Now's Definitely Not The Time - Parker officially kills SOJ negotiations

Is Charlie Parker brave, arrogant or just plain stupid?

I suspect I'm not alone in that being the main question on my mind when I picked up my copy of the local rag this evening and saw that, far from backing down from his previous threats to impose his below-inflation pay offer onto States workers, Team Parker have (true to form) decided that they aren't so interested in such scarily socialist ideas as negotiation or compromise with organised labour and that civil servants, teachers and uniformed services will be having the deal unceremoniously shoved into their pay packets at the end of this month.

You know, the same deal that produced a near-unanimous vote for a strike at a union meeting less than a month ago. Big think.

This stuff really does write itself sometimes. I'm not quite sure Parker realises that we no longer live in the 19th century and that you can't just stick up a middle finger to organised labour anymore and expect to get away with it.

I've gotta admit, I'm sitting here at my computer, thinking real hard, but even with my neoliberal ghoul Very Serious Businessman™ hat on, I'm struggling to see what Parker's optics are here. He certainly isn't about to beat down what Prospect only this week described as a potential "general strike", and no amount of hushed whispering at the shrine of the Great She-Elephant or combative emails aimed at bullying States employees into submission are going to change that any time soon. Of course, this is Jersey, so it might be too much to assume that the ruling class actually have a strategy here, but Parker is no thicko - everything we ever hear from the inside suggests that he's well aware of his own personal unpopularity. So far, they've kept up the pursuit of their slightly pathetic attempt to turn SOJ employees against each other - this time favouring nurses, midwives and manual and energy workers, who are set to see a revised offer putting them all on the same percentage pay rise (and taking away the higher raises set for the lowest-paid staff) - but it hasn't worked so far and it won't work again. States employees aren't stupid and Parker's efforts to divide and conquer have so far proved pretty inadequate, especially for someone who is supposed to have experience with this kind of thing.

It'll be quite something to see exactly how the unions end up responding to this but I'm not exactly expecting Terry Renouf to be extending Parker an invitation for tea any time soon.

Meanwhile, while everyone else is being told that there's no money (Parker's favourite line which is, er, actually complete bollocks), the supposedly austere new policy of no new hirings announced by Connétable de St. Oüen Richard Buchanan on Monday isn't going to apply to hiring new spin doctors and other "essential" roles at the top of the States. I feel like I remind people of this a lot, but we've already spent over nine million quid on making sure that the assorted transition team gruppenführers making up Parker's oberkommando are living in sufficient luxury. That's quite enough, thanks Charlie.

If you can find money to hire another Dr. Goebbels, you can find money to pay your employees properly. 

Is a little bit of honesty really too much to ask?