On Air: 1700G striking public workers and gay rights
| 14:03 UK time, Thursday, 30 June 2011
Ìý
As strikes and protests dominate the headlines, we're debating:
Is it right for public sector workers to strike?
In Britain, hundreds of thousands of public sector workers have been striking today, angry about pay and changes to pensions. Thousands of schools closed and many public services were disrupted. says some emergency service workers also stayed at home.
All this as Greece recovers from two days of violent protests about public spending cuts. Just last year, workers in South Africa's schools and hospitals were locked in a long running dispute -- which included weeks of strikes.
Do people who provide essential public services - as police officers, teachers or nurses, for example - have the right to strike? Or is industrial action irresponsible, even selfish?
And we're also asking: what's the best approach to gay rights? In the US, New York recently became the sixth American state to allow same sex marriage. We talked earlier in the week about addressing this - and our interest was sparked again today because a 91Èȱ¬ report about so-called "corrective rape" in South Africa has attracted lots of interest. We're hoping to get together two people with strongly opposing views on this to talk it out.
