Todays' strike - Food for thought

[singleseeder]

One of the problems faced by unions is that they are now seen as political animals (No offence to animals) mainly because of their links with the labour party. Does anyone else remember beer & sandwichs.

Colin

I don't think that Derek Simpson was used to beer & sandwiches........

Union boss Derek Simpson received �500,000 golden goodbye - Telegraph

[bearded bloke]

I don't think that Derek Simpson was used to beer & sandwiches........

Best send him over to the Gardeners Rest then,we got real ale

[Alison]

'We run your hospitals' - yes huge waits, very dirty floors, no drinks or dignity for the infirm or elderly.

Really? That's across the board is it? Funny that, my elderly MIL waited about a month for an operation earlier this year, was looked after wonderfully in a very old but perfectly clean hospital. She had wonderful service by hardworking and dedicated professionals. Yes the NHS (like most organisations) isn't perfect but is in no way as it is sometimes painted - thankfully

[Donny]

My wife is a nurse, has been for 28 years. Got deployed for the second time recently and she is saddened by the fact that she actually cares about her clients. She is angry at the way clients get treated disgustingly by the nhs and not her or her work coleagues.

She now wishes to leave the profession that she adored because of the red tape and rise in failiure to meet targets and the rise of the fines for this.

NHS hospitals are not long before privatisation will take over.

Donny

[beefy]

I really think this one has got at some of you.

1 - If you pay for something and you don't get it, why not expect a refund?

2 - The Gov't / Public service employers have trousered �200Million - where is it going?

I take it you still pay your bank charges and your morgage even though it was the bankers that got us into this mess .Have you asked them for a refund ? If you have let us know how you get on with that .
Food for thought ............

[Donny]

What gets me is on the local news reports, the news reporter chatting to a parliment person called him MR , why, did the parliment person call the news reporter Sir, no.

We pay for these folk to run the country in our best interests, lmao. We therefore are their bosses, they can address us as Sir or Madam.....

[jackie j]

I praise our nurses, our fieman, our teachers, and especially our armed forces and any one else that cares for the community, most on low wages compared to the big bosses who take, take, take. Get rid of some at the top who dont seem to do very much, but earn huge amounts and bonuses that most of us can only dream about and this country will save a fortune, then pay the ones at the bottom what they are worth with the money.
I have never been on stike as the industry I work in hasnt really done this when I have been in employment, but I support them whole heartily. My daughters school was on strike yesterday but some teachers still went in to catch up on marking etc and some pupils went into catch up on homework, my daughter included who got far more done because the disruptive ones stayed away.

[Oli]

I take it you still pay your bank charges and your morgage even though it was the bankers that got us into this mess .Have you asked them for a refund ? If you have let us know how you get on with that .
Food for thought ............

The government got us into this mess by allowing the bankers to do as they pleased, the constant blame on the bankers is ridiculous - they are working for businesses, most of which operated well within the laws of the country and the aim of business is to make money. Certainly they should not have been allowed to conduct a lot of their business in the way they did but that's down to poor regulation

[bearded bloke]

The singularly most confusing issue on this whole subject ....................

Why go on strike when there are ongoing negotiations taking place between all "interested" parties ?

[Mikey]

Why don't you go and ask some teachers how many hours they work that are unpaid? I.e., on their own time? And then work out how much it would cost to pay them for those unpaid hours over the course of a year?

Sorry Sarz, as it goes teachers do very well, they get paid pro rata so when basic salary for NQT is in the region of �18k for 9 months work I think they do alright. On top of that they are only contract to 6 hours a day, so to expect them to undertake a further 2 hours a day in their own time would not seem unreasonable to most.

Then consider that their pay increases quite quickly over the next 5-10 years until they reach a peak at around �30k unless they take on extra responsibility like being a year head, or head of faculty, or department head etc etc, then there can be some extra pay while they get reduce teaching hours in order to carry that extra work out.

Now I can come at this with some experience as my OH is a second in department and can carry out her duty on reduced hours. Come on teachers are not pushed, and as it goes the private sector generally work far more unpaid hours than our public sector counterparts.

I praise our nurses, our fieman, our teachers, and especially our armed forces and any one else that cares for the community, most on low wages compared to the big bosses who take, take, take. Get rid of some at the top who dont seem to do very much, but earn huge amounts and bonuses that most of us can only dream about and this country will save a fortune, then pay the ones at the bottom what they are worth with the money.

That was once true but these days is an urban myth, public sector workers as a rule get better salaries than their private sector counterparts.
Those at the top though well thats gone ridiculous, they pretty much set their own salaries, and the public sector has assisted in driving their salaries up. As they assume to get the best they have to pay the same as the private sector, but its a lot easier to get rid of someone at the top of the private sector when the annual accounts reports come out. Its a lot harder to do so with public officials.

[Two_Sheds]

I can come at this with some experience as my OH ... can carry out her duty on reduced hours. Come on teachers are not pushed

This comment is for you Mikey:
Your sweeping comment on the whole teaching profession is based simply on one teacher's experience?

This one isn't directed at you Mikey:

Sorry, but I hear the loudest shouts (in person and on talk radio) against public sector "profligacy" and scrounging dolies coming from small business owners ~ people who built up their own business, nobody helped them, they work all hours, blah blah.

Every small business person I know (and I know a lot) has done well for themselves because they avoid paying all their tax. Cash jobs, not on the books. Tax avoidance. It's possibly illegal and disqualifies them, imo, from condemning other people. Glass houses and all that.

[SarzWix]

I'm pretty sure that 8am to 4pm is more than 6 hours. I'm also pretty sure that the car-park still being 2/3rds full at 6 o'clock is another couple of hours on top of that.

My mum was a HLTA before she died. She used to spend hours preparing stuff for work the next day. She also spent hours she wasn't contracted for, doing extra support work with special needs kids. She didn't get paid for those hours because the school couldn't afford it, but the work needed doing.

Seriously, if you all think that public sector workers are useless and overpaid, lets go back to the days when sewage ran the streets, only the wealthy were educated, and the 'wise' woman at the bottom of the street 'medicated' people who couldn't afford a doctor.

[Mikey]

Actually TS, when you are married to a teacher you tend to know more than 1 teacher.

I'm not saying they don't work hard but the conditions of employment I mentioned are those of all the teaching profession not just the one I happen to be married to. I didn't even get onto the subject of sick pay, where some go off for 6 months but happen to recover just around the time the full pay ends.

[Mikey]

You can blame the unions for the extra work the teaching assistants get to do sarz, it was due to them trying to get more hours for teachers to undertake preparation that the rules changed on what teaching assistants were permitted to do. These days they are called upon to actually teach, even though predominately they have no qualification to do so.

Oh, and they are not actually contracted from 8 until 4 Sarz, and if your school is still 2/3rd full after the gates on most schools have been locked I'd be surprised.

[Alison]

I'm not saying they don't work hard but the conditions of employment I mentioned are those of all the teaching profession not just the one I happen to be married to. I didn't even get onto the subject of sick pay, where some go off for 6 months but happen to recover just around the time the full pay ends.

You will find examples of people that take the you know what in most areas of the workplace and it's never acceptable. However you can't generalise that because one person does it all their peers should be tarred with the same brush, totally unfair.