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

 

[Purple]

Well said @Peanuts20 but it's also fair to acknowledge that historically Unions are a large part of the reason that working people have the protections they have.

Just as we no longer need Suffragette or Suffragists because their objectives were achieved we no longer need traditional adversarial Unions.
I'd question what that adversarial approach ever achieved. We all know about Jim Larkin, a confrontational bully, but his son, a much more mild mannered man, probably achieved more.

We all remember the Suffragettes as the main reason women achieved equal rights but the suffragists achieved more by making reasoned arguments in a peaceful and non confrontational way. Emmeline Pankhurst is well known but Millicent Garrett Fawcett isn't.

There is no need for a "Them and Us" model of industrial relations. When I hear the term "Worker" (more usually Wur-ker) being used I cringe. It's so Victorian.

 

[Peanuts20]

There is no need for a "Them and Us" model of industrial relations. When I hear the term "Worker" (more usually Wur-ker) being used I cringe

Agreed, I'm a worker, I might sit at a desk most of the day but it's still work

 

[Sister Sara]

Historically, and going back 75-100 years ago, I would agree but not nowadays.

Thanks Peanuts20, but I'm not arguing for or advocating for unions. There are pro's and cons. One of the pro's being that the particular industry highlighted in this instance - refuse collection - hasn't really undergone any fundamental change since its inception.

That is, the public leave their trash out and the bin man will collect it.

Sure there are improvements in h&s with the automated bins lifts, safety bibs, etc, but the job is basically the same. To compare it to the work that MNC's do here is to compare apples and oranges.
I would say, that any employer or firm or business that can provide terms and conditions good enough to dissuade its workers from joining a trade union is to be commended.

I would argue, it is the very prospect of a trade union building strength in a workplace that has invoked some employers to provide good pay and conditions from the outset. If you don't want a trade union in your workplace then do what it takes to dissuade your workforce from forming one.

Having said that, some employers and unions have had very good relations over the years. Having worked in the sector of employment law I know too well some of the employers who benefit from union presence, acting somewhat as a quasi-hr department, to tone down unrealistic demands within its membership as you have pointed out.

There are pro's and con's to trade unions for sure.

In the instance of the Birmingham bin workers and looking from the outside-in, their presence is vital in preserving jobs, h&s standards and income earnings against a penny-pinching management willing to cut corners on safety.