Monday 20 June 2011

Pension Dispute - The Affiliates are Coming

Look Out Affiliates, Here Come Labour

I am constantly impressed by the bare faced cheek in which the Labour party have pretended to be on the side of the unions in the current public sector pension dispute, when they would have taken almost identical action to the Lib Cons. They were even using advice from the same political adviser, who is also still a Labour Lord in the British Parliament. Yet to date, they have managed to avoid any public criticism from the unions.

However, they have a problem on the horizon, as their main affiliated unions are also likely to ballot their public sector members and will expect support after the funding they give to Labour. Unison, Unite and the GMB have millions of members in the public sector who are all facing pension cuts, so how is Red Ed Miliband going to handle this one? This of course is one of the main reasons why the Lib Cons are deliberately ramping up the dispute, as nothing would give them greater pleasure than to see Red Ed have a public spat with the unions, on an issue that currently the public are at best agnostic on.

Of course, in the middle are the public sector workers, many of whom work in manual or semi-manual low paid jobs and with a salary, pension and life expectancy far less than the London politicians squabbling over how to take 'deferred pay' off them. The plot thickens.

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