Public sector union leaders to meet to discuss pay deal dispute

Honestly feel that Minister chambers has cocked this up from the start. He announced 1.2 billion in the budget, does he know about the art of negotiation or was he expecting the public/civil service unions to feign all over him.

The entire thing is pantomime from both sides. The government have already budgeted for a pay increase. The unions got their strike to try and stay relevant, the government got to be seen to “be tough” against the unions demands and then they’ll both sit down this week and agree what they were always going to agree anyway.

The government should just get it over with and give the public workers their 1k increase sooner rather than later so we can forget about this nonsense for the next three years

I 100% support the strikes. I have a question though, probably a bit naive, but I’d be interested to know people’s thoughts.  In a hypothetical world, where the choice was the cost of living being brought down vs a payrise, I wonder what people would vote for? The cynic in me would say people would still go for the payrise. 

The big winners here are the unions. Increased membership over the last few weeks. Also the Government has recouped a day’s salary from approx. 300,000. They giveth in one hand and taketh in the other. I do wish we could move away from percenatge increases and give a monetary pay increase across the board. This would allow for a greater increase for the lower paid. On a different note, over the last 17 years, public sector employees have got just a little over 1% pay rise annually, if we take into account the reduction in salary in 2010.