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"NHS at breaking point, and broken"

RoA said:
That would be good, ignoring the 91000 projected job losses in Civil Service, many at the DWP and only a 2% pay rise.

Of course, no one supports CS when Nurses are the talking point.
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Have the CS unions balloted for strike action?

It seems that the answer was yes, but there was insufficient turnout at 86 of 124 different employers. Lack of support seems to be coming from the CS itself?

https://www.civilserviceworld.com/i...lot-which-departments-voted-industrial-action
 
Seanm said:
That's not the same as lack of support: lack of coverage is between the PCS and the media, really, there's no need for anyone to resent nurses or the public for it. UCU's in a similar position. Not sure how significant public support is anyway: the main thing is how much leverage the union has. More unions in more sectors taking more action increases everyone's leverage.
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Agree, however, it looks like Union Wing's may be clipped severely by this government soon.
 
wulbert said:
When we are repeatedly told that the UK can't afford to pay nurses enough to keep them out of food banks, I am reminded that we could afford to let Dido Harding spaff £37Bn on a useless Test & Trace service.

£37Bn is a lot of money. To put the amount in perspective, Denmark & Germany are spending $7.5Bn on a 20km inter-country, undersea tunnel with two motorways and two railways inside it. We paid five times that amount for an app and some badly trained call centre staff. And guess what? The tunnel won't cost Danish tax payers a penny. Their state-owned construction co. will do a lot of the work ( along with private co.s) and the project is funded by a government loan that will be paid back from project revenue.

Denmark has a population 2/3rds the size of London's, is mostly fields and is the world's 60th largest economy versus the UK's 5th largest. It's amazing what you can do when you decide not to support a parasitic overclass of useless drones. Our NHS is on it's knees because our government wants it that way. It's a choice.
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It may be different now, but when I lived in Denmark, it was a good example of socialism actually working. But it was a mentality too. At the time, the top rate of tax I paid was 68%, and on average, 50% of my salary went to the state, as well as paying stupid levels of car tax.
But a big difference was that if I tried to avoid/evade my taxes (maybe it’s an AngloSaxon thing), even my neighbour would dob me in. In this country, they would probably applaud.
 
Seanm said:
That's not the same as lack of support: lack of coverage is between the PCS and the media, really, there's no need for anyone to resent nurses or the public for it. UCU's in a similar position. Not sure how significant public support is anyway: the main thing is how much leverage the union has. More unions in more sectors taking more action increases everyone's leverage.
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I'm not resenting anyone. :)

I find it hard to believe a union as media savvy as PCS haven't tried to get coverage. It's just a bunch of 'desk polishers' are less media-friendly. Possibly because someone not getting their driving licence issues on time is less likely to get people animated than an ambulance not turning up in an hour.
 
Seeker_UK said:
They have and are: https://www.pcs.org.uk/campaigns/pc...nal-industrial-action-ballot-results-2022/who

That you aren't aware shows how much media coverage they get compared to paramedics, nurses, border force etc.
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I was responding to the post that seemed to bemoan the lack of support for the CS as a whole, and the link I posted above shows that members in 86 of the 126 balloted employers did not turn out in sufficient numbers to be obtain a legal mandate. As such you have to look at the lack of support form CS workers themselves before before looking at anyone else?

Obviously those CS’s who have gone on strike deserve as much support as anyone else, but the CS might get wider support if CS workers as a whole showed some solidarity
 
Seeker_UK said:
I'm not resenting anyone. :)

I find it hard to believe a union as media savvy as PCS haven't tried to get coverage. It's just a bunch of 'desk polishers' are less media-friendly. Possibly because someone not getting their driving licence issues on time is less likely to get people animated than an ambulance not turning up in an hour.
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No not you personally but there have been a few posts that suggest it. And again I think you can’t separate the public response from media coverage. The news media have long since dispensed with industrial correspondents and as a class journalists have no understanding of or interest in the world of work or class politics - they simply don’t have a clue. So up to a point it doesn’t really matter how media savvy a given union is, a dispute isn’t going to get much publicity unless journalists can address it through the frames they have available to them - generally, human interest, threat to the nation, Fight! Fight! And if it does get coverage it’s guaranteed to be absolutely moronic.
 
ks.234 said:
I was responding to the post that seemed to bemoan the lack of support for the CS as a whole, and the link I posted above shows that members in 86 of the 126 balloted employers did not turn out in sufficient numbers to be obtain a legal mandate. As such you have to look at the lack of support form CS workers themselves before before looking at anyone else?

Obviously those CS’s who have gone on strike deserve as much support as anyone else, but the CS might get wider support if CS workers as a whole showed some solidarity
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It was 86 departments didn't make the threshold and 126 did (ie 212 departments in total). 60% of departments hitting the threshold seems a good number.

Again, that it's only been in CS World and not made headlines more widely supports the assertion than CS do not get the support (for whatever reason) than other parts of the public sector.
 
Seeker_UK said:
It was 86 departments didn't make the threshold and 126 did (ie 212 departments in total). 60% of departments hitting the threshold seems a good number.

Again, that it's only been in CS World and not made headlines more widely supports the assertion than CS do not get the support (for whatever reason) than other parts of the public sector.
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I don’t know, I do think awareness is different from support. To say that CS action is not supported by the public suggests a conscious withholding of support. Impossible if there’s no awareness.
 
Seanm said:
I don’t know, I do think awareness is different from support. To say that CS action is not supported by the public suggests a conscious withholding of support. Impossible if there’s no awareness.
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I would say it's not just a lack of awareness but, as hinted by Paul's post above, even if awareness was there, the response would be a resounding "meh".
 
Seeker_UK said:
It was 86 departments didn't make the threshold and 126 did (ie 212 departments in total). 60% of departments hitting the threshold seems a good number.

Again, that it's only been in CS World and not made headlines more widely supports the assertion than CS do not get the support (for whatever reason) than other parts of the public sector.
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The media are interested in strikes that inconvenience many people and the Government. So, NHS, Post Office, Railways and general infrastructure are national news.

PCS strikes at benefit offices, for example, are local news. Having worked (and been on strike) in the CS I would not expect more.
 
paulfromcamden said:
Not to denigrate anyone's chosen career but it's not surprising that nurses and ambulance workers striking is bigger news than, say, town planning officers.
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Sure but as an example, 10'000's of DWP officers do and have done front line jobs during the pandemic helping folks in financial need in JobCentre's throughout the country. Less important? Maybe but just as essential as Supermarket workers etc etc.
 
Nero said:
It may be different now, but when I lived in Denmark, it was a good example of socialism actually working. But it was a mentality too. At the time, the top rate of tax I paid was 68%, and on average, 50% of my salary went to the state, as well as paying stupid levels of car tax.
But a big difference was that if I tried to avoid/evade my taxes (maybe it’s an AngloSaxon thing), even my neighbour would dob me in. In this country, they would probably applaud.
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Second happiest country in the world too (Finland is No.1) in spite of the high tax. Go figure. We are always told that high taxation is a very bad thing.
 
Yes I loved it when we were there. Clean streets, no potholes, great health service, cheap public transport that somehow managed to coordinate buses and trains (e.g. if a train was late, the bus would wait), clean air, great sailing etc.

But oddly, I wouldn’t want to start a business there. Much easier in Blighty.
 
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