Mark Serwotka, leader of PCS, the trade union of Britain’s civil servants, is organising a strike of immigration officials at airports and seaports during the Olympics to highlight the the left’s campaign against the UK government’s austerity measures (or “cuts” as the BBC constantly characterises them)
To be fair he did organise a ballot of his members to endorse his actions and just over 50% supported him…..democracy in action, you might say, until you discover that only 20% of the membership actually voted.
Serwotka is one of the recognised leaders of British trade unionism in the 21st century – a movement which is virtually moribund in the private sector but highly organised, widely spread and extremely militant amongst public sector workers. Moreover these union men and women are no longer horny handed toilers in factories, workshops, docks and mines…..they are almost entirely white collar and they toil at filing cabinets, computer screens and photocopiers.
They regularly seed the audience at BBC Question Time, invariably railing against “cuts” and demanding more money, sharing, with Serotka, the quaint idea that you get out of recession by increasing the size of the public sector because this will then generate “growth” and help those private sector workers who have either lost their jobs or had their pensions devalued……a bit like infesting your dog with more fleas in an attempt to improve it’s health.
Faced with this 1960s sub Marxist nonsense the Great British Public appears surprisingly supine – so let me throw some petrol onto the barbecue.
public service unions would eventually create a new and powerful branch of local government presiding over fiscal matters. He warned that these unions would result in the loss of control of local budgets at the city, county and state levels of govern-ment. To support the ongoing commitments to these employees, other services provided by city, county and state governments would be severely curtailed or taxes would have to be raised.
No, that didn’t come from some hardnosed right wing blusterer but from Frank Zeidler that rarity amongst US politicians, an openly declared Socialist who was Mayor of Milwaukee during the 1950s.
When public sector workers go on strike who are they confronting, who are they fighting? Not some cigar smoking fatcat in an oaklined boardroom – they are striking against you and me, comrade, because the money that goes into their bank accounts comes from that perennial milch cow, the taxpayer. So when they say the government should pay them more they really mean that you and I need to dig deeper into our pockets to keep them at their desks shuffling paper.
Wouldn’t it be wonderful if the next time some whining public sector worker began to parrot their bleeding heart sob story from the union cribsheet the person next to them got up and in no uncertain terms told them that as a taxpayer and therefore their employer he expected them to cut the crap and do the job the rest of us were paying her to do….
Well, I can dream, can’t I?
