I’m not suggesting that the very fact that unions exist in the public sector means that they will somehow automatically spring up ex nihilo in other areas. What I’m saying is that the fact that strongly unionised workforces have better pay and terms and conditions than in non-unionised areas should be an incentive for greater union membership.
To be honest, and this isn’t intended as an insult, your use of the example of power workers turning off the switch is straight out of the Daily Mail right-wing hymnsheet circa 1979. Do we have to hear about the dead piling up in the streets as well?
As for your Jim Larkin analogy, one of the reasons I think it’s flawed is that Larkin’s approach wasn’t to demand that the members of craft Unions have their wages cut until their pay was the same as casual laborers hanging around the docks for a days work. It was to bring all labourers up to a decent level of pay and security of employment. That’s the difference between a left-wing approach and one based solely on some vague notion of fairness.
Focussing exclusively on public sector workers will do precisely nothing to improve the condition of low-paid workers in the private sector. In fact, it will have the opposite effect, as once the unions are defeated, there’s no real impediment to dismantling the very limited statutory protections there for all workers (except, ironically enough, the obligations imposed by EU membership, one of the reasons the Tories are pushing for renegotiation of the terms of membership). An equality based on all workers scrambling in bins for food isn’t an equality worth having.