Time to take a hit

Public sector employees are facing massive job losses (your report, 2 July) and there are not enough private sector vacancies to absorb these. Many employees in the private sector have taken wage cuts of ten per cent and more, so that the number of job losses in their firms can be kept to a minimum.

Thus they still have a job and 90 per cent of their previous income, rather than being out of work and trying to live on unemployment benefit. This seems to me to be a sensible approach under the circumstances.

So an obvious solution to the present problem is for everyone in the public sector to take an equitable pay cut to absorb the overall shortfall in the money available.

This would not address the problem of overstaffing, of course, nor pensions, but it would mean that people still have jobs, a living wage, all the present services would continue, and the government would continue to receive taxes. The results would be immediate.

It is not a new idea. Germany and Holland did it successfully during the 1980s. Ireland has recently adopted it. What is stopping us in Britain doing it too?

GK CONNELLY

Horsburgh Gardens

Balerno