Unions representing nearly three million people are threatening to bring about coordinated strikes this autumn to cause as much disruption as possible. MailOnline has more.
Several motions tabled by Britain’s biggest trade unions, including Unite and Unison, demand they coordinate their efforts to have the greatest possible impact and ‘win’ the battle for inflation-related pay bumps, the Observer reports.
While the proposals technically fall short of a ‘general strike’, a motion by Unite would task the Trade Union Congress (TUC) with making sure industrial action is synchronised or intentionally staggered to have as great an impact as possible.
The plans come ahead of the TUC congress – the unions’ decision-making forum – which will be held in Brighton from September 11 to 14.
Unite’s call for the body to ‘encourage industrial coordination’ to ‘most effectively harness their union power to win’ is backed by rail union RMT and the Communication Workers Union (CWU), it is understood.
Unison is calling the cost of living crisis a “low pay crisis” and is calling for the TUC to campaign for pay rises “at least in line with inflation” along with a £15-per-hour minimum wage.
Inflation is now at 10.1% and there are predictions it could reach 18.6% next year.
The unions boast nearly 3million members between them, with 1.4 million in Unite, 1.3 million in Unison, almost 200,000 in the CWU, and 80,000 in RMT.
Transport, education, healthcare, the civil service and local government could all be affected by strike chaos in coming months.
Worth reading in full.
Prepare for a second Winter of Discontent. Apparently, the militant trade union activists determined to bring the country to a standstill have forgotten that the last Winter of Discontent helped to persuade the public to give Margaret Thatcher and the Conservatives a massive majority. Expect Liz Truss to put trade union reform front and centre in the 2024 Tory manifesto.
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Here the unions really are representing ppl so unproductive that their strike merely highlights how little they actually do.
These people work really hard for the communities they serve. It’s poor form to devalue and dismiss them like that. Some worked throughout the lockdown, like railway workers, when the lorry drivers stopped moving freight across the railway for supermarkets, for powerstations etc. The people sitting at home and earning 70% through furlough were unproductive, but our elected government decided on this action not unions and not those people on strike and they didn’t say that’s unfair – i should be at home too. They got on with the job.
Forgive me for asking, but are you still standing on street corners, selling copies of the Socialist Worker before trotting off to your part time job as an EDI coordinator?
The union leaders were complicit in the public sector doing as little as possible during lockdown; teachers not teaching, doctors not treating, nurses doing Tik Tok dancing and those heroic railway workers working ‘full time’ on a system running at only 30% capacity. While all the time pushing for more stringent restrictions. Thus they have a large responsibility for the inflation we’re now seeing and they have the bloody gall to demand more money to sort out problems they helped cause. Their demands are political, no more than that.
Public sector workers got their full salaries while not working, as opposed to the productive sector getting 80% on furlough.
That’s if they or their company survived.
“Working hard for the communities they serve”. Which pamphlet did you lift that from?
Unions don’t have the legal power to make the changes you suggest. To call them ‘responsible’ for the inflation today is ridiculous. All changes made were by the government with its public health scientists. It was the same government that were terrifying the public with its messages of fear and prophets of doom. If the unions and people were affected by that, asking for more protections – that’s on the government too! Unions work for their members and if they’re terrified – the union will try to protect them. What’s hard to understand about that? Public sector workers during the pandemic got their salary while working. People on furlough and the self employed were getting 70% while doing – nothing. You have a faulty memory.
I have to pay the same inflation-inflated bills, but I won’t get a pay rise. Additionally, it’s eating away the savings I’ll need should I ever become incapable of working as I’ll never get a pension anyone could reasonably live on. As icing on the cake, inflation became sky-high due to political choices the unions wanted to be made, namely Money for nothing! (and gender-affirming surgery for free — they don’t do that chicks thing anymore). In order to fix the problems created by this, they now want more money for less than nothing and threaten to cause collossal harm to the non-unionized working population whose money they’d like to have.
Something is very fundamentally wrong here. This is not industrial action. It’s racketeering.
‘Due to unions’: I thought we had Conservative governments for the last 12 years …
Why this desire to blame everyone else for this situation. This is like Grant Shapps, the transport minister that have disastrous airports with cancellations and delays galore, ferries with cancellations and delays galore and trains that have cancellations and delays galore … but it’s not Grant Shapps’ fault. No, it’s the unions, it’s Covid, it’s the French. Anyone but Conservatives…
The only way to make public sector pay demands fair would be to put this question to a ballot:
“Were you in favour of lockdowns?”
All those that answer yes should be forced to accept a pay freeze until inflation falls back to 2%.
Those who answer no and can prove they were vociferous lockdown opponents should receive a pay increase in line with inflation.
They’d all say “No”
When that new policy review isn’t carried out by the Diversity and Inclusion Team, into the colonial impact of Shakespeare, or S Club 7 or something, we’ll all be sorry. How are we going to carry on.?
When the unions have become so powerful that a London tube driver now gets paid more than a first officer on a Boeing 787 then you know you are living in clown world. The public sector needs to be annihilated and rebuilt with people who actually want to be there and work instead of cosplay Communist babies obsessed with victimhood and political games.
Oh I see. But a footballer deserves to earn 100,000 times more than a train driver doesn’t he? If CEOs can be paid millions or 20-100x more than the lowest worker on the payroll we should accept this? Those shareholders receiving money from the company directly subsidised by the UK tax payer (as happens on the railway) should not be subject to scrutiny? Why should staff sit idly by and accept that? The workers didn’t cause this mess … nor did the unions … I think we’re barking up the wrong tree here as usual.
Methinks Troll alert.
Economics is obviously not your strong point is it? It’s called supply and demand. Unlike bone idle state employees (think DVLA) footballers can’t sit on their arses all day for 40+ years and get an inflation proofed pension paid for by the taxpayers. They have a desirable skill that lasts for 15 years if they’re lucky. If a CEO doesn’t perform then the company shareholders will see the back of them.
Do you think the footballers negotiate their salaries by themselves? No, they have agents. Guess what a trade union is? Something paid by members to represent them in the work place. If it’s OK for footballers, TV anchors at the BBC etc why can’t the working poor club together for representation?
The first thing that struck me on reading this was, “aye, aye, what are they up to now?”
The only notable thing that can be said of the TU’s throughout the dreadful lockdown was how quiet they were, nary a word from them unless it was to call for more of the same a la Kneel Starmer – harder, stronger, longer – so much for standing up for the working man. Actually, I concluded after the first six months or so that the Union brass had been bought. I have seen no reason to date to change this view. So what are they up to?
Some leading conspiracy theorists believe that TPTB are actually trying to foment civil strife and with a miserable winter looming for us all what better way to kick the “rebellion” off than a series of strikes right across the country. Throw in some nasty false flag events in order to get the kettle really boiling, ideally the police putting a few in hospital and the scene is set for utter mayhem. Which would of course leave the new PM no choice but to batten down the hatches, for ‘our’ safety, of course, with at a minimum curfews or possibly martial law depending on how well the Unions play their part. Plus of course it would provide those nice Albanian boys an opportunity to stretch their legs.
All conspiracy thinking I know but…
And of course it would allow geo Truss or Sino to claim that they didn’t break their promise not to lockdown again. Lockdowns and curfews are completely different things obviously.
What can be stated unequivocally is that the government will mishandle the strikes in the same way they mishandled lockdowns ie deliberately.
I second the notion that the adamant devotion of the leaders of all major unions to the Chinese model is very suspicious and suggests that Chinese money was involved here (Wouldn’t this technically be treason?).
There is no question RW that treason has been committed on a grotesque scale. There are literally hundreds starting with ALL the Cabinet, the SAGE mob, Raine, Michie, Ferguson and the rest. These people have declared War on the residents of these islands.
Remember, Bliar changed treason from being a capital offence when he was PM. He knew what was coming and hedged his bets.
It’s certainly getting that 1970s retro feel about it.
Inflation: 22%
Interest rates: 16%
Tax the rich: 83%
Tax the rest 35%
Tax the greedy companies: 52%
Power cuts.
3 day week
Daily strikes by one or another or all
Rising unemployment
Huge budget deficits and national debt.
Recession
Gloom, doom..
We’re not quite there yet, but moving along nicely.
Not that long ago, someone wrote in an editorial that he didn’t believe the unions would again try to chase inflation with wage rises as they did in the 1970s. Seems to have been a bit optimistic.
Over the past 30 months the unions have clamouring for more lockdowns, more vaccine-mandates and more interference of the state.
These covid-control measures didn’t do anything to control covid, but the unions wanted more of them anyway — we all had to suffer together to combat covid, even though unionised industries tended to do much less suffering than others (not always true, but generally true).
Now we’ve got the hangover from these crazy policies. Oh, but the unions now aren’t in it for the good of the nation, but have decided instead to screw the nation instead.
Strange how it all works.
How is it screwing the nation? The unions are advocating on behalf of their members who may or may not actually agree with the position of the union at any point in time that they actually support.
Thanks to a set of policies union leaders very vocally demanded, England has been experiencing a catastrophic recession and due to an oversupply of money and a drastic undersupply of everything else, inflation has reached levels unheard of for about the last 40 years (as far as I know). To this, the unions react by demanding more of the same, ie, more paper money not matching any actual economic output, and by threatening to do more of the same, namely, create yet more economic havoc. Considering that they represent about 5% of the population of England, that ought to count as screwing the nation, ie, the other 95% of the population who find themselves in the same, union-desired and union-created economic misery, but without access to the fake redress of trying to blackmail the government into buying them out of the whole they dug themselves into by threatening to harm the general population.
They’re basically acting like a giant toddler having a monstrous trantrum and smashing every to bits left and right while demanding more sweats than the mountains of sweats people already gave this hideous man-child in the vain hope that its hunger for more might eventually recede.
England isn’t officially in recession, so let’s get our facts right. Inflation is due to the Bank of England printing money, the magic money tree Conservatives have said doesn’t exist. It is also due to supply chain difficulties affected by layoffs due to lockdown in other countries. It is also due to the velocity of money in the economy as the economy re-opened from a period when the public couldn’t spend money because there were no services or products they could buy. Guess what, unions are responsible for none of that.
As for ‘blackmailing’ the government. This is the government that if you paid attention wants to cut a third of the maintenance staff on the rail way, force employees to work 39 weeks of nights a year and alter their terms of conditions. It is not the unions blackmailing the government, it is the government blackmailing the staff on the railway. In order to get a pay rise they want to force through these changes. Guess what, the employees won’t accept it. They say if the government wrecked the railways economy by mandating people stay at home then government should fix it. Governments do after all bail out banks to help their donors to their political campaigns. Government should fund the railway properly instead of this nonsense ‘modernisation’ which is a code for cuts.
39 nights per years? OMFG, the poor people! Not. Once upon a time in the past, I worked in a factory running 24×7 in a so-called change-shift system (Wechselschicht). This meant 3 days early shift, 3 days late shift, 3 days night shift, then starting over.
No, 39 weeks of nights. So 4 nights, followed by 3-4 nights, followed by 3-4 nights then followed by 3 days. Repeat for the rest of the year. This after being described as ‘true heroes’ by the same minister that now demands to trash their terms and conditions, sack the workforce and cut £2billion from the railways budget…
Don’t let anyone reform parliament though … electronic voting instead of taking an hour to walk through lobbies. Refusing to relocate out of Westminster to allow a refurbishment adding tens of billions to the cost, having silly, expensive ceremonies to open their place or work, having 3 months of holidays and huge expenses of course as if the world stops for them to allow this. Do you think we’ll ever get them to lead by example?
No, 39 weeks of nights. So 4 nights, followed by 3-4 nights, followed by 3-4 nights then followed by 3 days.
Well, so what?
I would start by saying that I don’t think calling them hard left or barons is fair. They are democratic organisations who are legally taking industrial action. Some of these union leaders have bigger democratic constituencies than some of our MPs. They received overwhelming democratic mandates to take strike action.It doesn’t seem unreasonable to co-ordinate strike action if the government isn’t interested in seriously engaging in disputes or is misrepresenting them. Worse is the language used by the government, including the two leadership candidates, to ‘destroy’ the unions, ‘attack’ the unions or ‘smash’ the unions. These are public facing roles – if these people are hurt in their every day jobs by members of the public aren’t the government responsible for whipping this up? This is not the language of moderation and wanting to end disputes reasonably. I’m surprised Toby Young hasn’t realised this. Unions are not the enemy, they are well within their rights to protect and negotiate better terms for their members.
So, the unions “are democratic organisations” are they? They are about as “democratic” as anything else labelled democratic is in this country ie not at all.
Read my earlier post – you’ve been had.
Well, there is a much small number of voters than in these unions that are presently selecting the next Prime Minister for this country …
these spineless worms who run these trade unions have failed to protest the destruction of our national wellbeing by absolutely irrational and totalitarian covid and climate policies … now they once again demonstrate they are prepared to selfishly inflict further almost unbearable pain on our entire nation in furtherance of their own narrowly sectarian interest
Not their job. I could equally ask why didn’t Conservative party members protest lockdown? The irrational Covid and climate policies are going through with their support it seems. Why are you trying to blame these failures on trade unions exactly?
The Tories are in denial about the existential crisis facing Britain
https://www.conservativewoman.co.uk/the-challenge-facing-the-new-leader-for-britain-is-existential/
Ewen Stewart
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The militant union leaders can’t see as far ahead as 2024. It will be interesting to see if the Empty Suit which is masquerading as Leader of HM Opposition supports his union paymasters’ destructive action.
Militant? What do we call the Conservatives then that have destroyed the economy, doubled the debt, let people die alone in misery and isolation, led a vaccine rollout that is killing the young when they had no need to take it (wanting children to take it), priced the young out of homes for their lifetime, obliterated healthcare, left us without any energy supply – shall I go on? And of course ignoring the laws they made while letting the rest of the population get punished for daring to violate them. What terms shall we use for Conservatives?
‘Apparently, the militant trade union activists determined to bring the country to a standstill have forgotten that the last Winter of Discontent helped to persuade the public to give Margaret Thatcher and the Conservatives a massive majority’ …or maybe not: it’s a big assumption that union bosses are really trying to look out for their members interests. Militant trade unionism is a good way of rendering an industry uncompetitive and ultimately destroying it so that people are driven into the hands of its competitors. Would we be so dependent on the major oil and gas suppliers now if it weren’t for the coal industry strikes and subsequent mine closures of ~40 years ago? Would we be so dependent on Chinese manufacture, with all the ethical issues it entails, if our own manufacturing sector had fared better?