THE tirade by Bobby Meynell against the strike by public sector workers (HAS, July 11) requires a reply, though I am grateful it was given prominence.

Striking is a blunt instrument and will achieve nothing, but it is an action taken because pay and working conditions are determined by bargains based on the ability of workers to obtain a fair deal.

Not everyone is so well placed to get a good deal from their own bargaining power.

In the private sector, the workers and their trade unions have been humbled.

To me the whole system of pay determination is part of a dysfunctional social interaction.

A better system would be one in which rewards would be commensurate with the contributions made to providing added value to the community as a whole.

The powerful would not be in the position to exploit the weak.

To me, the enfeebling of the bargaining position of workers took hold when Margaret Thatcher defeated the miners and since then successive governments, Conservative and Labour, have been content to see the humiliation of the working people.

Until a fair system is set in place, there will be strikes by those who are prepared to make a sacrifice to take part in them. I would like to see strikes, like wars, relegated to a grim past .

G Bulmer, Billingham.