THERE is always a sharp intake of breath when people at the sharp end of the public sector threaten to strike.

Take today’s story about teachers being balloted over industrial action against proposed changes to their pensions.

The unions are forecasting it will close the majority of schools in Oxfordshire – and many people will be affected if that happens.

We may be in the phoney war stage of an industrial dispute, with the unions flexing their arm and predicting chaos in the hope the Government will back down.

And let’s remember that the last round of strikes from teachers saw 32 schools completely shut, with another 26 suffering some effect.

It will not be a popular stance with the vast majority of parents.

But you do have to look the dispute from the teachers’ point of view.

It will be difficult for many of them to go out on strike knowing it affects the children they teach, but the sums some of them face losing are life-changing.

And they work – like most of us in the private sector – for the money in their pay packet and their pension.

Would many of us take a similar change without considering protesting by withdrawing our labour? Hopefully both sides will find some compromise.