News CLICKY

IMO he's right. Some unions are stuck in the 1970's.

ASLEF I'll give you. However how someone who has effectively managed to stall what recovery the UK economy had managed dead with a single budget can accuse somebody else of being 'the forces of stagnation' boggles the mind.

Jon

How does he plan to promote growth exactly?

You need unions. They are absolutely necessary. Firstly,they the workers. If the workforce is not allowed to fight for better pay and conditions, then we will live ina society where slavery becomes the norm.

Secondly, they provide a necessary check against the exesses of capitalism. All this "Open Market" nonsense sounds fine when the rich boys talk about it, but the reality is that those forces drive people out of jobs, force lower pay, require more hours...

On paper, it all sounds great. I'm sure that somewhere there is a very well constructed spreadsheet with it allworked out. Thing is, these calculations and those doing them forget that those numbers impact on people. If people are not allowed to protest against their inevitable doom, I really don't think it's worth bothering with any kind of austerity programme.

In his little world, Osborne assumes that we all have an equal wealth to his. He doesn't need to work, and quite frankly I wish he'd realise that and bugger off.

I'm not saying unions are a bad idea. I'm just saying some unions still run by the 70's mantra of "We strike therefor we are".
That's a bad thing. Striking left, right and centre doesn't do anybody any favours.

I used to be in a Union, but they did f*** all for me when I needed them. Nowadays, they seem to put their own petty interests before everything else. Sure, they help in negotiating pay and stuff, but their willingness to strike at the slightest provocation helps nobody. Can you imagine what state we'd be in if every Government we had capitulated at the slightest sign of union unrest. And what of the union leaders? You don't see them living in hardship, do you? In 2009, some of them got 20% pay rises.

I just agreed with you on political matters.

If I could name one good union it would be the NASUWT - excellent union for me and my parents and, unlike the NUT, very reluctant to strike.

I agree, in the US the real median wage of men has not risen since 1980. They have only kept the economy going through indebtedness, or a form of financial slavery even though it is even harder to go bankrupt in the US now. In the UK it has been unions pushing for minimum wages. Otherwise wages would have gone nowhere after the Tories abolished the wages councils. A friend of mine considered doing some bar work, and the wages he was offered were no better than he had more than twenty years earlier as a bar supervisor. They were the minimum wage but then wages councils meant you could live on a barman's wage.

I've had about a dozen jobs over the years, plus been self-employed.

Only one of the companies had mandatory union membership and it was the worst company to work for. It was outdated, the people were clock watchers and nobody really pulled their weight.

In the other companies, there was a dynamic atmosphere and people got regular pay rises, if they delivered the goods, if they didn't they'd get low or no payrises or even demoted back to a level where they were productive.

The company with the union made me redundant and the union did bugger all to help - in fact, the company laid off about 40% of its workforce, and apart from a couple of partially disabled people who were wrongfully dismissed, the union just rolled over... Funny, the union reps weren't among those being laid off.

I think that our positive attitudes towards unions date back to before the war (WW2) when they actually help raise living standards. Nowadays they are too self-centred. They enable inept staff to stay in jobs which demoralises the rest of the team. So my opinion is that they can be a significant positive force if they use their power wisely. Much of the equality laws have come about because of unions. So I can see both sides of the argument.

+1

I'm all for some Unions, particularly the ones that are currently trying to save the NHS and its workforce. There's alot of, what amounts to, blackmailing being done at the moment and employers, no matter who they are, cannot be allowed to get away with it.

But, yes, in some cases some Union leaders are in it for reasons other than that of making sure their workers aren't trodden on.

The alternatives without unions now would be a lot worse. Companies will drive down wages and living standards for employees yet pay themselves even more. The Tories are slowly eroding a century of social gains so that their backers can get richer.

The other problem that I've seen with unions is when they've fought tooth and nail to keep someone in their job, apparently oblivious to the fact that their most incompetent [LIFTED] on the planet at their given role.