There's a quote in that article that's worth study...
Lucy Morton, deputy general secretary of the Immigration Services Union, said she regretted its members were striking.
"This union hasn't taken industrial action at all in its 28-year history. This is something our members feel deeply and desperately strongly about, but nonetheless it's no-one's wish to disrupt the border, or to cause chaos to the travelling public. It's the only way we have left to get the government to hear us."
She added that although she believed they would not have public sympathy for the action, she wanted it to be effective so they would not have to take further action.
It is bad enough that these public sector workers are striking to force the Government to sustain their unsustainably generous pension payments from the taxes paid by the rest of the country, whose pensions are non-existent or almost valueless because of the financial crisis of which the public sector workers appear to be blissfully unaware.
But that sort of comment from a union leader, starting with fake expressions of regret, moving on to the demonstrable lie that they really do not want to cause disruption, and ending with a naked threat that if they do not get their way there will be more, is enough to make me want to find a striker and beat him or her to death next week.
Why the hell should people in the private sector, including those living on a State pension only, pay to subsidise the grossly over-generous pension of a workshy parasite in the public sector?
Let the b******s have their generous final salary schemes by all means, provided that they, and no one else, pay for it. These schemes started disappearing in the private sector in the 1980's, when it became clear that they were unsustainable. And it is the public sector unions who have bullied successive Governments ever since into sweeping the fact that they are unaffordable under the carpet.
So spare me the crocodile tears, Lucy, as well as your fatuous comments.
All I hope is that when your members are taking a day off next week, the lack of "public sympathy" will manifest itself in some quite violent confrontations by parents having to look after their kids for the day, probably with loss of pay, by air passengers who are disrupted with devastating consequences, and by the rest of us who have just had enough of civil servants and council staff taking the p**s.
Especially I hope that passengers will simply not accept being corralled at airports for hours and will simply force their way through the barriers in a mass uprising.