Unions and strikes

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Sun 14 Aug 2016 21:35
Unions and strikes - galileo

First of all I must confess to having been an Office Representative for what was then TASS, the union for Technical and Supervisory Staff.

I also confess to having taken part in a two week strike in the 1970s and in the negotiations with Management that settled the dispute; a favourable outcome for us, in getting more annual holidays and shorter hours. This was in the private sector, so the only effect was on the company's short-term profits.

I therefore understand that many workers have achieved better pay and conditions through Union membership.

Where a union promotes strikes which directly cause serious problems for thousands of non-involved members of the public I question the motives.

Typical examples are the French port workers and French Air traffic controllers, who time their actions for peak holiday periods. The people who suffer disruption have no means of affecting the outcome, as the other parties in the dispute are usually government or government subsidised.

Closer to home, a few hundred Tube drivers, SE train conductors and others in the rail industry have been able to inconvenience tens of thousands each day of action. The justification seems flimsy if looked at in detail, suggesting a political motive, rather than workers' benefit.

(It has been suggested that if road haulage drivers had been similarly unionised and willing to take a united stand they could have had better wages and conditions. Road haulage is far more fragmented than Rail, with hundreds of employers, would that ever have worked?)

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Mon 15 Aug 2016 00:39
Unions and strikes - Avant

There's good and bad about privatisation (although the way the railways were organised by the Major government was just plain stupid), but at least we are spared national strikes.

We still don't seem to have the new rule in force which says that 50% of those elgible to vote must vote for a strike: I don't know why it's taking so long. I'm sure that some at least of these strikes are politically motivated. There is a core of hard-left-wingers who have control of some of the unions (and believe Jeremy Corbyn to be a good leader....); they are further left then Michael Foot, who was a highly intelligent man but still unelectable.

The previous attempt to form a centre-left grouping (the SDP) foundered when Labour started moving away fron extremism (under Neil Kinnock, followed by Smith and Blair). There seems a stronger case for such a grouping now.

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Tue 16 Aug 2016 18:41
Unions and strikes - gordonbennet

I can only really speak for the lorry drivers, and you've got more chance of urinating in the queens handbag than getting 5 lorry drivers to agree on anything let alone get them all to join one lorry drivers only union, which the govt of the day would infiltrate bearing in mind how powerful one such would be, able to halt the entire country in a matter of hours not days.

The job itself has historically attracted independent thinkers who don't take kindly to being told how to do something they've been doing competently man and boy for a lifetime by some union rep of long standing transport affiliation, let alone the new college kids who've been at work 5 minutes, those indy thinkers with can do attitude might be thinning out in numbers mind as the industry becomes over regulated so anything is possible in the future.

As i said in that other post, those in haulage who have class leading terms and conditions are almost without exception unionised, the difference in terms and conditions between the good collectively agreed contracts, and what those companies who are hostile to unions pay without any consultation worth mentioning are staggering, easily twice the average hourly rate or rather often a similar top line but around 1/2 to 2/3rds the hours worked, with other benefits such as full sick pay schemes etc.

Transport has suffered greatly from the recruitment of foreign nationals, particularly over the last 20 years, this alone has resulted in serious wage stagnation just as it has in many industries, though it must be said at this point that turkeys who vote for their very own Christmas really shouldn't be all that surprised when Dec 25th arrives.

Unfortunately with public transport workers, rail or air, any action they take is going to affect the public, naturally as they are the point of the business or service, arguably they cause less disruption to business by timing strikes for holiday times, though that's hardly going to cut any ice with those affected, but if you are going to strike it makes sense to cause as much trouble as possible to concentrate the minds of the negotiating management and hopefully get management ears bent by politicians jumping up and down urging them to come to some agreement.

Little point in going on strike when the effects are going to be minimal, and those affected by the strike easily able to find alternative transport, weakening your bargaining position.

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Tue 16 Aug 2016 19:19
Unions and strikes - galileo

I think you have summed up the issue admirably and I accept your lucid and logical conclusions.

My point was that in some cases the action is not primarily intended to improve the lot of the workers involved; in those instances it appears to be driven by a political and agenda, i.e. "we don't like this government, so we'll cause them as much embarrassment as possible."

Brother Scargill's efforts were chiefly aimed at changing the government by other than democratic means. Remember, he always refused to let the miners have a ballot on the strike, as they might not have supported it.

Only 393 train conductors were allowed to vote in the SE trains dispute, yet total membership of RMT is about 80,000. In the long term, further legislation may be demanded and pushed through, not necessarily helpful to the members, a significant number of whom may realise this and be less militant than the current leaders.

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Wed 24 Aug 2016 13:59
Unions and strikes - Bromptonaut

Only 393 train conductors were allowed to vote in the SE trains dispute, yet total membership of RMT is about 80,000. .

Not sure I understand your point here. The action involves one subset of workers in one train operating company. The turnout/vote provisions coming into force soon (or possibly already in force but predated by ballot here) would be amongst those in this dispute, not the whole union.

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Wed 24 Aug 2016 23:01
Unions and strikes - galileo

Only 393 train conductors were allowed to vote in the SE trains dispute, yet total membership of RMT is about 80,000. .

Not sure I understand your point here. The action involves one subset of workers in one train operating company. The turnout/vote provisions coming into force soon (or possibly already in force but predated by ballot here) would be amongst those in this dispute, not the whole union.

I'm sure you are aware that 40% of trains in the South East already run with drivers responsible for door-closing (the supposed root of the dispute) and the conductors on those trains are working as proposed and have been for some time. This is a dispute manufactured by the union leadership, picking on the 393 as a 'force multiplier' to cause diruption.

I know from experience the only members who attend union branch meetings (which is where these schemes are cooked up and voted on) are invariably the most militant, all the ones with common sense would rather be in the comfort of their own home after a day's work.

Don't suppose you ever read Way of the World column in the Telegraph in the 1970s/1980s and comments on the Amalgamated Holeborers Union, whose rule book ran to 2000 pages and the concordances to it exceeded War and Peace and the Bible in length.

Satirical but relevant in the 1970s, certain union and political leaders would wish to take us back to those days.

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Tue 16 Aug 2016 21:06
Unions and strikes - John Boy

I can only really speak for the lorry drivers, and you've got more chance of urinating in the queens handbag than getting 5 lorry drivers to agree on anything let alone get them all to join one lorry drivers only union, which the govt of the day would infiltrate bearing in mind how powerful one such would be, able to halt the entire country in a matter of hours not days.


What a sentence and what a memorable phrase lurking there! Is that an original, GB?

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Wed 17 Aug 2016 12:44
Unions and strikes - SteVee

Let's not forget the Labour Party's promise to 'Weaponise the NHS' followed by junior doctors going on strike. Just because they didn't get into government does not mean they don't have any power.

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Wed 17 Aug 2016 21:00
Unions and strikes - gordonbennet

What a sentence and what a memorable phrase lurking there! Is that an original, GB?

The phrase is an original, one of SWMBO's favourite quips which i plagiarise regularly when it seems apt, however the unrinating bit is not part of the OE SWMBO spec, you can fill in that alternative yourself..:-)

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Fri 19 Aug 2016 16:57
Unions and strikes - concrete

Good thread galileo. Your point is correct about unions being simply motivated by political action, loosely justified by the old 'for the benefit of our members' argument. Poor old 'joe public' gets it in the neck every time. It is about time 'joe public' had a union and organised 'strikes' or rather non-use of these services. If that could be achieved and the workers faced the possibility of being laid off because the business was failing then we would have some sort of equalibrium. Come the revolution brothers!!!!

In the late sixties our company was a union shop. The company wanted to bring in a bonus system, which most of us agreed with because we could earn more by working harder. The union were set against this for very spurious reasons. Mainly because they could see it as the thin end of the wedge. No worker who is earning good money and therefore spends it and has committments is going to strike. It ended up most of us leaving the union, we had a company vote and turfed out the union and became an open shop. Good news all round, except of course for the odd lazy soul who now had to actually do some work for his wages. Never been keen on unions since that lesson. They were not remotely interested in our benefit, only their own.

A friend of mine owned a transport company a while ago, mainly delivering newsprint for the newspaper industry. To avoid problems and ultimately keep a loyal workforce he paid at least 10% above any locally agreed union agreement. This kept everyone sweet. He had one problem driver. The solution; he promoted him to yard manager. Best move he made as the pedantic so and so ran the yard like clockwork and managed the drivers very well.

Listening to likes of Red Len McCluskey and his ilk makes me wonder how these m****s would fare in there socialist heaven of Russia. They would be quietly spirited away some dark night, never to be seen again. When they are that well paid and cossetted they see it as a right to have regular enhancements and a stike threat to disrupt the people who pay their wages is their weapon of choice. About time we all got a grip of these m****s.

Cheers Concrete

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Wed 31 Aug 2016 21:05
Unions and strikes - focussed

I was a TASS member in the early 70's and later an MSF member in the eighties. My experience of their "advisory" services if you had some bother at work was that you would have been better off talking to next door's dog - they were useless.

My wife worked in the NHS and fell foul of an aggressive chief exec of a trust who wanted her out of quite a senior postion at no cost to the trust.

My wife was a long-standing member of Unison and called on them for help.

They refused any assistance as " it would not be conducive to ongoing relations with management"

What this actually meant was that the union rep was around the chief execs house for dinner most weekends-we found out afterwards.

She privately found a brilliant solicitor who got her to play her management like an old violin until they had provided enough evidence to take them to court for constructive dismissal.

Her solicitor was paid for by our household legal insurance - they didn't like it - but they had to pay up!

The trust management continued to tell lies and offered trumped up dodgy evidence and eventually dug themselves a really deep hole which they had to buy their way out of by way of a lovely big payout to my wife!

So much for unions - A waste of your money brothers!

Edited by focussed on 31/08/2016 at 21:06

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Wed 31 Aug 2016 23:11
Unions and strikes - gordonbennet
So much for unions - A waste of your money brothers!

That's what happens when the wrong people get elected as stewards, the selection of which is one of the most important union members can make.

As for wasting money in union subs, not really, my pay and perks over the years being in jobs with proper union negotiated terms and conditions has been well in excess of what others in similar jobs but lacking union representation would have been.

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Wed 31 Aug 2016 23:41
Unions and strikes - galileo
So much for unions - A waste of your money brothers!

That's what happens when the wrong people get elected as stewards, the selection of which is one of the most important union members can make.

As for wasting money in union subs, not really, my pay and perks over the years being in jobs with proper union negotiated terms and conditions has been well in excess of what others in similar jobs but lacking union representation would have been.

When (as I mentioned in my original post) I was involved in an offical TASS dispute, our full-time TASS official was excellent, correctly read how the management would react and that we would achieve what we had asked for within a matter of a few days.

(In those days if you were on an 'official' (i.e. supported by the union) strike the union paid 2/3 of your take-home pay as 'strike pay', which meant members suffered less financial pressure than employers.)

TASS, like many others, has now been absorbed into Unite, which has, I suspect, meant that average levels of education of the membership are not so high as when it was a small, specialised union.

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