Unions fail to organise drinking session in a brewery

Unite managed to mess up the simple process of issuing one ballot to each of their members in their strike ballot before Christmas.

Now the rail unions have failed in this when organising a rail strike ballot.

Next up for the unions is an attempt to organise a drinking session in a brewery.

Turkeys vote for Christmas

BA, whose average staff costs are apparently nearly double those of any other UK airline, are faced with 12 days of strikes thanks to the UNITE union's decision to oppose reforms that would give BA a fighting chance of surviving the recession and actually staying in business.

It seems that Turkeys really do vote for Christmas.

My memories of the miners strike

I was thirteen years old when the miners strikes started 25 years ago. I was not, perhaps, th best placed person to make judgments on the strike, but neither was I your typically stereotypical ignorant teenager. Yes, even then I was interested in politics. So what do I remember of that time ?

Most abiding memory was that the NUM and Arthur Scargill refused to allow a vote by members of the union on whether they should strike which for me was the key reason why I could not, back then, support the actions of miners. And as I recall this was the view of many people from non Tory midle class families who were probably union members but saw the NUM as being on a political crusade more than representing their members.

I cannot deny that Thatcher was playing politics too and it is well know that the government had prepared for the strike for 18 months in advance, but if Arthur Scargill had had any sense at all he could have called for a ballot, which at the start of the strike I am sure they would have won, and could have removed one of the government's key arguments from the debate. The constant government line that the NUM did not want to consult its own members because it was scared it would not get support for the strike was vital.

The winter and New Year of 1985 also stood out in my mind as a time when we genuinely feared that power cuts could come back. My parents were not overly stressed by this, they still had hundreds of candles from the 70's and the power cuts back then, but as a teenager with no real memories of such disruption, I found myself back then wanting to see the government win. Selfish, I know, but as I have got older and wiser and can see the very real reasons why miners went on strike, but can also still see why the government felt they had to take on the unions.

The saddest thing is that the scars of the strike still run deep with so many, even 25 years later. I used to go out canvassing in North Norfolk with fellow Lib Dem who was a former Kent miner. He said he had learnt to get on with the police and by moving to Norfolk he felt he could trust them, but back in Kent he could never speak to a policeman, couldn't help them and would never trust them, and he assured me that if I had witnessed what they did I would feel the same.

I cannot coment on whether he is right, but it is sad that the strike affected people so that they can still feel like this.

Agreeing with Iain Dale more than David Laws

I was slightly surprised but also rather impressed by the very grown up and wise words by Iain Dale on the subject of today's strikes. Well done Iain.

Sadly I cannot say the same for David Laws, the Lib Dems education spokesman, who has made some rather less educated comments about the teaching strike.

"I understand the NUT’s view that the pay award is low in relation to inflation, but it is the outcome of an independent pay review process and it has been accepted by the other teaching unions. "

Yes David. It has been accepted by the NAS/UWT, but this is because that union is so close to Labour that it will never oppose anything the Labour Party does. The NAS/UWT recently complained that its hardship fund had been called upon at an unprecendented level, but despite this they backed their Labour friends.

Mr Laws similarly goes on to assert that he believes teachers should be banned from striking.

One asks in response to Mr Laws, as a Lib Dem, whether we should have a rule that Lib Dem spokesmen should actually sound like Lib Dems and not old style Tories.

Did the postal workers union recognise that public support had turned ?

It is good to see that the CWU have settled their dispute with the Royal Mail. The deal has yet to be fully ratified by the union executive, but hopefully the enormous damage done to the Royal Mail during the dispute can now be put right.

There is no doubt that Royal Mail workers had some legitimate concerns, but by the same token, the way these strikes had been organised, enormous possibly irreparable damage has been done to the reputation of the Royal Mail which will only play in to the hands of their competitors, which will inevitably lead to more Royal mail workers losing their jobs in the long term.

Listening to the Radio yesterday there were enormous amounts of business people who had discovered other ways of getting post out, more use of technology, electronic payments, alternative postal providers, which were all cheaper than the Royal Mail, and many of these former Royal Mail customers who had stayed with the Royal Mail through loyalty, will never come back.

But it was not just the business world that was ramping up the pressure. It was the general public themselves. I heard to on radio phone ins about people who were waiting cheques, people who were in financial difficulties, people whose tickets had not arrived, people who were waiting for passports, in fact any number of things which we rely on for our normal daily lives were being held up, and the general public were starting to turn against the strikers.

So the Union made the correct choice in settling, whilst they still could and whilst they could save face. The Royal Mail has not yet been destroyed, but had this dispute gone on much longer the Royal Mail and the British Public could have been paying the price for some years to come.

Post Strikes will not help the Post Office survive but ...

Yes, a big but in my mind is that the problems in the Post Office could so easily have been avoided.

In great part the problems have been caused by the government insisting that the UK postal market be opened up to foreign competition whilst many of the countries the foreign companies are from do NOT open up their own services. In much the same was as it is very difficult now to find a UK company that provides water, gas or electricity because they have been bought by foreign companies whose home markets are still monopolies, the same is happening to the postal service.

The changes the Post Office need to go through do not have to be so quick and so radical and were it not the need to change so quickly of be made extinct by foreign companies who offer few benefits to their own workers, the Post Office's change could have been evolutionary and not revolutionary.

Of course, the proposed changes to the Post Office Pension scheme might have been avoided if the post office had not taken a seventeen year pension holiday on its pension fund (not this was started under the Tories and continued under Labour).

However, given where we are at, I cannot see hoe striking will do anything other than play in to the hands of the Post Office's foreign rivals but I accept at the same time that if I were a postal worker and they were threatening to cut my pension then I would probably go on strike too.