muckles:
My father was never a union man, but during the early 90’s he and his colleagues faced losing their jobs, they knew it was coming and understood times had changed, but wanted a fair settlement from the company.My father was well into his 50’s and the country was in the middle of a recession, he knew finding a new job quickly would be difficult. My father like many of his colleagues had worked for the company for over 20 years and until about 5 years earlier it was a family run company and the owners made a point of visiting each branch every yea and talking to the staff and more importantly listening to them. However the company was now a PLC, the family had long gone and was run by corporate types from a head office, no chance of them visiting a branch, let alone listening.
Head office made life very difficult for my father and his colleagues, seemily in the hope they would leave or they’d find a way of dismissing them, thus saving redundancy payments. So to fight this pressure my father and his colleagues joined a union, not sure which one, but they all joined and all stuck together, the union gave them legal advice and the respsentation they required and they got thier redundancy, more than the minimum as well. My father told me the day he was made redundant, he got the first goods nights sleep he’d had for a long while.
You wouldn’t be able to join a union nowadays in those circumstances. Once redundancy notices have been issued you cannot get a union to fight it retrospectively. You need to have been in the union for aprox 3 months beforehand. The unions will not fight anyone unless they are certain they can win, otherwise they are simply legal aid.