Strikes sum up state of nation
■ With a summer of discontent looming, highlighted by last week’s rail strike, now medical professionals, teachers, civil servants, airport staff and even barristers are threatening industrial action.
Has the time finally come to look at the way our bitterly divided country is run?
The pay gap between the bosses and workforce is widening at an alarming rate which wasn’t the case a few decades ago.
There are more multi-millionaires than ever while child poverty is at record levels. It’s obscene when hard-working families can’t put a loaf of bread on the table.
Steps must be taken to level up and this means tackling the extravagant pay of bosses and getting to grips with the extortionate dividends handed out to shareholders. Bill Cook, Teignmouth, Devon
■ Boris Johnson wants this fight with the unions. This is his version of Thatcher versus the NUM in 1984. He wants to crush the union movement altogether at any cost to make it easier for his cronies and donors to undermine workers’ rights and ride roughshod over their employees.
They have no objection to the practice of fire and rehire, while NHS workers are working flat out and some still need to use food banks to survive. Look at the state of this once-great country after 12 years of Tory rule. Everything is collapsing around our ears.
B Evans, Mountain Ash, Rhondda Cynon Taf
■ The Government and rail bosses say any wage rise for rail workers must be linked to modernisation, performance, efficiency and savings. Some 650 MPs make our laws and it takes up to 767 Lords to ratify them.
Maybe the Government should be looking at their own antiquated working practices that fail to meet any of the terms and conditions they expect of our rail workers. Len Goodwin, Doncaster South Yorks
■ Why should people be surprised that Tory ministers won’t sit down with the trade unions and discuss the rail dispute? When the Jarrow marchers arrived in London in 1936 the then Conservative prime minister Stanley Baldwin wouldn’t even meet the marchers. So what’s new? Nearly 90 years on and they still loathe working people. Nev Shaw, Portsmouth
■ With all disputes, the only losers are the workers whose jobs will dry up because companies will have to make decisions over lost income due to strike action. Workers are employed by firms, not unions.
As for the rail strike, I think most voters are unconcerned as people are now used to working from home. I believe the RMT union took the wrong decision to strike. Madeline Whitney, Reading, Berks
■ If nurses and teachers came out on strike I would be fully on their side. The cost of living crisis is crippling people who need a decent wage to manage. It’s OK for MPs on their large salaries.
There is no way they can justify their £2,200-a-year pay rise, while others are forced to accept what amounts to a pay cut. It stinks! Craig Haron, Colne, Lancs
■ Tory plans to outlaw strike action by trade unions are virtually identical to the same restrictions placed on industrial action in Franco-era Spain where workers weren’t allowed to strike at all.
This is where we are heading – a corporate fascist state.
Phil Brand, South West London