Corbyn suspended

[Sister Sara]

The bin strike is pay-related..

Birmingham bin strike: Why is it happening and what is the impact?

The BBC answers some of the most-asked questions about the ongoing strike.

www.bbc.com

If the council is telling the truth then it sounds absymal. A bin strike to preserve a whopping €100,000 odd a year? Or at least that is what I can make of it. And the abolished a role that was designed to provide additional h&s to the workers on the basis that it 'is not industry standard'!

Sad times in Birmingham City Council, worse for the voters of this chronic lump 'Labour' parliamentarians.

 

[Purple]

Or at least that is what I can make of it.

I think you need to look at it in an overall context. Unions in Britain (and Ireland) are like early stage cancer. Once they get a foothold they kill the organisation that they infect. Look at all the people they kill in our health service due to the waste they cause because of their intransigence and unwillingness to modernise structures and work practices.

Britain had the second biggest car industry in the world in the early 1950's, the second biggest aviation industry, they were one of the biggest ship builders in the world. By the 1970's the Unions has laid waste to all of that and destroyed the economic future of what used to be referred to as the Working Classes.

 

[Sister Sara]

@Purple I would disagree with all of that.

Focusing on the Birmingham bin strike alone, it is clear that the council are trying to penny-pinch and cut h&s corners. Its appalling really. Thank God for union intervention. Think where h&s standards would be in general if unions were not there to hold penny-pinching employers to account.

The unions were what made the Labour party what it was, otherwise Britain would be left with Conservatives and Lib Dems. That the Labour Party has now been both and sold by interests outside of the labour movement has laid waste to the Labour Party. If Raynor and Starmer want to do what they are doing, fair enough, but they should at least do it in another party.

 

[Peanuts20]

Focusing on the Birmingham bin strike alone, it is clear that the council are trying to penny-pinch and cut h&s corners. Its appalling really. Thank God for union intervention. Think where h&s standards would be in general if unions were not there to hold penny-pinching employers to account.

Historically, and going back 75-100 years ago, I would agree but not nowadays. Speaking as someone who has worked in a non-unionised environment for the last 20 years, MNC's are less worried about what the unions would do and more worried about being sued by a staff member for an accident. In the 10 years previously when I worked in a unionised environement, again, it was the fear of a law suit for something like RSI that drove H&S, not anything a union rep said.

I always looked as unions as a business, their income and very high salaries for the leaders are driven by the number of members they have and how they increase those numbers. Historically, it was no skin off a union leaders back if his members were on strike, he was still getting paid. Speaking as someone who negotiated deals in the past with unions, there was the optics and shouting at management in the meetings in front of their shop-stewards, and then the meeting that evening in a coffee shop 20 miles away where no one knew us and where the real deal was done over a cuppa.

Also cant ignore the fact that with a better educated workforce, the need for someone to "stand up for the working man" is a lot less. Far more people are confident and able enough to do that nowadays for themselves (or get an employment lawyer to do it for them. In fairness, where I have seen unions being of a benefit was where you had a local rep who was prepared to tell the members to "cop themselves on", and walk a member away from a case they were never going to win