Strikingly Unfair

Yesterday's newspapers were full of angry rhetoric about more industrial action in the New Year - before today's public sector pensions strike even got underway.

What puzzles me is why the trade unions support more favourable treatment for different groups of workers?

Now I can understand why the head teachers union would fight to retain a final salary pension scheme - because it favours people who earn a big salary in the final stages of their careers.

But the head teachers' final salary pension is being heavily subsidised - by the school cleaner, the classroom assistant and the school meals worker.

So why don't the GMB, Unison and Unite - stand up and condemn this nonsense as strikingly unfair?

Because that's exactly what it is - and ironically that's what the Labour party and the trade unions say they stand for - equality and fairness at work.

In which case why do they not come out and say that everyone should have the same normal retirement age - why should some groups of workers be allowed to retire before others?

I don't buy for a minute the suggestion that school teachers are somehow more 'burnt out' by 60 - than a classroom assistant or a care worker, for example.

Why should the lower paid groups - be on such inferior conditions compared to their higher paid colleagues?

To its eternal shame the Labour party is encouraging this crazy behaviour - when in truth its leaders accept the case for reform.
 
The bottom line is fairness at work - and if some public sector workers are more equal  than others, then no matter how you cut it - that's simply not fair.