People Get Fairness!

Paying more, for longer and getting nothing out of it at the end is not a difficult concept of fairness to understand. At least one would think so.

At a meeting yesterday in a hospital in Warwickshire one member of the audience clearly thought, and said, that she felt that paying more into your pension, for a longer period of time and seeing that money taken straight out by the Treasury to pay back to the bankers who had left this country in such a financial mess was fine. After all, she asserted, we all had a duty to pay back the "national debt".

Just as I was ready to launch a full scale rebuttal I was beaten to it by several other members of the audience. My role at that point was redundant. Everybody else got the idea of fairness and let it be known in no uncertain terms to their colleague, who it turned out worked in the hospital pension section.

The more we explain what's happening to public service workers the more they get angry and come to the union. I was told that after that particular meeting (one of five I spoke at yesterday)there was a rush on the union recruitment stall with several citing our presentation and their erstwhile colleague as the reason for them joining the union. Thinking of offering her an organisers job!