THERE ARE HARSH LESSONS AHEAD FOR BRITAIN…AND THE EU AS A WHOLE.

This morning the CBI warned the UK general public what the cognoscenti have known for quite a while: public sector pensions are out of control. Using a figure first revealed here, the employers’ organisation suggested that to pay existing public sector pensions will cost the taxpayer £1 trillion per annum.

Just to put things into perspective, a trillion Pounds is enough to fund the NHS until 2018. So far, subtle manipulation of State pension starting ages has managed to disguise the horrible reality of government’s inability to pay anywhere near the amount required to honour even the existing State pensions – let alone the baby-boomers who will finally come on stream in three years time.

In such circumstances, we need to think very seriously about whether senior civil servants can reasonably expect their gold-plated, feather-bedded, index-linked pensions to happen. They need to think about this too, but so far the signs of any reality impinging upon the public sector are not encouraging.

Yesterday, a resolution passed by the National Union of Teachers (NUT) at its annual conference in Liverpool called for a joint campaign with the TUC and public sector unions, including strikes if necessary, to oppose cuts to services, threats to pensions and pay freezes. Civil Service unions have also threatened to strike in protest against cuts in both employment levels and pension entitlements.

Rewind the tape to February in Greece: the BBCNews website reported that

‘Thousands of Greeks have rallied against deficit-cutting measures during a national public sector strike.Flights have been grounded, many schools are closed and hospitals are operating an emergency-only service.
The prime minister, who wants to freeze pay, gather more taxes and reform pensions, insisted that the proposals would be fully implemented.’

There is a trend here, and it is called ‘non-productive’ workers becoming increasingly militant. But a great deal has changed since the 1970s: the whole idea of ‘sympathy’ strikes is ancient history. From here on, the more commercially aware productive workforce in the UK (and the growing ranks of self-employed) are likely to take an increasingly dim view of bureaucrats and their fellow-travellers trying to protect an already privileged existence.

Now imagine this trend repeated in Portugal, Spain, Ireland…with la belle France of course, whose level of Government employment is still enormous – and whose farmers remain as implacably opposed to les fonctionnaires as ever.

The onward march of market economics has ‘educated’ a generation of workers, and caused them to replace union solidarity with material resentment. Governments must recognise this….or be swept away.