If a private sector worker falls in the wood and a public sector worker isn't there to witness it, does the worker make a sound? Definitely not! Even if the entire public sector is on a team building exercise in Coole Park, the private worker falls silently into the night. Meanwhile, if a sole public sector worker more than stubs their toe on the way into the clearing, ten of their colleagues immediately down tools to join in the screams.

Or so everyone outside the public sector seems to believe these days. Increasingly, private sector workers seem to think it's either us or them and they cry out, albeit silently, for their private sector colleagues who have fallen by the wayside, while public sector workers bemoan cuts to their benchmarked pay from their ivory towers of job security. Damn state employees, what have they ever done for us?

Truth is, the public sector has done a lot for us. They are the nurses and doctors that tend to us when we fall ill; they are the teachers that try to impress the importance of education on our children; they are the council workers who come out in the gale to ensure that roads are made passable; they are the gardaí who come to our aid when we are robbed or attacked; and they are the fire fighters who rescue us when the water gets too high or our over-priced houses go up in smoke.

So, why are we suddenly at each other's throats?

Public sector workers baffled by private sector workers anger at their protests should go back to the wood. Private sector workers have been enduring job losses and pay cuts for the past year but their cries, if they have deigned to make them, have fallen on deaf ears. Certainly they have not asked their public sector compatriots to join them in protesting their losses or join a mass boycott of all Dell products.

Those that have survived have engaged with their employers and endured substantial cuts to their hours and/or their wages in a bid to secure their positions at a time when their employers have made clear that it is their only hope of steering their way through the recession.

Faced with the same situation, public sector workers have opted to strike. While no one is criticising the public sector's right to be annoyed at the state of the country, they can well criticise their methods of demonstrating that anger.

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