http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2010 ... safe-seats



Between the average union having all the foresight of Mystic Meg, and Ball's potential power play, Labour will almost certainly rip itself apart as the incumbent MPs struggle to maintain the new right-leaning outlook

Could be a vote winner for the Tories. The last thing the middle classes want (which is who's votes Labour need to win the election) is 70's style powerful unions.

An so say all of us

You gotta ask who will stand up for the workers then. I think the public is too timid when it comes to work relations. We all know that the word “modernising” is simply a euphemism for sacking half the workforce and expecting the rest to fill the gaps, and this is what big companies are doing. The unions should be protecting their members’ interests. No one else seems to give a toss these days.

I am still feeling “militant”. This may last all week now…

There won't be any workers in a couple of years, just management.

[quote="paulzolo
You gotta ask who will stand up for the workers then. I think the public is too timid when it comes to work relations. We all know that the word “modernising” is simply a euphemism for sacking half the workforce and expecting the rest to fill the gaps, and this is what big companies are doing. The unions should be protecting their members’ interests. No one else seems to give a toss these days.

I am still feeling “militant”. This may last all week now…[/quote]
The problem unions have is they don’t seem to know when a fight is worth it and when its not. There is also still the whole Winter Of discontent that is still in many voters memories

The BA “fight” is an example
BA cabin staff gets paid more than Cabin staff in similar airlines
BA has more staff / plane
BA is losing money

Surely this is a case of damage limitation as in
-negotiate to have no compulsory redundancies
-have generous redundancy payments( so you get more volunteers)

Rather than possibly drive the Co to the wall

Then you’ll have execs walking away with huge bonuses.

No - it smells rotten. If BA can’t afford it’s cabin crew wage fee, then that’s management’s fault for letting it get so high. It is grossly unfair to expect the staff to take the burden for their failings.

I've never seen a union in my lifetime that had the guts or the sense for a fight

I have - I’ve done my picket line duty too. It was the CPSA, which was pretty left wing. I was at the time taking an interest in the union, and was considering it as more than as a member. The job I was in was showing itself to be alarmingly dead end, so I left.

Unions still will, but as unions not as MP's. Those strike mongers should not be allowed to effectively buy seats in parliament. The idea of an MP is that they represent the constituents, not a union.

Except of course that in Labours case a significant proportion of their money comes from the Unions, one of the largest of which is Unite.
While an MP should of course represent the constituency they are elected to represent the Unions also have a right to expect to have their agenda represented by the party they effectively pay for. The two things are not incompatible.
The Tories, or indeed any political party, claiming it isn't pushing some sort of agenda espoused by it's backers is lying.
If you don't want political parties to be influenced by the source of their funding then they would need to be funded out of general taxation (or other neutral source) on an equal basis.

Calling Unite or indeed any Union strike mongers assumes that they call for strike action at the drop of a hat. That's simply not the case.
It's in the best interests of union members to be in work but not when the management are determined to screw them over. The UK already has relatively poor employment rights compared to several other large EU states. When negotiations have failed why shouldn't a Union ballot its members on strike action? It's the last resort to make their point.
Once, as an employee, you've given away your rights to contractual benefits and pay there is little chance you'll get them back again.

In the BA case, it's not as if Unite hasn't been willing to negotiate. The strike is currently on because BA removed an offer from the table because the Union announce exact dates when it would go on strike.
By announcing a strike date (or series of them) the Union creates a hard deadline by which the parties should agree and also removes uncertainty for passengers as to if their flight(s) will be affected. That gives passengers an opportunity to rearrange or cancel plans and also gives confidence to people travelling on days that aren't affected. It should also be pointed out that Unite was very clear that it would not go on strike over the Easter holidays, which would have inflicted much more serious damage on BA.
So we have the Union, which had already offered to make savings of a similar value to those required by BA but whos offer was rejected, being vilified for giving BA customers concrete dates when flights would be affected and specifically not striking over a holiday period. In the mean time BA's management appear to be getting off scot free (I bet they won't be seeing their number significantly cut).

When there is no restraint in board room pay there is little appetite for staff pay cuts.