Are some public sector unions now refusing a deal which may restore money that they have already been paid for reforms to work practices which they never actually changed?

In other words, they are complaining that they have had pay which they received for work they didn’t do taken off them? Wasn’t that what benchmarking was for? Increased pay in return for reform? And now they are objecting to that pay being linked to doing the thing they were paid the money for in the first place?

Of course, the biggest cop out is the straw man put up by some in the unions, that they are being punished for a crisis that they did not create. This is only partially true. They didn’t create the banking crisis, of course. But they did negotiate benchmarking, which sent public sector pay to a level we can no longer physically afford. So they are at least partially responsible for us having a wages bill we can no longer afford, surely?