Corbyn suspended

redstar said:
The bin strike is pay-related..
www.bbc.com

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 www.bbc.com
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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.
 
Sister Sara said:
Or at least that is what I can make of it.
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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.
 
@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.
 
Sister Sara said:
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.
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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
 
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 said:
Historically, and going back 75-100 years ago, I would agree but not nowadays.
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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.
 
Sister Sara said:
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.
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The only jobs in any sector which should be protected are ones which add value to the employer or organisation in question. This is particularly true in the State sector. Lack of labour mobility is like plaque in the arteries of an organisation. In the case of a private business it kills it (see Britain's automotive, ship building and heavy engineering sectors since the 1950's for examples). In the case of the State funded sector it diverts critical human and capital resources away from where they are needed (see our Hospitals etc for example).
 
Purple said:
The only jobs in any sector which should be protected are ones which add value to the employer or organisation in question.
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I would add to that, to the public/consumer also.

I don't know the in's and out's of the Birmingham bin strike but if the workers in the council management are to believed there are only a maximum of 12 workers in the refuse collection that will lose £6,000pa. That is a paltry £72,000 for which these management workers have invoked strike action amongst the refuse workers. It sound like appalling management.

So when it comes to adding value to the employer/organisation/consumer, I have no doubt in this instance it is the workers engaged in the necessary refuse collection that hold way more value over the workers engaged in management. The workers in management are probably paid significantly more and I would suggest, in a city council the size of Birmingham, there are probably more than 12 of them.

So why not apply the £6,000pa cut to workers in management? They could sustain the hit easier. But most importantly they probably grossly overvalue their contribution to the employer/organisation/consumer. They are after all, only processors of procedures and reporters of outputs and outcomes, etc. These type of jobs will be readily replaced by AI, if not already.

That would be good management.

As for bearing the elements of weather, the early shifts, and the critical task of clearing the streets of refuse, I would be in no doubt that these jobs should be protected as the ones that add value to the employer/organisation/consumer.
 
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@Sister Sara, why not just refer to them as employees? Worker is an offensive term as it implies a underclass of under educated unintelligent i intellectual people who need to be protected from the more intelligent and educated but immoral upper classes. It’s a Victorian term, coined in the same era when it was unseemly for the white man to take advantage of darkies and natives and other creatures from the lower order of gods creation. There’s something disgustingly paternalistic and antediluvian about the phrase.
 
Purple said:
Worker is an offensive term
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Purple said:
There’s something disgustingly paternalistic and antediluvian about the phrase.
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Hi Purple, that is the first time I've ever heard that! Who could the term 'worker' offensive??

I was a worker, proud of it. Both when I was on the factory floor and then in the management positions later in my career.

But by all means, transfer the word 'worker' to 'employee' if you wish. :)
 
arbitron said:
I think in technical and practical terms all employees can be considered workers but not all workers are employees?
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Historically the term was often used to refer to the underclass of employees, the factory floor workers, so that those other employees in management roles who went to better schools and came from better families could differentiate themselves.

Use today is a little more mixed but I most often hear the term used in the non-professional sectors that are still heavily unionised. I've only ever worked in non-unionised IT companies and I've never heard colleagues refer to themselves as workers.
 
The late Tony Benn, a British Labour Party grandee and someone who I had a great deal of respect and regard for, said that anyone who derived their income from their labour was working class. That means employees in factories (from engineers and tradespeople to semi skilled line operators), employees in hospitals (doctors, nurses, porters etc), accountants, solicitors, barristers, electricians, civil servants etc are all working class but people who derive their income, or most of their income, from welfare or other social transfers, are not working class.

As for “worker”, @Leo described the problem with the historical loading of the term very well, but in a modern context everyone who works is a worker but not all work is paid and many workers who do get paid are self employed. In the context of Unions it is far more accurate and correct to refer to their members as employees.
 
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