UK goes on strike... do you agree or disagree?

Problem is that people are living longer but retiring at the same age. There needs to be a link between these two which is revisited each year. But that is not acceptable to the Unions.

Otherwise the contribution that employers - ie us tax payers need to make will keep rising. Its already extremely expensive and we just can't afford it any more.

So I say close all the public sector schemes to new members and let public sector employees fund their own pension same as the rest of us.

Just make a fixed % contribution from the employer.

Over time the number of members in the old schemes will reduce bottoming out the cost to the taxpayer.

So to answer the question let them strike - but don't give them any more concessions - we need to limit the benefits further.

Yup agree totally. It's about time this country started waking up to the mess were all in. Union orchestrated strikes do little to help the situation other than stir up resentment with their unrealistic and "not my backyard" demands

Well that's my tuppence any way

Wish I had a Government pension, lol

I'm sort of sat on the fence - I've always worked in the private sector, but I've worked in partnership and alongside the public sector for many years.

I don't necessarily agree with the fact that pensions should be reducing for existing workers, but I do agree with what highlandspring said, basically making the public sector pension scheme the same as a private one.

Getting a job in the public sector was often seen as a job that you should stick with for life because of the pension and I think one of the issues is people are going for, getting and staying in some public sector jobs based on this information, whether they're suited for the position or not and it has a knock on effect on business operations.

This is a different discussion and I'm under no illusions that it could just be something that I've been witness to and which hasn't happened elsewhere, but I've seen it on a number of occasions where public sector staff who are coming towards retirement age have basically done what they had to for their remaining years to get by in their work, which has had a detrimental effect on their colleagues and eventually the business as a whole.

Just my views and experiences!

Having had to sit in 2 hours of traffic both this morning and this afternoon, any sympathy I may of had completely vanished. Anyway I have no idea why I should subsidise anyones pension pot or lump sum payment. It cannot be right or fair that for some people who cannot afford to pay into a pension scheme of their own, but are required to pay for public sector workers pensions.

I think some of the public sector needs a wake up call. I do sympathise with things like teachers and nurses pay, cutting benefits of frontline troops makes me angry, but there must be ways to introduce some private sector commercial mentality and hunger into some of the administration side of the civil service. For strong management, there has to be huge opportunities for efficiency savings, automation, cleaning out deadwood thats going through the motions and awaiting retirement.

The job for life mentality and unsustainable benefits needs to change, the private sector learnt this a long time ago. Any passengers can be let off at the next station...

Simple just freeze council tax and revenue support grant for the next 5 years - that way local authorities will have no choice but to cut the admin - if they cut services instead they won't get re-elected.

Its happening this year with the 0% council tax increase - but 1 year isn't enough needs 5 or more years of pressure to reign them in.

I caused a bit of controversy on Thursday by my Facebook post on this very subject! My status said:
"So are all the public sector workers going to stop this silly striking nonsense and be bloody thankful they have a job and pension because there are plenty out there that would give their right arm for what they've got!!"

Nuf said!!

Unfortunately, the majority of people that went on strike didn't even know what their exact position would be, bizarrely there will be quite a few people that will actually be better off.

It seems a throw back to the days when the militant leadership were followed by the sheep that believed their every word.

It's quite typical of the selfish nature that prevails.

Listening to one union leader who was discussing the talks (which were still going on of course), he said that the government hadn't even given any concessions at the time so that was the reason they were still intending to strike. What an absolute idiot. So he just assumed that if they threatened a strike and therefore carried out talks it was automatic that the government should concede something by the very fact that they were in negotiations.

When will they join us in the real world where we have always had to pay for our pensions ourselves!