Coal not Dole

I have some sympathies with the strikers tommorow. My pension is also under attack. As recently as 2008 we had an increase in contributions and reduced benefits. The Hutton report will cut this further and increase contributions by another 6%. Today we heard that following our 2 year pay freeze by 2 years with a massive limit of 1% per year. In a time of inflation we have 4-5% inflation over that period and so in real terms we will have a cut of 25% and reduced pension terms. In addition our Trust is planning to shed 10% of posts to balance the books. There is a lot of turnover of staff and most will be handled by freezes on vacany posts. This has the effect of making those incapable of getting another job secure and penalising the posts that are in demand and turnover quickly. More work. less pay.

It is clearly a miserable time to be in the public sector. The private health sector is also pretty flat as companies are cutting private insurance as part of their own austerity. Those who are living on savings to pay insurance are having reduced income, and the self pay market is similarly flat. For some decades PP payment rates have stagnated despite increasing premiums.

If only we had listened to Joseph (or John Maynard Keynes whose advice to our Pharoah was much the same) and stored up our granaries in seven years of plenty for seven years of famine. The Chinese did which is why we are dependent on the hard working and thrifty Chinese peasants to supply the loans that our leaders desire to acquire to support our welfare state.

While there was a lot of sympathy for the miners of 83-84 in their strike, and Arthur Scargill was right in that large number of mines were to be closed, no-one won that strike. We lost the mines from the hardcore NUM areas and also the non-striking Nottinghamshire fields. Strikers tommorow are heading for a similar confrontation with a government that sees them as the enemy within. The strikes will be met by further pay freezes and job losses. Like the NUM there is a political agenda to bring down the government by the public sector workers, and an agenda of the government to break the public sector unions.

I am not striking tomorrow, one medical union (the HCSA, affiliated to the TUC) has advised that striking without a ballot is illegal, as is refusing to cross picket lines, but has suggested other ways of supporting the dispute. We may be having our own industrial action at a later date, perhaps a “work to contract” over pensions. The HCSA is the pitbull of the medical unions, disliked by the BMA and government equally for its uncompromising advocacy on behalf of senior medical staff. In an era where goodwill has been eroded by management, then a “work to contract” is an appropriate response. After all the PFI owners do, and so do the privatised cleaners, so why not the medical staff?

There are many of my colleagues planning early retirement due to revalidation. If they retire now, then they do not get a pay freeze, but get a CPI related pension increase of 4% per year. As another year of service gains extra superannuation at much the same rate, retiring now with 30 years of superannuation gives much the same pension as another ten years of pay-freeze and 40 years of superannuation. The Pension is also secure from further attacks, and a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush. Tempting isn’t it? and miss out on the years of misery and strife. So a cadre of experience will be frittered away, in an MTAS of the elders. History repeats itself, first as tragedy, then as farce.

Dr Phil