‘Us and Them’ Gets my Goat

LAST WEEK saw millions of public sector workers marching in solidarity against this Government’s attack on their pay and pension rights. I think it was brilliant.

When you work in the public sector – as I have, as my mother does and as many people I know do – you expect, on the whole, to get paid a little less than you would earn in an equivalent role in the private sector.

As a public servant, you know this, but you still serve nonetheless.

This might be because you gain personal fulfilment from doing a job that really matters to people’s lives or it might be because you know that, whilst you’ll earn a little less, you’ll get looked after in later life because of the commitment you’ve shown to serving the public. For most people, it’s probably both.

One thing that really gets my goat however is the ‘them and us’ culture that has somehow developed within many communities.

Those who work in the private sector believe that their public sector colleagues get a much better deal than they do and its unfair. Those in the public sector might think the same about the private sector. Actually, both the private and the public sector play intrinsically important roles in our society and neither should be jealous of the other because we all need both.

And let’s, instead of painting a picture of ‘them’, remember that those public sector workers are probably friends or family of yours, they might be your neighbours or people you went to school with.

Let’s not depersonalise everything and take what this Government thinks for a given. What is a given is this Government’s distaste of the public sector and its apparent arrogance at not being willing to negotiate properly with the unions at all.

The only thing that is “deeply irresponsible” (this term being the branding slogan of the Government at the moment – keep an eye out for it being repeated over and over again) is this Government’s inability to truly understand what life is like for real people in real time.

I understand that we need to save money and I’d probably agree that, in certain areas, the public sector has grown too much. But what I hate the most is Government lies that people fall for. Let’s be clear, actual spending is increasing year on year by this Government, not decreasing. As a country our politicians have to make decisions on what takes financial priority over other things. Quite frankly, I’d rather look after our public servants – our policemen, our teachers, our nurses and our service men – than invest hundreds of millions of pounds into free schools, for example.

What gets my goat even more (so perhaps there is more than one thing) is people turning their nose up at the strikes and making assumptions without actually talking to public servants and reading the facts. I had an e-mail the other day calling the strikes ‘the disruption’ – disruptive to some it no doubt was but a malicious disruption it was not.

We should show our solidarity with those taking the hit for a recession caused by Government over borrowing and unaccountable risk taking in our financial services.

This recession had more to do with bankers and politicians than it did to do with nurses and school teachers yet it seems the later are taking the hit whilst bonus pools increase and politicians argue amongst themselves.

I’m quite frankly appalled with where our country is going at the moment and, as you can no doubt tell from the tone of this week’s column, I can rant about it for days.

But, I plead with you, don’t make assumptions about public servants or the strikes, don’t take Government spin as given and go and speak to that neighbour or friend or family member who works in the public sector and find out what’s really going on.