% say they don?t know.

You see, to me that just about sums up everything that is wrong with these surveys. Look at the framing of that question... as a public sector worker and striker, I might have answered 'yes' to that. I am happy (don't shoot me!) to take some reduction in my pension provision either by working longer or paying in slightly more. However, if the question was "should PS workers have a 50% increase in their contributions for no additional benefit" my answer would be a resounding NO! If the question was 'should PS workers alone take a big financial hit to help pay off the deficit' my answer would be NO! If the question was 'should PS workers "take their share of the economic pain" while top execs continue to give themselves whacking great pay rises,' guess what my answer would be?

I've taken my share of the economic pain with a four year pay freeze, followed by an unnoticeable 1% pay rise. I would be happy to work a couple of years extra, but then I don't work with classes of teenagers or do hard, physical nursing work. Along with everyone else who's been on a pay freeze I've watched food and fuel prices rise while my income stagnates, so why am I now - just because I work in the public sector - expected to throw an extra £30 a month or so (a week's grocery shopping for me) into the government's coffers? I'm not a high earner. I can't afford it. That's the bottom line.

blossom you've kind of made it clear that it's a bit pointless me explaining my position on this but what I will say is that no my intention was not to cause maximum disruption. I work at a community mental health team and we made plans a week ahead to ensure adequate staffing. I kept the date free of appointments and I stayed late on Tuesday night. I even checked my work email remotely so that I could follow up anything today (which is not a work day for me) Striking is the only thing I can do to convey how deeply I feel. That said, I really hope I don't have to do it again.

To be fair, it's not a good day to have an off day as a union leader!

There is no money. People are living longer. This is how it is. People have a right to strike but it will not change the reality of the situation.

Yes, we should support it. Cameron's government has shown that they have done nothing other than to cut salaries and jobs - that's right, squeeze the teachers and nurses yet AGAIN. (By the way, I'm neither a teacher nor a nurse though I work alongside them - and I think we are very lucky to have the committed and talented teachers and nurses that train and qualify in Britain).

How about some news that Cameron, his Cabinet and the Tory party are cutting their OWN salaries and job perks?!

Of course, if a rational solution was proposed for public sector pensions, then of course there won't be a need for a strike. Most physiotherapists and ambulance staff have far better things to do.

I think the cabinet did take a 5% salary cut.

But MPs haven't altered their pension terms

You work for 40 years and pay 5% of your salary each year into a pension.
Your employer pays another 15% into your pension.
So a total of 20% of your salary over the years has been set aside.
You retire for 30 years on a pension of 50% of your FINAL salary
so where does the other 30% of the final year alone come from?
Not "market growth" in the last 15 years

Please could somebody explain to me where they think the extra money will come from?

Kipper you do realise Labour would be doing the same if they were in power as there is no choice but to reform for the future of this country? Do the people against the reforms actually think there is an alternative?

If you listen very carefully to Labour you will the hear the same thing from them they just concentrate on dissing the government to distract from the fact there is not an alternative.

The only alternative is for the government not to tackle the deficit and the world to then view us in the same light as Greece/Italy ie. we are incapable of servicing the level of debt - interest rates will go up on GOVERNMENT borrowing and kaput for the country.

Even Greece and Italy have had to rush and get someone running the country with the commitment to take the abuse heaped on them by the unhappy electorate so that they are viewed globally as someone who can be trusted to bring the country's deficit down. Is this all passing people by or something? There is no alternative. The alternative is very scary.

Also your comment re. Cameron et al taking a paycut.

I'm bit confused that you don't seem to be aware that ministers all took a 5% paycut after coming to power and their salaries are frozen for the full term of government ie. 5 years. They are in the process of reducing the size of the MPs from 650 down to 600. They have had pension reforms. How can all this information have passed people by? Do people have selective hearing?

I wonder if some people grasp the situation. If your household income is exceeded by the amount of INTEREST you are paying on your credit card and you can't afford your mortgage, food etc. what would you be forced to do? You would have to go bankrupt.

The alternative of the deficit not being tackled is too scary to contemplate for the country. Have you seen reports from countries such as Greece where there truly is human misery from the fall out. Not things being tight etc. the whole show falling down around them.

There is no alternative other than to have a government viewed as being untrustworthy to tackle the amount of INTEREST we owe so it doesn't keep rising (like Italy's has recently to unsustainable levels).

MPs haven't had their pensions altered. And you need absolutely no qualifications to be an MP - other than just to somehow get a lot of people to vote you in.

Do you know what the starting salary of an MP is? Far more than a lot of teachers who have already chalked up a decade trying to - and succeeding at - getting our offspring to enjoy learning, read and write, tackle exams and other challenges, play a sport, eat properly at the meal table,...etc...Or the physiotherapist that got the paralysed stroke patient walking again. Or the radiographer who saved a patient's life by advising a (better paid) doctor about getting alternative xrays done to get the necessary information.

Sorry, but a reasonable pay cut isn't 5%. Especially since Cabinet politicians (and the Tory party in the 80s and early 90s) got us into this mess in the first place by selling our assets and allowing the City and banking to get out of control (granted, the banking bit is part of a worldwide problem - but then Asia isn't suffering for it as much as Europe is).

Cameron's government has shown that they have done nothing other than to cut salaries and jobs

Well Kipper, if you arrive to power with the biggest deficit in peacetime, economy in recession and a note from your predecessor's which says that all the money has run out. Just what do you expect the coalition to do? Borrow more money and give everyone a payrise?!?!

As for MP's, they are planning to cut their pensions. Just like they are planning to cut the rest of the public sector pensions. It's not because they want to, it's because they have to. The last three governments have all been canny enough to duck the issue and leave this one holding the turd.

As for qualifications, surely the whole point in a democracy is that you elect the person you want to represent you. Do you really want a system where only MP's who have a degree in politics is allowed to stand?

And as for your last paragraph about the bankers, that just shows that you haven't looked deeper under the covers than the nonsense peddled by the unions, popular media. Alas you are far from the only one who thinks the bankers are to blame for our deficit. They are not. The previous governments are the ones you should be blaming. Not the one trying to sort the mess out.

People in the private sector seem to be viewed as doing a job ie. a teacher at a private school. A nurse in a private hospital. A radiographer in a private hospital. These people are doing a job. Some will be doing better than others and the majority will be doing it very well and giving more than the job description.

Same as in public sector. They're doing jobs. Some people, myself included, will always do more than the job description includes. It's called society and human nature at it's best.

A parent bringing up their child will always do that bit extra. It's in our nature.

The public sector workers wouldn't be doing their job any worse if they went and worked in a private hospital/school they will still do their best. It's very confusing all this talk that borders on sanctifying public workers and demonising others.

People in the public sector are not doing something different than anyone else that had CHOSEN to do that type of job would be doing. They are doing the very best they can and making a different in their chosen career/job. We all do the best job we can do in any situation and any job we are doing I believe. I see it everywhere I go and in all walks of life.

Of course bankers are not to blame. Labour spent spent spent spent and now their own supporters are paying the price and silly people took out loans they could not afford because they seemed to think they could live on the never never forever. Now they are paying the price. You reap what you sow.

The current crisis transcends party political lines. As stated upthread, there is very minimal true wealth creation in this country.

The City of London is what successive governments have relied on to generate income to sustain the economy, yet it represents a reflexive rather than an absolute reality. Markets rise and crash depending on complicated patterns of optimism and pessimism about the future. It's the Emperor's new clothes. If everyone believes in it, it works. As soon as they don't, it comes crashing down.

We do not make enough money to cover what we spend at all levels and in all sectors. It's not just the poor people who took out HP contracts they should never have been given, there are people who have very healthy salaries who do not budget for health or education costs and who expect the government to ensure a well run infrastructural system to support their businesses while paying a tiny fraction of the costs and cribbing about them.

Across our society, people want top-class public services but are not prepared to pay for them. The people who pay the most tax are, ironically, the least invested in public services as they take the least from them. There is shock and horror when people suggest paying paltry amounts for NHS visits e.g. a £5 for a GP or Physio visit, when actually the cost to the Exchequer is in the region of £70 minimum for these appointments. Very few people have health insurance or pay into their education because it is provided for free, and yet improvements in these areas are almost never seen to be directly linked to governmental spending while issues and concerns relate to governmental inefficiency.

Pensions are the tip of the iceberg.

What frustrates/angers me is that the measures imo are too extreme. Meanwhile the government is spending masses on childcare for 2 Yr olds. But the hours they are funding aren't sufficient to enable parents to go out to work. We've got debt but why is the government trying to balance the books in their term of government when it took much more than 5 years to get into this mess?

No support from me, sympathy but no support.

I didn't see public sectors coming out or supporting horrified threads for my/our benefit when I or hundreds and thousands like me were made redundant over recent years and weren't able to afford our pensions, pensions that were changed dramatically over the times that we were paying in to them. Apparently because we are in the private sector we deserve it.

LaCiccolina, did you ask the public sector to come out and support you, though? If any private sector workers were picketing their place of employment I would never cross their picket line because I would support their right to stand up for their jobs, even if it were obvious it was a losing battle (think Chorus).