The unions up the ante

Chris lancashire

It will also be extremely draining on the finances of the unions involved. And the public mood is against them. Strikes will be neither long-lived nor effective.

HJ

Of course the unions (and the NHS is totally dominated by union members) fully intend to ensure that any economies in the NHS will be at the expense of services, so that the government will get the blame.

It is not in their interests to improve their own efficiency and maintain services.

davidk

Well, the day employers stop running to the courts whenever a TU ballots its members successfully for strike action is the day the Speccie can get on its high horse on this issue.

2trueblue

Reality will have a bearing on their actions, so they better join the reality that all of us live with. Since 2007 peoples salaries in the private sector have on average gone down and expectations of them going up anytime soon are still not even on the horizon. Liebore have left a mess behind them, so whats new?

Steve Tierney

What a crazy world we have entered where the budget decisions of the elected government can be challenged in court. It appears we are now governed by lawyers and judges rather than politicians. That's really not democracy at all.

Victor Southern

Are these continual reference to the Times motivated by some wish to get us all to move behind the pay wall?

We are all perfectly aware that the unions will try to give the coalition a hard time. What excuse they use for that is not even germane - their DNA compels to fight with a Conservative administration.

Richard of York

Oh Chris my sit tight and let everyone else sort it out friend.
The Unions do not need to worry about money there will be direct action organised by the Unions that costs them nothing.
The people will revolt of their own choosing.
I fully expect there will be a gneral strike once the full force of these cuts hit home and that will hurt even safe little back room businesses like yours.
The future is not looking good. If there is a double dip this govt won't last long.
Should the bankers make the mistake of paying large bonuses again the waste products will hit the ventilation systems and protests similar to the Greek action will be seen in own towns and cities.
I shall watch with keen interest from my ipod in Florida.
Enjoy!

Ronnie

'The front cover of The Times (£).'

Really Pete, how much is he paying you?

David Booth

So let me see now the Government feels the NHS is overmanned so the Unions counter this with a threat to withdraw their people from working in the NHS.
What will then happen is that the NHS will continue functioning with a reduced work-force thus proving the Governments point.
The Unions appear to be charging down the left wing with the intention of scoring an own goal.

TomTom

When is NHS Accounting going to deliver MEDICAL and NON-MEDICAL Budget Blocks ?

It is simply that the financial structures of the NHS are primitive, the so-called Finance Directors low-grade, the IT systems backward, and the ability to flex budgets dominated by union issues and tax credit wage subsidies which determine working practices

Chuck Unsworth

If the Unions go on strike and patient deaths ensue it'll be very interesting to see how Union bosses take to being sued. Duty of Care is quite broad-ranging.

charles hercock

The point surely is that Lansley said the frontline would not be cut and it is being

Lansley's lies

SMason

There's such a breathtaking level of ignorance around public sector unions, stoked up by the new government and press hostility, though I'll admit their combative press releases don't help. The last NHS place where I worked the unions were working desperately hard with senior management to implement cuts in as painless a way as possible, without resorting to sacking vital staff (because, believe it or not, the trust was, like most trusts, if anything, understaffed), and without compromising the care and support given to people using the service.

Similarly, Clegg's so-called gold-plated pensions are the exception not the rule (just as Osborne's mansion-living housing benefit claimants). And to argue that the public sector should have to be as crap a place to work as the worst private sector job is both incoherent and depressing. It's noticeable that public sector unions have much better relations with senior management than private sector unions, though the new government are doing their best to damage these good relations.

Anyway, efficiency savings to be gained from sacking staff are minimal - they'll just come back to bite when people have to re-use services, or use services for longer. As the King's Fund have pointed out several times, the ways to increase efficiency and productivity are structural stability (which Labour didn't really know the meaning of) and standardisation of care/best practice/moving complex operations to regional hospitals etc.

But I do agree that the majority of the public now seem to be of the mind that public sector workers just sit around all day, doing bugger all, waiting to collect their mega-pensions. It's sad.

alexsandr

every day they are on strike is a day we dont pay em. that will help the defecit.

John Bracewell

Typical Trades Union thinking, the majority voted for a government(coalition as it turned out), but since the minority Union/Labour people are not getting their own way, they threaten strikes. Strikes against the cuts enforced by their own Labour government. How democratic, if a Labour government is in place, then OK, if not, strike against the government of the majority.

Chris lancashire

Richard: I find Florida a bit tacky, especially at this time of year. Much prefer the South of France.

Mike Thomas

Oh please tell me this is true?

When are these union boneheads going to realise that:

a) the money has ran out.
b) the promises they made to help in improving public services did not materialise.
c) the public are quietly angry at the waste in the public services.
d) the private sector have taken all the pain to protect workers whose productivity hasn't improved since '97 and yet are paid more than them.

My hope is that this government have a cojones to face this out, have the unions strike and bankrupt them in the process.

Labour will then have lost their key source of funding. Good, out of power for a generation.

Alex Gallagher

Interesting that so many responses concentrate on condemning strikes when the article acually says ...

"And they're threatening to all get all litigious about it. As one of the union's spokeswomen tells the paper, "If we are not happy with the [government's reply], we are reserving the right to issue urgent judicial review proceedings." "

Maybe the use of legal channels to win arguments is a difficult concept for some to understand.

Or maybe they just want strikes so much that they omit to read what is written......

Keith Southall

We should get Gordon and Tony back, (We could also get Kinnock ..he knows how to make money.)

The BBC would be happy, the Gaudian (not a mi spelling), Simon Heffer would be glad, and most of all the Islamist (not a religion) would glad...the Scots would be extatic, why fight the inevitable Dave... just let England go.

Paddy

I agree with Alex Gallagher that they are hankering after strikes.

But the public mood is not good so they will be short-lived.

They must get it into their thick skulls that it is Labour's fault for the absolute mess they left behind.

If Labour hadn't lied and lied to win the election the Tories would have won a majority and probably would not have cut so quick.

So they have only themselves to blame.

ajs

So now we know that R of Y lives (?avoids taxes) in Florida. So we know therefore what attention he is worth. Zilch.

Verity

Paddy writes: "If Labour hadn't lied and lied to win the election the Tories would have won a majority ...".

No, they wouldn't.

The small number of votes that Cameron got had nothing to do with a public appetite for Labour dimished by their lies, and everything to do with a distrust of, and lack of enthusiasm for, David Cameron.

Vast tranches of true Conservative voters opted not to vote for faux Tory Cameron. Those Tories who went to UKIP or stayed home had no interest one way or another in Labour's traditional electoral liefest.

David Cameron, after almost five years of lack lustre performance and childish public relations trickery, including pushing his disabled son in front of the cameras, to no purpose other than self-promotion, couldn't win a majority over a Labour party that just about everyone recognised as foetid and on its deathbed.

They were disaffected Tories, not potential Labour voters.

It was disaffected true blue Tories who upset Dave's apple cart. You've got it all backwards.

TGF UKIP

"Judicial review proceedings" On reading that my mind went immediately to Pete's piece earlier this week on Harperson's Equality Act and its all encompassing provisions meaning that such proceedings could be sought for almost any governemnt move.

That May and this Cameron LibDem government is moving to implement the Act and not repealing it, just demonstrates their stupidity as well as their ever so PC pusillanimity.

yank

SMason: "And to argue that the public sector should have to be as crap a place to work as the worst private sector job is both incoherent and depressing. It's noticeable that public sector unions have much better relations with senior management than private sector unions, though the new government are doing their best to damage these good relations."

.

.

Well, Mr. Mason, I believe that as opposed to the strawman you so ably built and knocked down, the proper comparison here is between the AVERAGE public sector job and the AVERAGE private sector job, not with the worst private sector job as per your strawman.

I think you'll find in these parts, and I suspect those parts as well, that the average public sector job is waged and benefited 20-30% greater than the average comparable private sector job.

This is the disparity that must be addressed. It is the low hanging fruit, as we move into this period of austerity. It is an illegitimate transfer of wealth, by force of government.

And of course public sector unions have better relations with senior management than private sector unions... you break no new ground with this observation.

Private sector senior management will not allow an illegitimate transfer of wealth to occur, while public sector senior management (i.e. elected governance) will gleefully do so, as they receive kickbacks (financial and political) from public sector unions, facilitating their elected governance. Thus are the illegitimate transfers of wealth facilitated, as the alleged empty-handed labor negotiation becomes in reality a mutual featherbedding arrangement, to the detriment of those whose wealth is being illegitimately transferred, by force of government.

Enjoy your wages and benefits 20-30% less than your betters, proles. And just shut up about it already, would you?

kevin taylor

Managemnt micro Management and more management is one off the reasons i as a patient belive that the N.H.S. is is crises We have bed managers line manager and a whole list off other managers people with no prospects off ever getting a job in the private sector seconded into the N.H.S . because the know someone

Paddy

Verity: Whose 'gang' are you in!