The government is, apparently, planning to legislate for new performance standards that public sector workers must meet before they are allowed to strike. The idea makes no sense, unless the government sets standards for itself that it must meet. A thread….
This planned new legislation is clearly part of the government’s planned PR campaign against public sector workers trying to maintain their pay in the face of a cost of living crisis has been in part created by the government’s own planned increases in tax and interest rates.
The government’s aim is to say that strikers are failing the public, and the government must crack down on the right to strike as a result. There are, however, big problems with this argument.
First, whilst the strikes are, of course, about pay they are about much more than this. They are in most cases also about working conditions. These have been massively undermined by government cuts.
They are also about preserving the public services. Right across the board people are leaving the public services because they simply cannot afford to stay when pay is so low, overwork is so high because others have already left, and the private sector pays more.
They are also a protest. No paramedic has ever gone to work to sit for many hours in an ambulance with a sick patient they know should actually be in the hospital they are outside, knowing that the person they are caring for is being harmed by the lack of resources to treat them.