The Union forever, protecting our rights! BA staff get 8% and the money they were cut returned. Well done to them, action works. https://news.sky.com/story/british-...rike-action-after-pay-offer-accepted-12656881
Unfortunately it's often the only solution. It's often presented as strike happy unions maliciously hurting the public. A complete lie. I remember being asked once on the picket line by a radio interviewer if I was sorry for the "misery caused to commuters" by our strike? I replied that of course I was and that we hardly wanted to be standing out here losing a day's pay either - the people responsible for the situation are the board. Ask then if they're sorry. On the news today they were saying about some strike or other and they would give details of "how it will affect YOU". Because union members and strikers don't watch the news or don't qualify as people or something. It seems indicative of how the TV news is always aimed at middle class sensibilities. PS On the subject of news, the propaganda on the British news is so tiring. Every item is more or less polluted with it. Rather than telling you the news, they tell you what to think about it. For example there was an item about China and some very small protests there about covid restrictions. The cops came and more or less broke it up. The same as happened in the UK when there were similar protests. They showed a very slanted report on it, which ended with the 'reporter' saying "....and so the police won, in China they always do....". Well apart from the fact that you're commenting on the news rather than reporting it, in what country do the police NOT always win then? Everywhere I can think of, the cops generally have their way. Just plain stupid propaganda intended to give you the idea that chinese police are repressive.
I completely agree. There is far too much opinion instead of reporting - particularly when it comes to the 'climate crisis'
Without digressing too far from the point of the thread, which I’m sure you’ll agree with, the great work unions can do protecting workers’ rights and ensuring a decent deal, climate change isn’t ‘opinion’. The climate has changed, this we know. This has already caused a crisis in the most vulnerable parts of the World, the Pacific Islands, glaciers, low lying areas like Bangladesh, the melting of permafrost etc. What to do about it is another matter and that is opinion.
The unions have severely let down BA staff over the years, topped off when BA introduced a ridiculous policy of sacking loads of its workers, rather than putting them on furlough. They got away with terrible and short sighted staff treatment for years, despite the unions, because of the governments awful decision to give them a monopoly over T5 and Heathrow gates. That’s meant BA could cut costs and worsen their staff’s quality of life without any fear of competition. It’s only now that there is a huge demand for flights and a massive shortage of staff, that BA needs to lure new entrants and has no choice but do everything to retain staff and give in to (very fair) pay restoration/ increases. Market forces.
Demonstrates that you need to act when you can. The unions can’t prevent every knock back, but they are the best defence we have. We will need them strong and united when PM Truss attacks employment rights to please her Brexit boneheads.
In a country where you can change the entire unwritten constitution with a 1 man majority, and the government can just shut down parliament if it disagrees with them, checks and balances are vital. Whether you like it or not, the media is the best we have. Todays politics seems obsessed with the present. There was hardly any mention of climate change in the leadership debates. Or the care system. Or hospitals. Education. Housing. Northern Ireland. All issues that will increasingly affect the majority of our population over the next decade or two. Very few mentions of trade offs. Just relentless positivity. If the news comments on scientifically proven issues that are worsening and the government is ignoring, that’s fine by me. Where things don’t have such a robust of evidence behind them, then there should be balance.
Akchewally that same things are being felt across the flying 'industry'. An awful lot didn't return after furlough because of the awful pay and working conditions (asocial hours & mainly working with the public).
Fair point. I've just finished reading The Denial and forgot that it's a fiction - hence my inappropriate use of ' '. Re unions, you might be surprised to hear that I agree that many of them do outstanding work for their members. Others - the teachers come to mind - are a pain in the ar5e
What I would like to see are Unions pre empting the next Chairman/CEO taking over "failing businesses" magically transforming said business into record profits , taking a mahoosive bonus and then when the workforce say " well, what about us " . WHADDYAKNOW the business is back to losing money chairman moves on to next business leaving his old job ready for some other chancer to come in and magically transform business . Rinse and repeat . I would like to see Unions say "don't even think about it"
The biggest arsewipe is that Canut at the Royal Mail . He paid himself a monster bonus because of an act of God . Covid. Packets and parcels went through the roof . Covid kits etc . He did sweet f.a. But he got paid out . How evil is that ****** ?
Can you imagine the fuss if the unions did try to stop it? Screaming headlines of The Politics of Envy! Labour politicians who supported them would be vilified. Sensible folk here would stop being sensible.
Eddie Dempsey is such an impressive speaker: Like or hate the message but he’s streets ahead of the robot-like numpties all the major political parties put up for high office.
Love the message and agree. Labour seem like lightweights but comparison. It’s what they should be saying. Hopefully in future he’ll avoid ill-judged ventures into international politics.
And even if they do screw up their share options and golden goodbyes until recently when shareholders started to kick up a fuss were still paid. Rewarded for failure. The whole corporate mentality since the eighties is fundamentallu askew with a few exceptions. The division between the few upstairs and their workforce has never been greater.
This sounds like one of the men from Exxon and Koch in the Big Oil series trying to obfuscate and confuse as corporations have always done when evidence proves what they are doing is detrimental and all they are concerned with is protecting their profits. The amount of evidence corroborating anthropogenic climate change is overwhelming. It's not an opinion it's factual. It's just that a set of entrenched loons with no idea of the scientific method as with covid and the other idiotic conspiracy theories they come up with still think it's a hoax. Sad, sad idiots.
One of the big issues is senior execs wanting to pay off useless directors they themselves appointed with as little noise as possible to save face. (A bit like Poxbury in some ways). One complete muppet I was forced to report to about 25 years ago admitted after a couple too many drinks whilst entertaining customers that straight out of Uni he had worked in an HR company that drew up the type of psychometric tests our company had used during the selection process. He knew all the right answers to all the wrong questions but obviously stormed the test. He lasted a year, but made a fortune out of it.
While I accept that I am probably a sad, sad idiot, it seems to me that the trouble with predicting the climate is that we can't - for the purposes of carrying out controlled experiments - build twoEarths and subject one to one level of carbon emissions and the other to another. So we rely on mathematical models which do not take account of other factors (that we don't understand) that could be a significant influence on the atmosphere. Temperatures may rise faster than is being forecast or slower. Nothing is certain. What is a fact is that anyone who suggests that the science may not be indisputable is condemned as a heretic - and that offends me.
My dear fellow I am not calling you an idiot. I was referring to some of the numpties I was watching in the Big Oil versus the world. However the modelling has been substantially refined. All sorts of variables are included from phytoplankton densities to average levels of vulcanicity. The models do take into account all these factors. The science is indisputable insofar with regards to anthropogenic climate change. Anyone who thinks different like those in the past who clung to outdated models and hypotheses is barking up the wrong tree much as those at Exxon and Koch were deliberately trying to misinform and mislead despite what their own scientists were telling them. The problem with building two model Earths ? We can't but we can model countless ones according to what actions are taken to curtail greenhouse gas emissions and even those with drastic cuts right now are still predicting a considerably warmer Earth. We also have the example of a runaway Greenhouse in Venus. Those who keep trying to believe that this is not happening are burying their heads in the sand. Science comes to it's theories on the basis of exhaustive collection of data and models to fit the data. It's not some underhand attempt from a secret elite to turn us all into being manipulated more than ever.
The few people who want to dispute climate science, against all the evidence, would be of little consequence if their views were not disproportionately promoted by vested interests, as @Smudger has pointed out. These wreckers have ensured a desperately slow response to both warming and deadly air pollution. People suffer as a result. Sadly, they have convinced the irrational, self-interested and populist. They are not heretics, they are simply empty vessels filled up with the rhetoric of oil industry and the despots it supports. They are lucky to be merely considered heretics and not run out of town with pitchforks. Free opinion is to be protected, but it shouldn’t be abused for power either.
On which date did Global warming turn into climate change ? Just askin' like cos I'm currently reading a book called "The Bible " and I'm not sure that any of you have heard of it but " flood fire and famine " is the central story as far as I can tell . Anywho . I'm not suggesting we shouldnt look after the planet but those who drive a 3 litre gas guzzler and take frequent long haul trips should STFU and stop preaching The poor are unlikely to drive such vehicles or take so many long haul holidays
There absolutely needs to be power in unions. The RMT leaders are doing a fantastic job and setting an example that others should follow.
The media in this country is so depressing. Even the guardian are mostly tools for the neo-liberal establishment. Journalists rarely do actual journalism anymore, they just mindlessly repeat propaganda.
Lisa Nandy outflanks Sir Keir by visiting BT strikers. Her argument that she was ‘showing solidarity’ in a cost of living crisis can’t be refuted by the leader and the tone Labour takes with strikes is likely to be more supportive in the future. This is the way it should be. Labour doesn’t have to endorse every strike, but it must show that it understands that union power is going to be vital to combat the assault on living standards. Imagine if Truss did embark on reducing public sector wages as she has suggested? That isn’t going to be defeated without industrial action, nor is the threat to workers rights post Brexit. Labour cannot be on the wrong side of that.
Eddie Dempsey is my vote for personality of the year. Eloquent, unscripted and spot on in his assessments. You just know what's coming when you hear "nah let's have it right..."
Hardly. We all just shrug and work from home the days they want a tantrum, except the poor sods who have to be on location.
What's the alternative to unions then? Unless you think bosses should be able to exploit workers however they see fit...
I’ve never been part of a union and I’ve done fine. Getting on with your bosses and having a common goal helps in my experience, rather than infantile bickering. Like I said I used to be furious when the tube unions went on strike. Now I just don’t care in the new world. They can strike 3 days a week as far as I am concerned.
Your experience doesn’t translate to everyone, does it? Plenty of employees are far too remote from their bosses or the goals of their employer to be able to share in them, plenty of people get bullied at work, plenty of people have no control over their working environment etc etc. And it’s “infantile bickering” to argue for better conditions and pay? Really? Thought we’d moved away from the Victorian era.
I simply don't buy into the idea that bosses wouldn't absolutely abuse having free reign over their workforce, with nobody to hold them to account. Sounds ****ensian to me.
