In other words, the Government is committed to subsidising, bailing out and rewarding the City of London -- at the cost of public sector workers, pensioners and private firms.
Tomorrow, hundreds if not thousands of public service workers in Hillingdon will take industrial action. These are ordinary working men and women who are striking to protect the pension schemes they have paid into. Is it too much to ask for a retirement without poverty after a lifetime of public service?
It is not just refuse workers, teachers, health workers, civil servants, meals on wheels providers who are being fleeced by the cabinet millionaires. It is also their families, many of whom work low paid in the private sector, who depend on these pensions.
That is why this issue has gathered such wide-spread support from trades unions which have never previously taken part in industrial action. .
Yet if you believed the Government’s line you would be forgiven for thinking that tomorrow’s strikers are greedy, self-serving and not living in the real world.
Since the election in 2010 Conservative ministers have been systematically attacking public sector services and directly or by inference public service workers. They are attempting to use public sector pensions to divide public sector and private sector workers. But never does a Government minister ask why private sector employers were cutting employees' pensions during the years of growth and prosperity? The Conservatives take every opportunity to call public servants lazy, wasteful, entrenched, overpaid, privileged, enemies of enterprise - except of course when they threaten to withdraw their hard work. Only then do Tories start adding up the value added by public services.
Education Secretary of State Michael Gove this week described some union leaders as “militants itching for a fight”. In reality it’s the Government that has been itching for the fight, setting up public sector workers as the Aunt Sallys while supporting their friends in the City, the real authors of the financial straits we face.
We should resist this Government’s attack on public services and public sector workers. Everyone except the very rich will be harmed by the Conservative ideological attacks on public services.
When a Conservative MP asked this week “Will the Prime Minister acknowledge that the most disruptive impacts of next week’s strikes will be on mums and dads with children in school?“ she was peddling deceits using sound-bites and scare tactics, rather than addressing the real issues.
The first deception is that public employees somehow owe us their work. They do not. They are not slaves, nor convicted to hard labour. They get paid to do a job. A strike is the withdrawal of that labour at the worker’s own cost.
Second, a strike would be utterly pointless as an expression of extreme dissatisfaction, if it did not have some disruptive impact. The brunt of this impact is borne by the striking workers who do not get paid while on strike. It is untrue to say that giving up 20% of their weekly pay in the current economic climate is a decision taken lightly.
Third, is the implication that public servants are not mums and dads, with the suggestion that no mums and dads support the strike. They do!
Did the same Tory MPs complain about the Government’s decision to give a bank holiday to celebrate the Royal Wedding in May? Did they express concern for all the waiters, shop workers, hospital workers, taxi drivers, police, pub staff and plumbers would look after their children, with schools closed? No they did not!
If you work in the private sector do not be misled into resentment of public sector workers. Ask who is really benefiting from all these attacks on the public sector.
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