By that logic it would be impossible to have a strike without having a national referendum on it.

It depends on whether or not the problem is long term or not. If it is a long term problem then your long term prospects aren’t particularly bright anyway, if it is a short-term problem then you have no need to make a long term sacrifice.

What is more likely is that the money saved from minimising your enumeration will not be needed to safeguard the company but to give to shareholders.

When the public sector work forces were created,particularly the direct labour ,public works dept's.It was done to stop the private firms getting together and naming their own price I.E this is the lowest we will tender.It was also decided to give these people a fair deal ,decent pension scheme,sick pay,paid leave,not just holiday stamps,protective work clothing etc.Something they were not getting at Slap it on and MakeHaste LDT,or Joe bloggs and co.All these attacks On the public sector all went on in the famous novel "The Rgged Trousered Philanthropists" by Robert Tressel.It was written about 1905 it could have been written last year

Smokey, the company has over 1BUSD in the (global) bank, but on a country level the pension commitments are unsustainable in the longer term. I have been through the "pay more in" scenario twice already, and the company still has to add £20M to the pot every year just to get the annual pension account to balance. Given that there are no new people paying in, and that the population are living longer, and therefore taking from the pot for longer, how can this be sustained in even the medium term?

As the company have a number of different pensions running in UK, regardless of the other schemes from outside the UK I can't see how this is a sustainable proposition going forward.

Ultimately the current scheme is more generous than the company can sustain at a local level (equivalent to a UK country level for the wider public sector debate) and therefore it has to change. I don't like it, but I have to accept it.

No it wouldn't. I think by "workforce" he refers to the union's membership.

In all fairness, I think the low turnout does suggest some pretty widespread apathy for strike action within the unions. It's unlikely that significant numbers of people in favour of the strike (the ones who feel most strongly) would fail to vote, so the small sample has obvious suggestions of bias.

One possible interpretation is that around 70% of the collective membership of those unions didn't actually support the strike.

Comparisons with General Elections are somewhat flawed, as you compare a vote for elected representatives, who are usually largely unknown to most voters, with a relatively simple yes/no question.

Well quite easily. They have $1BN sat in a bank. What they are asking for isn’t for you to make a sacrifice to keep the company going, or a sacrifice to safeguard the future in the company. Its asking you to make a sacrifice so it can pay out higher dividends to shareholders.

It’s a genuine question but I cant see why you think it is in your best interests, for you to make a sacrifice so other, likely richer, people can make more money?

But that was the companies error. The company has offered you remuneration, you have agreed to it. Why is it now acceptable for them to renege on that agreement so that it can pay out higher dividends?

What do you mean by that?

The lines between public and private companies is blurred. With banks, they are largely taxpayer owned, and in some ways the pay of top executives is very much the business of us as tax payers. However, a contract is a contract, and although I'm no legal eagle, I would imagine that there would be little that could be done to get around a contract saying someone is given a 400% bonus as part of their package.
Where the previous government missed a trick was by not getting more involved in how the banks actually worked when they nationalisded them. It could have made the situation much better.

On the subject of infrastructure, again there are companies which you could call semi-public sector. The likes of BT & E.ON. They are private companies, yet the government wants to have their cake and eat it. They want to tell players in the energy market what they can charge, and how much profit they can make, but also rely on these companies to have the capital to invest in the future. new power stations, new broadband networks all cost billions of pounds. The reason energy companies are percieved to make large profits isn't because they are greedy and want to make loads of cash, they are huge organisations, with a huge investment in infrastructure without which the country couldn't function.

It's impossible to cap earnings in the private sector, it is simply market forces at play. The workforce is the work force. If they want a cut of profits, they need to become the bosses and start their own business. Harsh, but that is capitalism.

Don't forget, the large salaries taken by directors are often taxed at 40% to 50% so they're putting more money into the country than the whinging masses of worker ants.

And, by they way, I have been on strike for the last fifteen years but nobody has yet noticed and I am still collecting a wage.

If you're talking about the directors at the city banks, very few of them will be paying anything like that amount, and many will be paying no income tax at all.

You cannot equate a general election where you will at least you have a representative even if you don't vote, with a call for a strike which will have an adverse effect on so many people. This isn't some march around the streets. How can you claim to have a manadate for such a serious thing as a major strike based on the views of around a quarter of the workforce. If this had been so important as to consider a strike to be the only option, would not a majority of the workforce have taken the trouble to vote?

Negotiations are still on-going and terms may be improved further, but the offer on the table is still much better that the majority of the population can hope to enjoy. One of the reasons our country is in so much debt is these sort of overgenerous pension agreements that were made to the public sector which even in the good times were unsustainable.

Even with all these cuts our children and grandchildren will have to work until they are 70 or 75. Do you feel comfortable with this prospect? Would you feel comfortable if many jobs would be lost as an alternative to keeping the same pension terms? As the outgoing Labour Chief secretary to the Treasury said in his note "I'm afraid to tell you there's no money left"

I do not blame the unions for negotiating such good terms. I blame the governments that accepted them without thought as to how they could ever be paid for. Of course it is a bad situation to have some agreed benefits taken away. But where they are so obviously out of step with the rest of the workforce as a whole and in particular with the private sector who have to produce the wealth to pay for part of these pensions, then some sort of change has to be made.

If you look at what is going on in the rest of Europe you can see in almost every country there are changes being made to reduce unaffordable benefits. Real austerity is being forced on these overspending countries and unless we make voluntary reductions in our pension/benefits/services expectations then we will be a short step away from a simliar fate.

How on earth can somebody you didn’t vote for and don’t agree with be representative of you?

So you think that 70% of 25% is a democratic majority to call a strike do you? IMO it's a selfish minority prepared to heap misery on many innocent workers, children and families, the majority of whom will have far worse pension terms, yet will be expected to pay in their taxes for these strikers.

A bit like George Osbourne? Who apparently (according to Channel 4, but not denied by him as far as I know) legally avoids paying millions in tax.

Don't forget though folks, "we're all in it together."

I never said there shouldn't be regulation. I am pointing out that it is the shareholders who are the owners of these publicly quoted companies who having put their money in therefore becomes their say and not ours. Thats the way it is! If we don't like a particular public company then we have the right to vote with our feet and not buy their goods or services. ie don't use Vodafone if you don't like them.

Only a few banks were bailed out and as we the taxpayers have shares these then yes we do have a say through our MP's.