British Civil Servants Lose Public Support

Government unions on both sides of the Atlantic seems to feel that they should be immune from marketplace forces. Ordinary middle-class individuals and families who are barely making ends meet under the current economic conditions should be -- according to organized labor-- forced to pay for unlimited benefits for the entitled public-sector workforce no matter what.

Despite predictable efforts by the left-wing media, it is interesting that a strike by public sector workers in the U.K. over pension reform this week apparently turned out to be a big flop. London Telegraph blogger James Delingpole describes the public mood in Britain:

I got my answer from a chance remark made by Jeremy Vine after our interview. He was telling me about the phone-in he'd done the day before during the public sector workers' strike and what had astonished him was the mood of the callers. If I remember what he said correctly, one of his studio guests was a nurse on a £40,000 PA salary, with a guaranteed £30,000 pension, and this had not gone down well with the mother-of-three from Northern Ireland struggling as a finance officer in the private sector on a salary of £14,000 and no pension to speak of. The callers were very much on the side of the private sector. In fact, they were on the whole absolutely apoplectic that privileged, relatively overpaid public sector workers with their gold-plated pensions should have the gall to go out on strike when the people who pay their salaries – private sector workers – have to go on slogging their guts out regardless.

Sound familiar?