I have been chipping away at the indifferent coal face of public sector management for a few years now... Strikes always leave me in something of an awkward position at work as whilst senior management in no way indicate that my career will be effected by going on strike...the implication is nonetheless there...
However, I'd never cross a picket line and have always done my duty, even if I don't always agree with the cause. Not that picket lines last all day these days. During the last strike I slept in and went to join in about 11am and everyone had fucked off home!
Our unison rep is a lovely chap but the most blinkered, morning star reading old Trot you could ever hope to meet. He views my politics as somewhere between Thatcher's and Pinochet, so to amuse myself I usually take up an anti union stance with him.
The thing that fucks me off about this strike is that Prentice is blatantly going to fold as soon as one more concession is made. He loves hobnobbing with ministers and to be honest his mandate to strike (29% turnout, 78% yes) is arguably weak.
That is another thing that irritates me; the vast majority of public sector employees I work with are incredibly complacent. (I'm talking here about 'council officers' not nurses, who I am in awe of to be honest, given what they do for such little money)
I find it unbelievable that not only are their pensions at risk, the cuts mean that half of them (including me) could well be unemployed within the next 12 months, and yet 71% of them couldn't be bothered to put a tick in a box and post it in a prepaid envelope...
...The other thing that fucks me off is that I am not even in the pension, as there seems little point until I dig myself out of the debt whole I spent my entire 20s digging ever deeper.
So yes, I will strike, but I will complain about it.