The Judge RANTS!
31/01/07
Strike Hard!
I'm on strike today. So are thousands of my colleagues.
We're striking because of this government's decision to throw tens of thousands of our colleagues on the dole (a Labour Chancellor boasts about how many people he's making unemployed - how times change!), close dozens of offices (so making it difficult - if not impossible - for the public to get the attention and service they need), and the threat of sub-inflation-level pay settlements.
Support seems pretty solid, I'm glad to say, although there are exceptions.
Some people seem to have a limited (not to say retarded) view of what constitutes 'democracy'. On Monday, for example, our departmental intranet suddenly sprouted a message from a man called 'Sir' Gus O'Donnell, head honcho of the home Civil Service. In it, he made the following claim:
"Of their [PCS] members, 77% decided either not to vote, or to vote against strike action...This low level of support can not justify taking national industrial action..."
OK, Gussie baby, let's take a look at those numbers in detail, shall we?
Percentage of those PCS members who were balloted voting in favour of industrial action: 22.1%
Compare with the 2005 General Election:
Percentage of electorate voting for Labour: 21.9%
I've briefly amused myself with a little drama whereby dear Gus goes into his next meeting with his political masters and says, "Sorry, but your level of support in a democratic ballot does not justify you calling yourselves 'The Government'."
Well, I can dream, can't I? After all, that doesn't cost me any money.
What really riles me (and others), though, is the behaviour of some of my colleagues. There will be, as there so often is, a number of them who will willingly (perhaps gleefully) be working today. I'm not talking about those who are not members of the union - they don't have much of a choice (except to see sense and join, of course). I'm referring to fellow union members who will totally ignore a democratic decision taken by the membership of the union and...well, there's no other word I can honestly use...scab.
They use various excuses (where they can be bothered with justifying their actions at all), none of which is particularly convincing. If the boot were on the other foot, and the membership had voted against strike action, would those of us who disagreed be permitted not to work today? Of course not, and if we absented ourselves without authorisation we'd face disciplinary action. Yet these people can go in to work today without any comeback (at least from the employer, or from the law in general).
How easily the lessons of history are forgotten! When I did (however ineptly) A-level History, the course covered the period of the Tolpuddle Martyrs, the rise of the labour and trade union movements, and the General Strike of 1926. It seems that some of my colleagues are unaware that people fought, that people were imprisoned, that people died for the rights of workers to defend themselves and their livelihoods against idiot, dangerous or vicious employers. Or at least, if they are aware, they don't much care. Not only are some of them working, but a number of managers have agreed to go to offices where nearly everyone else is on strike to man (irrespective of lack of experience to do so) the public counters, so as to give the illusion that it's 'business as usual'. What makes it worse still is that they will, in most cases, be going to offices where a substantial proportion of the staff were told (via e-mail) only yesterday that they'll be losing their jobs at the end of March.
And yet, I suppose these self-same people will be more than willing to enlist the union's help should they find themselves facing disciplinary action, for instance, and will certainly not refuse on point of principle to accept any pay rises the union wins for its members. Solidarity is a wonderful thing, isn't it? Well, isn't it?
Then again, if ignorance is bliss we live in a truly happy land. Once again the BBC News website's Have Your Say section has covered the subject. Just as on every other occasion in the past when they've done this, the floodgates have opened and the tsunami of prejudice and pig-ignorance has swamped the board. Here, as ever, are the sneering remarks about "workshy jobsworths", "Sack the lot!", "How will anyone tell the difference?", "Welcome to the Real World!" and, of course, the favourite standby of the idiocracy, "Wake up and smell the coffee!" (my dears, that is so-o-o-o-o 1989!). And if I read just one more bloody reference to our "gold-plated pensions", I will not be responsible for my actions.
In fact, the degree of ignorance, stupidity, vituperation and general abuse in that section is of a nature which you wouldn't even see levelled at the BNP or Al Qaeda.
Much of the snarling comes from people complaining about how 'their' taxes are funding our generous salaries and gold-pl.....AAAAAARGHHHHH! THAT'S IT!!!
(Pause while I find a passing management consultant to machete to death.)
Ah, that's a little better....better mop the bloodstains off the floor tiles quickly, though - they'll leave a mark otherwise).
Where was I? Oh, yes. To read them, you'd think that only people working in the private sector actually pay taxes. Listen, slaves, we pay at least as much as you do. More than that, those wonderful pensions are paid for out of our own contributions. So, in effect, we pay for them twice - with our labour and with our taxes and deductions. Moreover, we are the only sector of employment whose pay and conditions are set on the basis of political considerations rather than economic ones.
As for these privateers yammering on about how they work 169 hours a week for a handful of rice and half a roll of bog paper, and about how they'd be sacked if they didn't: well, that's what you get for supporting Thatcher's economic miracle, isn't it? There was a time when you could freely join trade unions or similar professional organisations and have people who would stand beside and behind you when you needed support against shite employers. But you swallowed the propaganda, didn't you? Unions were 'dinosaurs'. Unions were 'disruptive'. Unions made for 'inefficiency' (the lamentable Enoch Powell - and it speaks volumes that the right ever regarded such a man as an intellectual giant in their ranks - referred to them as 'beasts of disorder'), and had to be destroyed. Which, in the private sector at least, they have been to all intents and purposes. An employer can, even in the face of an overwhelming wish on the part of the workforce, totally refuse to recognise trade union membership in the workplace.
The results? People working ever-longer hours for no extra pay, scared shitless that if they so much as breathe a word of discontent they will be kicked out, or their job 'outsourced' to Slovakia or Thailand. The damage to the individual worker from this is bad enough, but the knock-on effects on their families and on society in general are there for all to see. And this is the ideal that they think we should all aspire to? More fool them. I think I'd rather have a better balance to my one and only existence than that.
All this is driven by a régime which started out by using the word 'reform' (in connection with the public services) in its original sense. Then they started to use the word as a euphemism for covering up what they really intended to do: privatise what they could get away with, and devalue the rest. To assist in this aim, they bought - dearly- a brigade of fraudsters known collectively as 'management consultants'. So, inevitably, it wasn't long before government ministers were using such verbal diarrhoea as 'Transformational Government', apparently with a straight face. This percolated down the levels so that now even local managers seem to have no difficulty in using null-speak such as 'baselining', when trying to tell their teams how to do their jobs. The result? Demoralisation and anger at being alternately insulted and patronised by know-nothing con-artists.
OK then, private-sectorites, here's a Modest Proposal for you all to consider:
Sack us all, Go on, you know you want to. Scrap the whole of the public sector (except, of course, the armed forces and the police, who will be needed to keep order on us when we're standing on street corners). Sell it all of to your favourite supermarket or energy company. Let Thames Water take over the Prison Service - after two months, all the prisons would be empty because all the cons would have been allowed to leak out. Hand over the collection of taxes to Newscorp - after all, they know all about taxes there, having dodged so many of them. And when you need a social service assessment on dear old Granny so that you can get her into sheltered accomodation (owned by Securicor, natch), you'll be able to phone a special Hotline, where you will be stuck in a queue for six and a half hours listening to a badly-synthesised South Asian voice saying, "Welcome to the Saga-ga-ga Seniors Assessment Helpline. Your custom is of the highest concern to us. Please hold until an agent becomes available...."
Go on, do i! Take us into that bold, thrusting and dynamic future! See your tax bills tumble...and your phone bills go through the roof (the Road to Mandalay is a long one, even by Bluetooth).
Perhaps then and only then will you see what you've lost. Just like you did with your right to defend your working conditions...
