Wednesday 3 October 2012

Win some, lose some

I'm a union member, and I went out on the march last November - almost a year ago! - along with many other public sector workers.  It was a really positive experience: I met people who were really passionate about doing their job well, and the main topic of conversation was a description with slight guilty undertones of how they'd arranged for cover while they were out.

Nearly a year on, and there's news in from the union.  As far as I'm concerned:

We WON!

Well...  I think we won.  I think the changes to the LGPS (Local Government Pension Scheme) in the new proposal are fair and reasonable, where I would have labelled the proposals we went on strike about a theft or a fraud.

One of the unions involved is still unhappy with the new proposals but it's highly unlikely there'll be any more strike action.

Has this small fact been in The News near you at all?  Of course not.  Good news, or the happy outcome of old news, never gets in the news.

LGPS members rejoice.

Meanwhile, the pay structure for police officers has been mucked about with beyond recognition.

Some people are raking it in.  I don't have any real obligations outside of work and I actually like working nights so if I were a police officer I'd be pulling all the night shifts God sends and as a result I'd actually be better off as a result of Winsor.

But the people who can't do the unsociable hours are far worse off.  In a Control Room environment, that means young mums.  Sorry if that sounds sexist and old-fashioned but it happens to be true.

It goes like this:  Young people go into response policing.  Young people also tend to have babies.  They may not then want to go straight back out into fighting with drunk people every night, so they fall back to the next position - the Control Room.  It's the only job where their experience is totally relevant and there's no chance of them getting into a physical fight (until the thing living in the rota fridge actually develops motor skills).

This has always been a good thing for us.  It means we've got a few police officers with recent experience in the room with us, which is truly invaluable.  We've always known they were earning more money than us for doing the same job, but it didn't matter because we knew they'd earned the salary for previous training, and that they'd probably go back to "full" police work in the fullness of time.

Not no more.

The plan is to get all police officers out of the Control Room.  Those who physically can't go back on front-line duty are seeing life-changing pay cuts.

This is wrong.  Civil rights campaigners have fought and died for the principle that you don't lose money if you decide to have kids.

Slightly rarer but still extant is the person (usually but not always male) who comes off front-line duty because of an injury and ends up in the Control Room because his experience is useful there.  Again, they used to keep their police officer salary and we staff never begrudged it.  Surely the injury earned it.

They're now being offered the choice of a redeployment to an "officer" job that they might not want, or be any good at, or a pay cut.

Since when did this society think it was OK to offer someone a pay cut because they'd been injured in the line of duty?

I'll tell you.  It was the day that we were told it was OK for an MP to call a police officer a pleb for trying to do her job.

I don't want to live in a society where it's OK to talk to another human being like that.  I certainly don't want to live in a society where the lack of respect for authority has reached the point where it's OK to talk to a police officer like that.

But that's where we've got with the current ruling party.  They're all toffs, millionaires,  Eton alumni.  Scratch at the veneer and that's what they think of all of us.  Anyone who works for a living - we're all fucking plebs as far as they're concerned.