Trade Unions! Do They Still Have A Role To Play?

[fr8neck 10]

If there are positions that you describe as ‘management’ oppositions which involve less pay than driving, then I would question their nature as managerial posts. Office boys perhaps, but not true management. It would seem that your negative experiences have been with working people who just happen to be white-collared and therefore satisfy your need to have a ‘them and us’ culture.

 

Too often, the shop floor do little but whine and complain, with no understanding of the constant efforts made by their management (by which I mean senior managers and directors) to keep a business afloat and keep the staff employed. They look with unguarded jealousy at company cars, and with no understanding whatsoever of business, commerce or production planning, decide in their little minds that the ‘management swines’ get something for nothing, that anybody could swan in and out of a comfy office in a suit, and that it should be the shop floor on the big bucks, not the suits. Well, life’s a little more complex than that. Those jealous left-wingers on the shop floor would have been well advised to work a little harder in education, leave school with a bit more than a black eye and somebody else’s coat, and develop a qualified profession.

 

Then, and only then, would they be able to begin to understand what is actually involved in running a company, and why keeping a bunch of whining workers content is a thankless and very difficult task fraught with external constraints for which those workers seek to blame the very management that attempts to shield and protect them.

 

 

Why does income determine whether or not a person is a manager? By this reckoning these 'Office boys' shall attain 'managerial positions' the instant my wages have been driven low enough, or they receive a pay increase.

They manage, therefore they are managers.

They don't do anything else-they manage.

Their pay levels are, like mine, determined by a combination of supply and demand and negotiating skill/power.

They happen to be an easily replacable sort of manager- therefore they are poorly payed.

 

I don't have any 'need' for an us and them culture, that is the situational logic of the thing: lowering my pay and conditions looks like the easiest way to improve the bottom line.(and, obviously, lowering their own pay and conditions does not.)

Other areas of commerce may differ but road haulage is a very competitive, high investment/low return industry; as all firms are in essentially the same position regarding cost of other inputs, trying to gain an advantage by stiffing the workers appears to management as a good idea.

 

Keeping a business afloat may be of interest to senior managers and directors on some occasions, but not necessarily: it depends upon their contract. Keeping the staff employed is very rarely an interest; why would it be? If the job could be done by half the staff then half would be got rid of. Businesses are not run as charitable institutions for their (non-boardroom) employees.

The rest of this paragraph is amusing enough but bears little resemblance to reality. I am interested in my pay and conditions, not those of managers, and the relationship between my pay and the cost of living is the one that matters.

The only time managers pay is under scrutiny is when staff are told there is no money for them and plenty for the higher-ups.

The assumption of ignorance of 'production planning' etc is also false: large numbers of employees in the modern workplace move in and out of self-employment/employment and understand perfectly well how businesses are run.( at my present firm many of my colleagues are farmers and run what are fairly large 'businesses', their driving is part-time during relatively slack parts of the 'farming year')

 

The final paragraph is incorrect: as stated, businesses are not run to 'shield and protect' their workers: they are run to maximise profit.

Without the 'whining workers' there would be no business: if they were not absolutely and entirely necessary to the business process they would not be there.

[NorbertColon 10]

The only way a working man will make a decent wage is by fighting for it.

Your attitude is why so many people are working for coppers, when others are raking it in..

A worker, whether skilled or unskilled, should only be worth as much as his skills - or lack of skills - are worth to an employer.

 

Is there a 'union' that will guarantee higher sale prices for the products of a factory which has to pay inflated wages to unskilled labour? Of course not, so why should workers be paid more than their services are worth to the employer?

 

The selfishness that Thatcher introduced in the 80s has proved the downfall of the country as I long predicted.

If you mean the legacy of success that led to our current economic strength, then you are correct. If you suggest that such success, based entirely on Tory long-term planning and bold decisions based in the 80s is a 'downfall', then I suggest you study economics.

[NorbertColon 10]

NorbertColon shows us that it is absolutely correct that capitalism offers us choices. You either work for peanuts with crap terms and conditions, or your job will be farmed out to a country with worse wages and worse terms and conditions. That is a choice, you can't deny it.

Or, and here's a radical thought for you, you work hard at school, get yourself some qualifiactions (or skills), and make yourself a marketable entity in your own right.

 

It's called rewarding effort and ability, rather than laziness and ineptitude.

[fox20thc 10]

Or, and here's a radical thought for you, you work hard at school, get yourself some qualifiactions (or skills), and make yourself a marketable entity in your own right.

 

It's called rewarding effort and ability, rather than laziness and ineptitude.

 

I have many skills and put them to good use, however I work in an industry due to circumstance and needing it to be part time which has seen the announcement of 4000 jobs being offshored to India. So does that mean I am lazy and inept?

[NorbertColon 10]

In this case, as in now more often than not, the role of the union wasn't to do the right thing. It wasn't to protect the honest workers and their wages. It was there to spite the employer, and to generate a roll for itself - an extremely selfish act..

Indeed, and the reason that the unions act in such a way is that they are staffed by blinkered socialists, not unlike some of the posters on this thread, who are blindly embittered towards the 'management' and unable to extricate themselves from the very unhealthy 'them and us' culture of the 70s.

 

I own my company, and I have a number of employees. I have written our company policy documents and employee policies, and these are based on EU law, as all companies are obliged to do. My employees know their rights, and know what I can and can't do. Not one of them chooses to be in a union - they all know, as I do, that there is nothing a union can offer them that is better than what I have in place for them now.

Absolutely as it should be. There is abundant legislation in place now to protect employees without unions. As you will be very aware it s very difficult to get rid of the most unreliable and incompetent employees, even without them being assisted by unions. The laws already work in their favour.

[AnnElk 10]

my unions a waste of time. the union magazine's full of stuff about the struggle against oppression in some tinpot country on the other side of the planet thats got no relevance to my job. And the staff reps in our place are only interested in their mates

[fox20thc 10]

my unions a waste of time. the union magazine's full of stuff about the struggle against oppression in some tinpot country on the other side of the planet thats got no relevance to my job. And the staff reps in our place are only interested in their mates

 

Interesting point of view, and which union would this be? And if union reps are not repping everyone say something!

[NorbertColon 10]

Can you Mr Sidebottom explain to me, why your employees have to be tied to you?

Why do you insist on a certain number of hours per week, and set times per day?

Unless you are running a continuous process facility, I cannot see the reason for it.

Let people come and go as they please, and only pay them for the hours they work. .

Artisan, do I recall correctly that you yourself claim to have spent a couple of decades in ‘senior management’?

So let me ask you this. Let’s say you need 500 people to man your branch of an organisation. Are you happy to subject your middle and junior managers, and your poor foremen, to the nightmare of organising shift rotas when the employees can come and go as they wish?

Do you not think that the commitment that the company must give to the worker (wages, pension, sick pay, holidays, maternity leave, paternity leave) should be rewarded in reciprocation by just a little commitment from the worker? No – you say they should just be able to float in willy nilly as and when they please. What an utterly asinine suggestion – which lends great doubt to your claim ever to have been in management (as does your shop steward attitude).

Let them demand their own payment for their hours that they work in your employ, and sort the rest out for themselves.

A free market. The devil take the hindmost.

I’m not quite sure what you mean by this, but if you mean they should set their own wage level, then you should put the meths back under the sink and leave it well alone for a few days.

Mind you, imagine if people could just be able to walk off the street into a factory’s reception and demand to be given a day’s employment sweeping up, at £50 an hour. That’d be great for the workers, wouldn’t it? British industry would be in the dark ages within a year, but that’s fine, because the poor workers would have been looked after.

 

Why are you so very deeply embittered towards people who have the difficult job of making companies run?

[fox20thc 10]

Unless you are a director of a company you are also a worker and equally open to being given a rough deal.

 

Most companies are fair minded and treat employees well but.. most of the time its the middle management with a power trip who cause the problems which result in union intervention.

[waldershelf 10]

From the content of their posts NorbutColon and F.Sidebottom sound like just the kind of employers that the labour movement have been struggling against for decades, I wonder if they have considered taking their businesses overseas where they can take advantage of the free market economy and pay their employees what they are worth, I'm sure there must be countries that still allow child labour and starvation wages. India, Pakistan, China, bangladesh, the phillapines, most of africa, most of south america etc etc

[fox20thc 10]

From the content of their posts NorbutColon and F.Sidebottom sound like just the kind of employers that the labour movement have been struggling against for decades

 

I think you might be right.

[NorbertColon 10]

From the content of their posts NorbutColon and F.Sidebottom sound like just the kind of employers that the labour movement have been struggling against for decades, I wonder if they have considered taking their businesses overseas where they can take advantage of the free market economy and pay their employees what they are worth, I'm sure there must be countries that still allow child labour and starvation wages. India, Pakistan, China, bangladesh, the phillapines, most of africa, most of south america etc etc

Or, might it occur to you otherwise, that there are employers, managers and leaders out there who take pride in having a happy, motivated and well looked-after workforce.

Even more to your surprise, what if it’s possible to have a workforce who are content, enjoy a positive, healthy team atmosphere and would gain nothing from the negative anti-establishment preachings of a union presence?