Our local paper, the Southern Reporter, reports that “2,000 public service workers” took the day off work yesterday. Sorry, withdrew their labour to protest against a monstrous government regiment that should horrify and disgust all sensible people. Soon, you know, armed resistance will be necessary.
Fine. But, in these parts at least, it is interesting to see which taxpayer-funded workers struck. The Southern reports that:
The Scottish Borders, being a small and largely rural council area, may not be typical of the action elsewhere in the country. Nevertheless, in this part of Britain there wasn’t a public sector strike at all, there was a teachers’ strike.1,200 teachers were on strike (78% of all teaching staff). 400 non-teaching staff (45% of all non-classroom staff). 68 of 1,400 people in the social work department did not report for work. 23 of 900 workers in the infrastructure department were out. 28 of 400 staff in “white-collar” jobs in Finance, IT etc withdrew their labour. The remaining strikers were a few hundred NHS staff whose action ensured cancelled operations and appointments.
Since teaching is a relatively high-status** job and teachers are relatively well-paid we may conclude that, whatever is said about this being action to defend dinner ladies and other low paid workers, here at least it was actually a whingeing howl of rage from privileged public-sector workers in a supposedly vocational profession whose terms and conditions are the envy of many, enjoying as they do almost complete job security, reasonable pay and generous holidays on top of a hefty measure of social esteem. They struck because they could and so they did. That’s their prerogative, for sure, but that doesn’t mean anyone else is required to respect the teaching unions far less accept they were “forced” to strike.
*Just kidding! Sort of.
**As it should be and as, frankly, teachers insist it is.
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