This is how I learnt about unions and I could be remembering it wrong because I was a child.
My dad worked for ‘The Post Office’ before the government broke it up and gave the profitable bit to the annoying yellow bird.
Then in the 1980s it was sold off and the owners wanted a pound of flesh from their workers. We relied on the extra money my dad got from “ ‘mergencies”, where he was called, out of his usual hours, to fix a fault in a telephone line or exchange but the new shareholders apparently couldn’t understand why someone deserved more money to be on call and have their weekend ruined. The industry was changing and shareholders thought that should mean more money for them and less for the workforce.
This was happening in most industries in the 1980s and although workers tried to fight, most lost. Mrs Thatcher’s government cracked down on the unions and persuaded people that they were being held to ransom. They talked of picket lines as dangerous places and sent police armed with riot shields and batons to stop their protests.
The telecoms workers won, though. I liked to think that this was solely because of my dad. He was the secretary of the local branch of the communication workers Union. This involved writing a newsletter, which I was allowed to read for mistakes before he printed it on the distinctive smelling Banda machine, with its pupae ink.
End the 9 day fortnight.
All out drive for 35.
The things I read didn’t make it seem as though it was about wanting more money. There had been some research about how people lived longer if you cut their working week to 35 hours and what child would want their father to live longer?
But thinking about it now, of course it was about money. And why shouldn’t it be? It was about making sure that the workforce wasn’t devalued.
I’m sure they only won because a PABX exchange went down and the few engineers that were able to fix it refused, causing all credit card payments to be not accepted.
Dad could have gone to fix it and negotiated his own contract (as he did after he retired from BT) but he was proud to have helped win.
Just like then, we are in a period of transition and bosses are trying all sorts of tactics to pay their workforce less. British Airways staff want their pandemic pay cut back, railway staff want a pay rise over 3% with the guarantee that when the company gets rid of all the guards and ticket offices (which is what they mean by modernise working practises) then they won’t make those people compulsorily redundant but offer them training to redeploy them in another part of the business.
The news reminds us that train drivers are paid more than most people and everyone gets upset. However, train drivers are not striking because they are ALL in a different union and so they have always had negotiating power to get a good wage rise and job protection. If the railway staff (cleaners, guards, ticket sellers etc) were part of the same union then we might not be a the stage of needing a strike. The threat would be enough to make the bosses see sense. (Since I wrote this, I realised that I am wrong. Not all train drivers are innASLEF and they are striking for a wage rise in line with inflation)
It might be time we re-thought the narrative on unions. The hypocrisy of MPs telling us that we don’t need to band together to negotiate our worth is stunning when their pay has risen another £2000 to £84k because it was set by an independent body.
The average wage in this country (mean) is about £34k and the most common wage (mode) is £24k for full time work.
I just thought I’d write this because I’ve seen and heard a lot of twaddle lately about strikes and unions.
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