BY Island standards, a gathering of 1,000 people certainly qualifies as a mass meeting. Moreover, when the vast majority of those who attend such a meeting express joint opinions and agree on joint courses of action, they must be taken seriously.

This week’s meeting of public sector workers, which attracted men and women from all pay groups and was all but unanimous in recording a vote of no confidence in the States, should therefore have made States Members – and the Council of Ministers in particular – sit up and take notice. That there is genuine and, in many respects, well-founded concern about government pay policy and genuine fear about the prospect of cuts and redundancies is manifestly clear.

However, this does not mean that even 1,000 voices speaking in unison should force government policy away from the course currently being plotted. As the staging of the unprecedented mass meeting itself confirms, these are extraordinary times in the history of the Island and the world as a whole.

Consequently, policies which, alas, are deeply unpopular with almost everyone, have the potential to lose politicians votes, and are widely seen as undermining the terms, conditions and rights of public sector employees are having to be forced through.

But before the Council of Ministers makes any new call for acceptance of the pay freeze on the grounds of economic urgency or trots out any platitudes about desperate times calling for desperate measures, it should, at the very least, take steps to put the pay affairs of States Members on a parallel footing with the public sector workforce. Is it any wonder that rank and file workers are up in arms when, whereas they are in line to get nothing, Members’ salaries will be boosted by £1,000?

Sometimes the capacity of Island government to inflict self-harm beggars belief.
Unfortunately, if our politicians often fly in the air above Cloud Cuckoo Land, the same can be said of those in the workforce who believe that the public purse is infinitely elastic. If this is a time for fair treatment for all, it is also a time for realism and even sacrifice for the greater good of the Island and, in the longer term, enhanced opportunities for increased prosperity across the board.

Like it or not, the mass action which 1,000 like-minded workers could so easily launch would be in no one’s long-term interest. Indeed, it would be even more fatuous and counter-productive than that £1,000 pay hike which our politicians are currently in line to enjoy.