[soco]

Deals kept changing, both the economy and politics never kept the same line over time. We even vote every few years for a deal presented in writing and it never turns out as written, so I'm not sure why some folks could claim with a straight face whatever historical promise. And let's be honest, there was never a "written deal", ever - what you mention here is simply an expectation building up for the last decades and currently ebbing down.

[spwa4]

My father was a teacher, a public servant. At one point he showed me "the deal in writing". Signed by the director of the school. It had a reference to the law, but everything was copied into the contract. The pension plan, including the age he would be allowed to go onto pension, how sick days are handled, how holidays are handled, how long-term illness would be handles, sickness insurance, what was covered, how ... It was over 20 pages, which was certainly not the norm for a contract in the 70s.

They updated the law and the contract meant nothing. I mean, he and other teachers occasionally, through long term and sometimes very wide strikes, got some new policy struck down. But never through the courts. They won several court cases against the government, mind you, that was not the problem. But the government simply voted in a new law, including a stipulation that the court case result meant nothing (because of course a bunch of people were owed back pay due to the court's decision. Out of over 10.000 teachers that got court judgements against the government, TWO got paid what the contract explicitly said over 1 million teachers had a right to)