Daily View: Who won public's support over strike action?
Commentators are divided over who won between the government and public sector strikers yesterday.
that the government won the battle yesterday but the unions could win the war:
"Instead of being a test of industrial muscle, the current dispute is ultimately a battle for public support. The unions lack the power to force the Government to surrender, but if they can convince the public that it is the unreasonableness of the Government that provokes them to strike, they can make the political price the Government must pay to win dangerously high."
Conversely the the strike proved the unions will never win:
"The levels of tax and debt needed to sustain an unfeasibly large public sector workforce, which enjoys terms and conditions that are no longer available to anyone else, will continue to sap the strength of the economy. This is understood by most people in the country, which is why so many union members decided not to strike or declined to vote in the ballots that triggered the action. It is also why no mainstream political party, including Labour, nor any of the unions' usual cheerleaders in the media, have backed the strike: they know things cannot go on as before."
That crucial public support is nowhere to be found :
"Far from advancing their cause, the unions only managed to alienate even more members of the public. Think of all the young working mothers who had to take the day off - and lose a day's pay - to look after their children.
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"Millions of private sector employees, who have taken pay cuts and lost their final-salary pension schemes, are hardly going to sympathise with strikes by public sector staff already enjoying higher wages, better pensions and an earlier retirement age."
The David Cameron "owns the dispute" right now but it could very easily switch:
"[Public support] is currently on the unions' side, albeit narrowly, over maintaining existing pensions rights - but against them, again narrowly, over striking on the issue. That could change if either side overplays its hand... These are not the 1970s or the 1980s, when the unions could so easily be framed as a threat to economic prosperity and social stability. Today the unions are neither the source of Britain's economic problems nor a threat to national order. Most want a negotiated settlement based on the defined benefit pension that the government has already promised. Ministers will be lucky to find a better time to settle than now. The politics-light public may not be paying detailed attention, but they get all this too."
The what Labour leader Ed Miliband should do. It says he is stuck in the middle of "supporting a strike organised by its own supporters, and opposing it because it is unpopular and wrong but suggests he sees this as an opportunity:
"He has the chance to be seen as his own man, as brave and as capable of taking tough decisions. He should realise that he cannot please everyone and that his job is to lead. He should tell the unions that pension reform is essential and that strikes like this are not simply a tactical error, not simply premature, but are simply unacceptable to him.
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"Then he should move decisively to reform the relationship between his party and the unions. He should announce that central to his changes to party rules will be an end to the role that unions play in both the election of the leader and in the nomination of candidates for parliamentary selection."
