Blogging from the Highlands of Scotland
'From fanaticism to barbarism is only one step' - Diderot

Wednesday 24 September 2008

Council strike action - do you think they will provide rebates?

The admittedly wickedly-radical idea occurs to me that if council employees are to conduct a series of regular strikes to improve their pay, we council tax payers should receive some kind of rebate for the periods when the council is not providing us with the services we pay them to provide. There's more detail about the services which will be curtailed all over Scotland here and in the Highland Council region here; a summary of the effects on council service in Highland Council region is given on the main page:



Industrial Action

Services provided by The Highland Council will be disrupted on Wednesday 24 September as the result of industrial action, which is part of nationwide action by Unite the Union, GMB and Unison members in respect of the National Pay Award. The Council will endeavour to keep disruption to a minimum.

For comparision, I use a number of services for which I pay by subscription, provided by commercial organisations. It is invariably the case that when these services are curtailed for whatever reason, technical problems or industrial action for example, that there will be a 'rebate' in the form of an extension of the period of my subscriptions to cover the period when services were not being provided, without me having to ask for this. I've never heard of a government or council, anywhere, which takes it responsibilities for providing services equally seriously, have you?

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