The issue that prompted most comments online was the reported threat by chief treasury secretary Danny Alexander to appeal directly to employees affected by the reform of public-sector pensions, thus going over the heads of union leaders.

Some of your comments:

• Chris T: As someone who has worked a total of nine years in the public sector and 31 in the private, I feel well qualified to observe that there aren’t significant differences in pay in the middle of such organisations. But there are differences in pace and security. The private sector has a greater sense of urgency and the imperative to survive market conditions is keenly felt. The sense of entitlement to index-linked, defined-benefit, final salary pension plans that prevails in the public sector is no longer appropriate. A lot of people realise this and the government is right to appeal directly to them.

• Tony O: I am a public-sector worker and a member of a union. However, I just do not see a 22 per cent vote in favour of strike action in a turnout of less than 30 per cent as anything like a mandate. Maybe union leaders need to be bypassed if they plan on pressing ahead. Don’t low turnouts tend to suggest that people really aren’t that passionate about the subject?

• Paul M: I am a civil servant, working in a small office with three others. All of us have changed our minds so many times over the past week or so as to whether we will strike on 30 November. I voted against the strike and want to go into work. But we have been told that if we attend work, we can be moved to fill the post of a striking worker. If we fail to do so, then disciplinary action will be taken. I’m happy to do my job, but not that of someone else on strike. The only solution is to stay out. It seems to me that both management and the four of us are shooting ourselves in our combined feet!

• Mara Thorne: I’ve been a trustee of private-sector final salary pension schemes in two companies. In the last one, when staff were faced with the choice of paying more to keep the scheme going, keeping contributions the same in return for lower accruals, or leaving the scheme, nobody left, and only half a dozen people froze their contribution rate. Everybody else understood the value of the final salary pension, took a deep breath and paid more in. Contributions went up over a period of six years from 4 per cent to 7 per cent of salary. In the end, the scheme closed anyway. As trustees, we argued for staff to be given the choice to pay in even more to keep it going, but the company didn’t give us the option. That’s the reality these days. It’s tough for everybody.

For the original news story and more comments on it: bit.ly/unionbypass