I work with a customer on a daily base, still every little change need to be discussed with the Union, slowing the process down, and wasting money, silly things like writing numbers on a sample pot for example.
Skoda has defiantly to do with the workers mentality ( and they never striked since they are a capitalist country)
But other countries who are doing reasonable well, like Germany and Holland have a much less Union involved working environment and have a very good sociol security and HSE program’s to protect employees.
By the way when the Dutch public transport strikes, they still work normal only don’t let the passengers pay for the journey, so that the general public isn’t negative affected by their actions!!!
Here mostimes the aim is to hit the public as hard as possible to gain media interest.
If you have noticed, but I certainly have, the Unions are not very big in small cases, for that reason.
Oh and before I forget what has the Union inBritain brought to the DCPC??.
The Unions in other countries have agreed with the employers to pay for it, for example in Holland is agreed in the CAO (cooperative Workforce Agreement) that the employees plays for the DCPC and for the time needed to comply with the DCPC.
Also have they agreed on the Grandfather rights for DCPC who are much more lenient for older drivers than any other place.
WHERE WAS THE UNION IN BRITAIN WHEN THIS HAPPENED? WHERE THEY SLEEPING?? OR PARTYING WITH THEIR MEMBERS MONEY■■?
WHERE WAS THE UNION IN BRITAIN WHEN THIS HAPPENED? WHERE THEY SLEEPING?? OR PARTYING WITH THEIR MEMBERS MONEY■■?
Perhaps they realised that if they fought for employers to pay for it, that they would maybe need strike action to force it through.
And then people with your mentality would cross the picket lines etc.
perhaps the drivers in Holland etc get the DPCC paid for because they were prepared to fight for it themselves via the unions
On thing is certain, the bosses didn’t wake up one morning and say " don’t worry lads, we’ll pay that for you"
Ok , Skoda never striked since they were a capitalist country …did they strike before then?
In a communist stae I doubt that they were forever going on strike.
It wasn’t the workmanship that made their cars crap it was the designs and the materials used.
Doesn’t alter the fact that the bods on the workshop floor had little to do with turning the comany around.
By the way when the Dutch public transport strikes, they still work normal only don’t let the passengers pay for the journey, so that the general public isn’t negative affected by their actions!!!
that sound like my kind of industrial action. Sadly I imagine that it would probably be an offence in this country otherwise it would have been done.
I seem to remember reading about a driver letting his family ride without paying and he was prosecuted for it, so I imagine that letting all passengers ride for nothing could put the drivers involved in the courts. Perhaps the laws are different in holland regarding this, or perhaps the authorities know that retaliative action would result in an escalation of the dispute and are not prepared to fight.
Here mostimes the aim is to hit the public as hard as possible to gain media interest.
I don’t think so. The aim of any strike is to casue the maximum financial loss to the boss in order to force him to comply. usually, that means either to stop making his products or stop supplying his services. both of which affect the consumers.
High profile disputes, such as airlines etc, obviousley attract media attention.
No strike is called in order to get media attention as a first requirement.( although possibly I concede that the present public services pension dispute has a strong element of iy)
While Unions have many failings we’d still be sticking kids up chimneys without them… Oh, hang on
For those on a good screw, and I doubt there’s many, then good for you and I hope it lasts. But remember, most are not in that enviable position, not even protected by the minimum wage.
We are near bottom of the ■■■ pile with regards to pay and conditions, and with all this extra cheap labour being brought to market it’s only going one way.
When I worked in England there was no way I would cross the line, it is against my beliefs. In the USA I have a delema ! I haul out of and am acutually based in a strict union run refinery, but my company are not union linked. The refinery has a long strike before I came here and drivers were told to cross the line or quit and believe me transport companies mean that so the drivers who worked here then did so and were abused with rocks and other objects thrown at them as they went in or out. When the workers returned the strong union members treated drivers like crap, but the ones who didn’t really want to strike acted like nothing had happened.
In the case of a strike I would have no choice but cross the line when told.
I sympathise with your possible dilemma Pat.
Although I am a firm believer in unions and will whenever possible stick to my principles, there are times when a hard choice has to be made.
ultimately my first respnsiblity is to my family and any decision I may make takes their interests into account.
I would expect no man with family commitments to do different.
Which, incidentally is why I do not believe in the “if you don’t like it, leave” mentality.
Thanks to all from both sides for a sensible discussion without resort to name calling or insults.
Pat Hasler:
When I worked in England there was no way I would cross the line, it is against my beliefs. In the USA I have a delema ! I haul out of and am acutually based in a strict union run refinery, but my company are not union linked. The refinery has a long strike before I came here and drivers were told to cross the line or quit and believe me transport companies mean that so the drivers who worked here then did so and were abused with rocks and other objects thrown at them as they went in or out. When the workers returned the strong union members treated drivers like crap, but the ones who didn’t really want to strike acted like nothing had happened.
In the case of a strike I would have no choice but cross the line when told.
The fact is that the US economy of the 1960’s,which is as strong as it’s ever got and probably will ever be,was mostly based on the standards of living won by what calednoniandream’s lot would call obsolete militant union action by unions like the UAWU and the Teamsters.It’s no surprise that it’s all been going downhill there ever since Reagan broke the union’s power by shipping jobs to Mexico and importing stuff fron zb China.Hoffa was a patriot unlike zb Reagan.What you’ve described there is just typical US strike breaking methods used since the 1930’s.
If Hoffa was still around you’d have to be unionised before you’d be able to be based in the refinery and you’d (rightly have no option than to honour the picket line or lose your union card .
did members of Hoffas union get a vote.
it doesn’t (from what I have read)seem to be the kind of a union that I would want to be a part of.
my perception of a union is where members are free to unite…or not!
The unions over here are mostly ‘Mob Run’, I see it everytime I go near a construction site, there is always a small camper or tailer near the entrance with a union sign on it and a few chairs outside where the so called union reps sit and do nothing all day except making sure the dues are paid. These guys arrive in Caddilacs and Lincons and watch.
I have been on strike in the UK diring the 70’s, I was single and got nothing for strike pay, it made me very angry to have Bill Morris show up at the meetings in his Jaguar and preach to us about stiking it out as he went home to his mansion, just like Arthur Scargill who destroyed thousands of families but remained extremely rich.
Unions have a good side but a really big bad side.
From what I have been told about the strike at the refinery it went on for almost a year and the workers ended up worse off.
I had the impression that unions over there were run along those lines, but it was only an impression with no evidence.
I had gathered that by the fact that although there are various links betwen euro land unions and to some extent African and South American unions , there are none that i am aware of with North American or Canadian unions
Bill Morris, more interested in doing his bit for his brothers in Africa than his members in the uk, I told him this to his face.
Not sure about Scargill retiring rich, certainly not short of a bob or two, but rich. not sure about that.
Not wanting to get into the usual argument re Scargill but there is no doubt that he manoeuvred by Thatcher into the position where it became all or nothing.
del949:
I had the impression that unions over there were run along those lines, but it was only an impression with no evidence.
I had gathered that by the fact that although there are various links betwen euro land unions and to some extent African and South American unions , there are none that i am aware of with North American or Canadian unions
Bill Morris, more interested in doing his bit for his brothers in Africa than his members in the uk, I told him this to his face.
Not sure about Scargill retiring rich, certainly not short of a bob or two, but rich. not sure about that.
Not wanting to get into the usual argument re Scargill but there is no doubt that he manoeuvred by Thatcher into the position where it became all or nothing.
The miners went out for almost a year, most lost their homes and marriages. they achieved nothing for themselves but pain and suffering. Scargill and Thatcher lived well through all of it.
del949:
I had the impression that unions over there were run along those lines, but it was only an impression with no evidence.
I had gathered that by the fact that although there are various links betwen euro land unions and to some extent African and South American unions , there are none that i am aware of with North American or Canadian unions
Bill Morris, more interested in doing his bit for his brothers in Africa than his members in the uk, I told him this to his face.
Not sure about Scargill retiring rich, certainly not short of a bob or two, but rich. not sure about that.
Not wanting to get into the usual argument re Scargill but there is no doubt that he manoeuvred by Thatcher into the position where it became all or nothing.
I think you’ve got it the wrong way round.It was/is the ‘mob’ that had/has more of an interest with the bosses’ side of the fence not the union’s.The mob then infiltrated the unions to make life easier for the US government and the bosses to ‘organise’ the unions’ activeties (and pension funds) for their adavatage not the union members.Which is why,ironically considering Kennedy’s attitude to the unions,both Kennedy and Hoffa ended up going the same way when they (tried to) do things which weren’t to the advantage of the mob.
You can bet that ‘IF’ the mob really were on the union’s side,then ordinary workers in the US would be a lot better off and it would be the guvnors and the politicians over the years who ended up poorer.Or like Kennedy and Hoffa.
But the idea of not having closed shops just results in exactly the situation that Pat described of strikes being broken by non unionised labour.
your comment re american unions may be true. the outcome is the same as far as I can see.
the workers have to join and have to do as they are told.
not my idea of a union.
my idea is of a union being a democratic organisation.
not going down the scargill thatcher debate, its been done too many times.
del949:
your comment re american unions may be true. the outcome is the same as far as I can see.
the workers have to join and have to do as they are told.
not my idea of a union.
my idea is of a union being a democratic organisation.
It’s ironic how people’s idea of ‘democracy’ in government is that we get a choice in leadership that then tells us what to do when it suits them but those same people then seem to make a lot of fuss about the issue of ‘democracy’ in the union movement for doing something similar,when it doesn’t.
American unions,like ours,obviously don’t/no longer have a closed shop and/or solid support throughout the rank and file for the actions of fellow trade unionists and the results speak for themselves in both the example given by Pat and the example of the fate of the British mining industry.
I think there would have been a better outcome to the miners’ strike of 1984 (and therefore the fate of the rest of British industry and it’s workers and the economy in general that followed) ‘if’ we’d had the closed shop throughout British industry and solid backing for a general strike in support of the NUM ,than what actually happened with the UDM’s action and everyone leaving the rest of the NUM to get on with it.
While in the case of Pat’s example,as in the miners’ strike one,a closed shop with decent support,would probably have saved a lot of picket line violence and got the dispute over with,far sooner and probably far more in the strikers favour.
I recall when I worked for Tesco I was told i had to join the union, although ‘Closed shop’ was supposedly outlawed, I objected and said that working regulations stated an employee has the right to join a union and it was not compulsory, therefore I also had the right not to join a union. … However ! just to stick it to the shop steward instead of joining the same union that every employee was in I joined the TGWU and remained the only member of that union in Kiln Farm depot
