Letters: Readers write in support of industrial action over poor pay by public sector workers
Readers write in support of industrial action over poor pay by public sector workersPhotograph: Liam McBurney/PAPhotograph: Liam McBurney/PAI asked my daughter, a nurse who is 30 years in the job and working on a very busy geriatric ward, what going on strike meant for her. “I will arrive just before 7am, leave at 7.30pm, and take my full 30-minute unpaid meal break,” was the reply.
For the last two years, her annual leave has been taken in two- or three-day snatches, whenever staffing allowed. This year, she is determined to take proper, much-needed, week-long breaks. Steve Barclay et al will not be working on Christmas Eve and Boxing Day. She will. I jokingly asked: “Short of cash?” “No, short of staff,” was her reply. For too long theI spent my working life in the police, mostly as a police officer and lately as a member of support staff.
At the beginning of the year I was awarded a 2.1% pay rise – about the same time as the nurses’ pay review body made its recommendation for their pay rise. My pay rise wasn’t anywhere near enough to meet the cost of living crisis, and later in the year it was substantially increased . The government needs to offer nurses what they gave me, and more besides.
Joseph and Mary had to trek to Bethlehem for the census so Caesar could tax them more effectively. Then, as now, taxes fell disproportionately on the poor. The baby who arrived on that occasion preached the revolutionary message that all are equal in God’s sight. A crucial way of enabling that is a fair tax system.
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