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The government is to blame for the pension strikes

Nurses and teachers did not create the global economic crisis, yet public servants and the wider public are being forced to pay not only through these pensions changes but higher VAT, student fees and transport fares, cuts to EMA and vital services that millions rely on.

The Tory-led Government has mishandled the pension issue. Cameron and his ministers have put a 3% surcharge on pension payments for millions of people. Danny Alexander’s provocative announcement on the retirement age in the midst of negotiations has proved reckless.

It is a sign of the harm that is being done to living standards by this government that one of the unions involved in this dispute, the ATL, has never before in127 years held a strike. The Tory-led government should drop its refusal to negotiate on core issues such as the increase in the employees’ pension contributions, raising the retirement age and the change from RPI to CPI.

What is happening today means hundreds of thousands of Londoners will be inconvenienced. That is bad news for everyone. The government must end its attacks and negotiate on the core issues under contention.

2 Comments

  1. Quietzaple says:

    The banks paid lots of tax before the crash: regulate better but stop excluding them from the comity of capitalist enterprises we are prepared to work with.

  2. Steve Kelly says:

    The banks should be forced to pay back every penny the last Government paid to bail them out. We pay interest to these banks in money Government borrows but they still expect the taxpayer to fix their own debt crisis, while at the same time pay bonuses – wrong on all counts. They should be excluded. Better still nationalise them and start to control the money supply of this country ourselves. Banks have been exposed finally for what they are – as is the Tory Government,

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