To strike is a right

As you would expect to hear from the TUC Deputy General Secretary. And I don't disagree with her. Except in very limited circumstances, the labour is the labourers', not the employer's (Ed notes: 'very limited' is essential public services - police, army, some {even most?} bits but possibly not all of hospitals*. I'd alo include firefighters, who are currently allowed to strike, and exclude GCHQ, who might or might not be, TPTB keep changing the rules.)

Except the rest is the usual CiBollocks.

Voting to go on strike is not a decision working people take lightly and is always accompanied by a strong sense of injustice at work. The impact of losing a day's pay is significant, not least for those in the lowest paid jobs who are already on the tightest budgets.

To suggest that benefits encourage people to go on strike is ridiculous.

Err, anybody remember the 70s? One out, all out? For any reason and none? She should - she's in her fifties. But probably remembers it from the privileged position of union power not from the point of view of the poor bloody citizens (Ed notes: Although, of course, this was prior to the British Nationality Act, 1981, so we were "subjects") who just had to put up with the quarrels of their 'betters'.

People who don't work can't go on strike. Some people who do work go on strike not because they feel 'a strong sense of injustice at work' but because some machinating trot has appealled to some false sense of 'worker's solidarity'.

Right, so if it is ridiculous to suggest that people are encouraged to exercise their right to strike by the fact that the rest of us are there to provide a safety net, surely it isn't ridiculous to suggest that removing that safety net won't discourage them from exercising that right? Or am I not allowed to apply logic to lefty nonsense?

And then it gets worse:

The government's intention to limit benefits for strikers, however, is more about rhetoric than real impact.

So it won't even change much. Great - so we've got a politician promising a sop to their electorate and it won't even affect yours. Except, possibly, to encourage them to think about it a bit more. So you have to whine about it anyway. It's brilliant minds the downtrodden have claiming to be on their side - makes you wonder what she's running for.

* I'm not too bothered, for example, about a plastic surgery clinic being shut. A&E, obviously, maternity, long-stay are different matters. I don't really know enough about it to make the critical judgements.