There is a curious morality around strike action by those who deliver public services. I have never felt entirely comfortable with it.
I remember the awkwardness in the room when an Aberdeen University moral philosophy lecturer was asked about the industrial action he and his colleagues planned to take as our exams loomed.
And I have never forgotten his useless advice to us: ‘Make like an ostrich. Bury your heads in the sand.’
Scotland is facing the nightmare scenario of widespread bin strikes which will leave rubbish piled high in the streets
All that learning, I thought at the time. All those years of reading in his field of expertise and this was the wisdom he had to offer.
I was young and timorous so the questions I formed in my head were never asked out loud. Can we get into this, please? It seems appropriate since you are, after all, a moral philosopher. Your dispute is not with your students, but with your paymasters. And yet it is your students who will suffer if your demands are not met.
Is our education not being held to ransom here? Please elucidate on the moral legitimacy of this.
I don’t doubt eminent philosophers have attempted to do just that, which is why I would have been fascinated to hear the answers to the questions I was too bashful to ask.
As a result of my silence, the discomfort around strike action has persisted ever since. I watch films where random innocents are grabbed in the street and used as human shields by desperate people demanding things their hostage is in no position to give.
And – violence aside, obviously – I see a relationship between this mentality and public service strikes. Pay up or the consumer gets it.
Bewildering numbers of consumers side with those threatening harm on the services the public pay for and have a right to expect. They conclude, fairly perhaps, that the strikers’ demands are reasonable.
But bewilderingly few conclude that, whether the demands are reasonable or not, occasioning harm or inconvenience on those who are in no position to meet their demands in order that a third party cedes to them is morally problematic.
Earlier this week a trade union promised to deliver a ‘stinking Scottish summer’ to the public unless council umbrella body Cosla ups its pay offer.
First Minister John Swinney is under increasing pressure to step in an resolve the industrial dispute between waste collection workers and councils
The industrial action by street cleaners, refuse collectors and recycling workers is timed to coincide with the Edinburgh festivals, thus ensuring maximum unpleasantness in Scotland’s capital where rats are already reckoned to outnumber the human population by two to one.
Residents in that city know the drill already, of course. Two years ago the place was a tip during a 12-day August strike which resulted in public bins morphing into mountains of detritus, their foothills stretching ever wider around them.
The council asked householders to keep their rubbish indoors – so their homes stank too – and, as the strike spread to 20 of the nation’s local authority areas, a health warning was declared by Public Health Scotland due to the slum conditions in which people were being forced to live.
I well remember the scenes in Glasgow – the takeaway food trays and disposable cups at first placed gingerly atop the city centre bins, then around their edges and, latterly, flung in their general direction to join the putrid heap. The seagulls and vermin may have happier memories.
And I read the words of the Unite union’s industrial officer Graham McNab again. ‘A stinking Scottish summer looms unless Cosla and the Scottish government quickly sort this out by injecting more cash into a new offer.’
There is no hiding the intent. Indeed, it is almost gratuitous. I don’t read in these words a deep-seated regret that, for the second time in two years, council tax-payers may have to suffer though they are blameless in this dispute and powerless to resolve it.
I detect in them no conscience being wrestled with over the fact sanitation will inevitably deteriorate, bringing risks to public health.
No, I just read the direct threat to the amenity of our streets, our homes and possibly our wellbeing unless a third party coughs up.
What would Mr McNab have us do? Harangue the Scottish Government, I suppose. Badger it to ensure his members don’t follow through on their threat to us.
We could parrot the familiar refrain of all opposition parties in times when public services strikes loom and urge everyone to ‘get round the table’. It always sounds to me like a more listener-friendly way of saying ‘We don’t know the answer and, fortunately, since we’re not in government, we don’t have to’.
The fact is there are multiple players who may be seen as legitimate targets for blame in the current dispute. Take your pick from Westminster, the Scottish Government, your local authority or your refuse collector’s union. Add others if you please.
Make your case – there is no shortage of economic illiteracy and wrong-headed policy making to shoot at. But it is we, the innocents, in the firing line. It always is.
We take the hit when baggage handlers and air traffic controllers go on strike. We miss our flights – I speak from experience – when Spanish passport controllers operate a go-slow, bringing airports to a standstill.
Our children don’t get taught when teachers walk out. Our trains don’t run when it’s railway workers’ turn.
The egregious element here is no matter what economic failing you identify as being at the root of the latest wave of industrial action, there is no quick fix. Economic policy moves with all the nimbleness of a super-tanker in a hostile ocean. And the threat to the public is right now.
In the circumstances, it would be appreciated if union officials such as Mr McNab took a moment to reflect on what they are saying. He is saying his members will leave our towns and cities to stink until they get what they want.
This in spite of the fact – of which he is surely aware – that the public pays through its council taxes for its towns and cities not to stink. No rebate is offered when the services paid for are not delivered. The idea is we put up with it and keep paying.
And this set against a year-on-year diminution of council services across the country and a general trend of above inflation council tax rises.
Potholed streets remain that way for years until remedial work is done – often ineffectively. Bin collections are steadily pared back and extra money is now demanded of those wishing to dispose of garden waste.
Round my way, our purple bins for glass are supposed to be emptied every six weeks and the last collection didn’t happen. Our street is lined with forlorn purple bins left out for weeks now in the hope the collectors will remember them some day. My guess is they will remember them when we’ve all given up the ghost and returned them round the back.
It’s worth noting, Mr McNab, that it’s a thankless task being a council tax payer at the best of times.
Should we make like ostriches and bury our heads in the sand?
Or might our case for an all-out strike be as strong as anyone’s?
