Strike day across the Civil Service today. I'm in work, but Deb is off. Always a source of tension.

The office is empty, but I am using my own form of subversion by not actually doing any work.

It's not that I don't agree with the point of the strike. In fact, as the pay deals have got worse and worse over the years, and the conditions have deteriorated - along with the attempt to remove some of our pension rights (let's face it, a lot of civil servants have always accepted poorer pay on the basis that the pension makes up for it to some extent - I've worked in areas where senior management have made this an explicit selling point for below inflation pay rises) I've become more in favour of industrial action. I'm increasingly of the opinion that what the government is doing effectively amounts to the destruction of the civil service. Large parts are now run privately, with the movement of further civil service roles into private hands (particularly most of JobcentrePlus) in the pipeline. Pay continues to deteriorate - and despite popular opinion, most civil servants are poorly paid. I'm a middle manager with 15 years experience, but I earn less than £25,000.

No, the main reason I'm in work now rather than on strike is that I can't abide the union, on a number of different levels. I have never believed that Mark Serwotka has the strategy or ability to do the best job of representing members interests. He has been militantly in favour of industrial action, even when it blatantly wasn't effective, ever since he was elected. In the dispute over the removal of screens for JobcentrePlus, PCS shamelessly abandoned staff who had gone without pay for 6 months during the strike and caved in to a deal they could have had months earlier. And lastly, I've never yet met a local PCS rep that I felt I could believe in. Most seem too full of their own importance and their ability to get one over local managers, and don't really have local members' best interests at heart.

So the long and short is that I find it hard to support PCS, even though I disagree strongly with the direction the civil service is being taken. So I'm in work, saving myself a day's pay, but being subversive by writing a blog entry rather than working.