It pays to have the Government as your employer

The website "Burning our Money" recently calculated that the public sector is losing nearly 1 million working days each year to industrial action. The comparable figure for the larger private sector is 25,000 days. "Burning our Money" points out that an average public sector worker therefore goes on strike 100 time more frequently that his private sector counterpart.

This may be partly due to the fact that public sector "firms" are usually much larger, and therefore easier to unionise and then to organise.

It is probably slightly due to the fact that the public sector unions have a closer relationship with the Government, and they have votes! Some even sponsor MPs. Most of all it is due to the fact that their jobs are more secure. If a private sector firm has a strike, its very future is threatened and employees know this.

There used to be a trade-off, that public sector jobs were "for life", and as a consequence they had slightly poorer pay and less good pensions. The jobs are still more secure, the pensions generally better and, with exceptions, the pay has caught up.

We now have a very large public sector, including medical and care staff, teachers, and police. Recently the number and salaries of civil servants and local council staff have risen strongly. At a time when private sector unions have struggled to maintain membership, employment in the public sector has risen.