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notices and features - Date published:
5:03 pm, July 22nd, 2009 - 3 comments
Categories: blogs, workers' rights -
Tags: brenda pilott, psa, public sector eye, richard wagstaff
Public Sector Eye. A new blog from the PSA written by the union’s two national secretaries, Brenda Pilott and Richard Wagstaff.
Finsec’s been running the gossip for a few years now, but this will be the first blog written by union national secretaries on issues affecting their members. Given current events it should be interesting reading.
Good luck to them but, as far as I’m concerned, the PSA has a shit load of work to do to get back in my good books: after taking an unresolved grievance to them I was told to “get over it and stop making a fuss or you’ll make more work for all of us if this escalates” and then, on the way out, the delegate had the gaul to try and sell me insurance! That was 10 years ago now – I suppose these days they have Loyalty Cards for use at petrol stations as well insurance schemes.
The blog claims there are only, whatever, 40000 or something public servants yet someone else has recently claimed there are 247,000.
Whatever the authors of the blog say cannot detract from the fact that public servants have increased significantly in numbers, because of new spending and new policies by Labour. There will be cuts in services, but people will cope.
“The blog claims there are only, whatever, 40000 or something public servants yet someone else has recently claimed there are 247,000.”
Assume that’s ‘core’ (the definition therein varies as much as estimates as to the number) vs overall workers in the public sector. The number varies depending on who is making the point and what that point is 🙂
“Whatever the authors of the blog say cannot detract from the fact that public servants have increased significantly in numbers, because of new spending and new policies by Labour.”
The first half is of course true if you persist in looking at numbers from 1999, it is wrong if you look at numbers from 1990. As with my point above – that depends upon who you are and what point you are tying to make.
Of course new employees are there ‘because of new spending by Labour’ – they are not volunteers. Given the state of the public service in the late 1990s, a few more employees was not a bad idea. At least we get election results on the day these days…
“There will be cuts in services, but people will cope.”
For the most part, but you cannot guarantee that. Nor can you state that people will not needlessly suffer through reductions made not because of cost, but ideology.