I know this is an age old post Baroness Thatcher(rip) topic…but I feel that it may be time to bargain collectively with our employers. Especially with regard to pension funds/job descriptions/working hours e.t.c.? Bring it on!
Whilst your sentiments mean well there are no people left in this country that have got what it takes to oppose what is/going to happen. 
FLUNKEY:
I know this is an age old post Baroness Thatcher(rip) topic…but I feel that it may be time to bargain collectively with our employers. Especially with regard to pension funds/job descriptions/working hours e.t.c.? Bring it on!
Not much time before i leave for work but here’s my pennies worth .
Until the unions clean themselves up they are a liability.The principle of unions is a good thing but over the last 30-40 yrs they have taken more than they have given right across the industries they represent and i wouldn’t trust a single one of the champagne socialists
Not much time before i leave for work but here’s my pennies worth .
Until the unions clean themselves up they are a liability.The principle of unions is a good thing but over the last 30-40 yrs they have taken more than they have given right across the industries they represent and i wouldn’t trust a single one of the champagne socialists
[/quote]
Correct!
So it will take an exceptional person to get the ball rolling and convince the down trodden that the only thing they are ‘working hard and getting on’ for is the elite amongst society.
No problem with profit - it just doesn’t incentivise those that do the graft, only those that supposedly ‘create wealth’.
The politicians are, as we speak preparing for the next term in parliament - they just have to decide who’s turn it will be to dish out more of the same crap for the next 100 years. And they will accept ‘only’ £75k a year because the rules say they have to!
Bloody hell, how will they manage!?
Your exceptional person would need to work out first what the objectives are, if objectives are based on the green eyed monster… hatred of people who earn more such as the so called elite, or the politicians wages… then there will be no support.
The agenda should be about what makes things better for you and your colleagues. Not how we can make matters worse for others (Elite & Politicians).
One of the things that I would say should be tackled - the fines dished out at Truckers, who discover illegals hiding in their trailers at the entry ports. All it would take is for truckers to collectively say that’s it… no more carrying goods from Britain to Europe until instant fines are stopped and I recon a couple of weeks and that will be dealt with. Of course, the issue isn’t the truckers - the issue is the benefits system and the asylum system here.
I’m sure there are many other issues, but wages and hours are already covered by minimums and maximums.
What would you say can be improved by unions?
Before it could happen you would need at least 2 drivers to agree with 1 thing, I cannot ever see that happening.
I only speak for myself. I am not jealous or envious of anyone for any reason.
I would just like to see a fair reward for the exceptional effort required of me to make the ‘few’ better off.
After all, the people that make the laws and rules of the land are without doubt only working for the greater good! And that is why there is no corruption or self interest and all our institutions can be trusted and relied upon - not!
Boomerang Dave:
I’m sure there are many other issues, but wages and hours are already covered by minimums and maximums.
Well not really, when your facing a £60 fine for going a few minutes over your driving time, is a few minutes over really as bad as not putting your seat belt on or barring the points speeding, using a mobile whilst driving or jumping a red light.
Can you name another industry where your are fined for working to hard? No you can’t but it happens because we are a soft touch, with no one to fight our corner, it isn’t really about having a union to protect us from our employers, it’s about having some one to protect us from the authorities!
fredthered:
After all, the people that make the laws and rules of the land are without doubt only working for the greater good! And that is why there is no corruption or self interest and all our institutions can be trusted and relied upon - not!
I got that angle from your earlier post, but what would you DO to improve things for you and your colleagues?
We can all stand around banging on about how bad it is that other people are better off or more corrupt, but what are the solutions?
Edited to add: What is a fair reward? And apart from the elite, politicians and law makers - what else is wrong with your job? 
weeto:
Boomerang Dave:
I’m sure there are many other issues, but wages and hours are already covered by minimums and maximums.Well not really, when your facing a £60 fine for going a few minutes over your driving time, is a few minutes over really as bad as not putting your seat belt on or barring the points speeding, using a mobile whilst driving or jumping a red light.
Can you name another industry where your are fined for working to hard? No you can’t but it happens because we are a soft touch, with no one to fight our corner, it isn’t really about having a union to protect us from our employers, it’s about having some one to protect us from the authorities!
Drivers hours actually permit some flexibility for emergencies such as being stuck in a major hold due to things like an RTC.
The bottom line is, if your boss is putting work on you that cannot be completed in the time limits, then that could be an issue for a good union. There is no excuse for planning that causes drivers to go over their hours and to be fair, you just have to have the balls to say no - won’t do it.
Well i’m in a unionised job, every good job i’ve had and the current one is the best of all have been unionised, thats over a period of 37 years, my first job was unionised even then.
Yes unions have changed but on the shop floor level nothing has really changed.
The most important decison you will make as a collective is who is to be your spokesperson/shop steward, take time over that one for your majority terms and conditions are at stake.
A good steward has to wear two hats, one to negotiate strongly but fairly with the management, this means having the balls to stand up for whats right yet unable to be bought/bribed by being fed the right work to keep himself sweet.
The other hat is required to keep discipline in the ranks, once you negotiate (full sick pay for example) benefits then there is a sizeable minority too stupid not to take adavantage and milk the situation, which will eventually destroy the job from within.
This other hat is also needed to stop silly demands from ever reaching the ears of the management, you simply are not going to get a 20% raise in one hit combined with 20% reduction in hours, get real.
Choose a steward who is principled and has the majority of the members at heart not just themselves and their merry mates, i cannot stress this highly enough.
I’m really not interested in the political slant of the union bosses, they with certain exceptions are far removed from the workers they might once have been or presume to represent.
In many cases they have assisted the Blair govt in particular (the o present cabal no better) into unlimited immigration which has systematically and ironically destroyed millions of working peoples livelihoods, though they themselves like turkeys voted for their own Christmas and still do.
It is worth establishing a good union where you work, you only have to look at the RMT train drivers who have never allowed their jobs to be undermined like ours have over the last 25 years, they have stuck together and earn around £40/50k for a 40 hour week.
Oddly enough the companies concerned haven’t gone bust and they haven’t brought in thousands of often incompetent underskilled flip flops to take over as and where necessary because the union boss and his members put the members first, makes sense to me.
Juddian:
The most important decison you will make as a collective is who is to be your spokesperson/shop steward, take time over that one for your majority terms and conditions are at stake.
Absolutely agree with the above and with this too:
A good steward has to wear two hats, one to negotiate strongly but fairly with the management, this means having the balls to stand up for whats right yet unable to be bought/bribed by being fed the right work to keep himself sweet.
The other hat is required to keep discipline in the ranks, once you negotiate (full sick pay for example) benefits then there is a sizeable minority too stupid not to take adavantage and milk the situation, which will eventually destroy the job from within.
This other hat is also needed to stop silly demands from ever reaching the ears of the management, you simply are not going to get a 20% raise in one hit combined with 20% reduction in hours, get real.Choose a steward who is principled and has the majority of the members at heart not just themselves and their merry mates, i cannot stress this highly enough.
I’m also not interested in the political slant nor the who’s who at the top of unions, but I would like to say, last thing any collective needs is another über left Scargill type - never has so much been don by so few to destroy the good work previously done by other trade unions!
Juddian:
It is worth establishing a good union where you work, you only have to look at the RMT train drivers who have never allowed their jobs to be undermined like ours have over the last 25 years, they have stuck together and earn around £40/50k for a 40 hour week.
Indeed, but very few truck drivers can honestly expect to move from the current situation to equal the comforts of train drivers. And I’d take some convincing that the current situation for train drivers will stand the test of time… but I hope I’m wrong.
When I worked for British Steel, the managers rather cutely promoted all the shop stewards, one after the other, or handed lucrative contracts to their spouses running canteens and the like. One-by-one they were bought off, until the shop floor was left with reps who were never going to provide a strong argument for the workers. Indeed, many of those who could argue a good point and were loyal to the shop floor were put off - they started to see becoming a shop steward as the fast track to promotion… kind of had a nasty taste about it.
A good shop steward is probably going to be the hardest working team member of all, as he or she will have two jobs to do for the same pay! That takes a lot of heart in today’s climate.
The idea of unions being able to bargain in an environment where the political climate is against them having sufficient power to do so is doomed to failure and trying to implement the former without first sorting out the latter is just a case of putting the cart before the horse.
On the subject of so called leftists like Scargill that was more a case of the establishment,with the perception that low wage economies are a good thing,that caused,and continue to cause,the need for unions in the first place,using anti union propaganda tactics which unfortunately the working classes then believed.Which is why the economy is where it is now.It is actually possible to put union leaders like Scargill into power while at the same time then picking and choosing which parts of their political ideals to accept or reject.On the subject of Scargill I’m sure that he knows that he made a few mistakes in regard to following the bs socialist cause but not everything he did was bad in knowing which side he was on.Unlike the so called Labour Party governments at the time and since.
there are differing views on the rights or wrongs of union membership ,however the important fact here is this .any union is only as strong as its members . its no good the members telling the steward to" go in there and tell them we want " if they haven’t got what it takes to provide the steward with a “or else” .nor is it any use demanding something that is simply not available such as a large improvement in wages and conditions from a company that is struggling .however there are benefits to being a union member such as legal cover. I personally benefitted from this . had I not been in a union I simply could not have afforded to take my case forward and receive a sizeable compensation payment. however to join or not to join ■■ its a personal choice .
I’m in USDAW
syramax:
there are differing views on the rights or wrongs of union membership ,however the important fact here is this .any union is only as strong as its members . its no good the members telling the steward to" go in there and tell them we want " if they haven’t got what it takes to provide the steward with a “or else” .nor is it any use demanding something that is simply not available such as a large improvement in wages and conditions from a company that is struggling .
The problem is an effective ‘or else’ option isn’t there in most cases,with most effective action requiring cooperation on a national and secondary level and with such action always ending up with the employers these days being able to use the typical anti union propaganda and secondary action laws since the government managed to turn public opinion against such action.The result being in most cases the union movement is now mostly more worried about public opinion and legal action being taken against it,using the Thatcherite anti union laws,as soon as any action looks like it might be successful.With the RMT and ASLEF seeming to be the exceptions that prove the rule.However they’ve not really needed to call what could be termed a real national rail strike in the case of co ordinated action involving all the different rail operators and employers in the case of push having come to shove.While those employers are probably more interested in defeating the road transport industry than reducing the terms and conditions of it’s own workers massively at this time.However if/when that moment ever comes you can bet that the rail operators would use every type of means which successive anti union policies have provided them with to defeat such a strike.
In which case it’s my bet that just like the miners they’d probably lose in the event of a real national rail strike under this regime and in an environment where the working class population has been turned against it’s own interests by years of Tory anti union propaganda.It’s obvious that in the case of the road transport industry the logistics of being able to organise such national co ordinated action would be even more difficult.While in the present econonomic climate and under present government policy towards the road transport industry such action would probably be more likely to result in job losses than a successful outcome.
While anything less than the ability to organise such co ordinated nation wide action really doesn’t provide a sufficient ‘or else’ bargaining card.In which case all the employers need to do,across all of what remains of uk industry as a whole,is as they’re doing at present by saying no and if you don’t like it tough and with even the so called ‘Labour’ Party supporting that situation while at the same time pretending that it’s bothered about the fall in incomes in real terms and the wrecked economy which that situation is producing and has produced since the late 1970’s when the unions were effectively defeated both here and in the States.
Juddian:
It is worth establishing a good union where you work, you only have to look at the RMT train drivers who have never allowed their jobs to be undermined like ours have over the last 25 years, they have stuck together and earn around £40/50k for a 40 hour week.
Oddly enough the companies concerned haven’t gone bust and they haven’t brought in thousands of often incompetent underskilled flip flops to take over as and where necessary because the union boss and his members put the members first, makes sense to me.
That is because they can’t, where train drivers are concerned the law is robust enough to uphold good working practices because it’s so critical to public safety.
You might remember from discussions on another forum which we both inhabit,exactly what goes into making a train driver, and it’s not a couple of weeks in an old DAF with a tandem box trailer running round an industrial estate.
The RMT’s strength lies in the fact that if they stop, the job stops, or at the very least is severely compromised. Road haulage being the diverse and necessarily more flexible entity that it is (which of course killed rail freight back in the day) can circumvent this difficulty with ease.
Sidevalve:
Juddian:
It is worth establishing a good union where you work, you only have to look at the RMT train drivers who have never allowed their jobs to be undermined like ours have over the last 25 years, they have stuck together and earn around £40/50k for a 40 hour week.
Oddly enough the companies concerned haven’t gone bust and they haven’t brought in thousands of often incompetent underskilled flip flops to take over as and where necessary because the union boss and his members put the members first, makes sense to me.That is because they can’t, where train drivers are concerned the law is robust enough to uphold good working practices because it’s so critical to public safety.
You might remember from discussions on another forum which we both inhabit,exactly what goes into making a train driver, and it’s not a couple of weeks in an old DAF with a tandem box trailer running round an industrial estate.
The RMT’s strength lies in the fact that if they stop, the job stops, or at the very least is severely compromised. Road haulage being the diverse and necessarily more flexible entity that it is (which of course killed rail freight back in the day) can circumvent this difficulty with ease.
There’s no reason as to why the road transport industry can’t be subject to similar if not even stronger unionisation than rail being that rail can’t generally cover every stage of freight movements from door to door.In the case of road transport it’s simply a unity issue amongst drivers not the nature of the job itself.Unlike the rail industry,so far.However as I’ve said no union can really be effective under the present political regime regardless of it’s unity.
Sidevalve:
Juddian:
That is because they can’t, where train drivers are concerned the law is robust enough to uphold good working practices because it’s so critical to public safety.
You might remember from discussions on another forum which we both inhabit,exactly what goes into making a train driver, and it’s not a couple of weeks in an old DAF with a tandem box trailer running round an industrial estate.
The RMT’s strength lies in the fact that if they stop, the job stops, or at the very least is severely compromised. Road haulage being the diverse and necessarily more flexible entity that it is (which of course killed rail freight back in the day) can circumvent this difficulty with ease.
Yes agreed, but whose fault is that.
We as an industry allowed the dumbing down of standards and its still going on, just one example it would appear that autos will be able to be used for driving tests in the near future, another nail in the skills coffin, pretty soon any bugger that can walk upright will have an HGV licence.
Maybe if all lorry drivers had been unionised all these years like the Rail workers, and those unions had ensured strict safety standards, proper working conditions and long term real and ongoing training (not this DCPC box ticking bollox) then things would have very different.
I’ve often thought we have all been in the wrong unions all this time, we should have been in a road transport specialist wing of RMT, not a sub division of the Labour party fund raising machines.
There have been some good even positive posts on this age old topic. As an ex-teamster (if that is possible?) I have been back in the UK for a few years after 25+ in the Americas. I am now working from the U.K. east. I had to do my UK/eu licences since the days of using the American versions are long over per the new DVLC/a.
I have been studying the transition from the Scargill thru Baroness Thatcher (rip) eras and have come to the conclusion that the “Unite” which has absorbed all those weak collectives is merely a Political vehicle for the “champagne socialists” to use
martyh:
FLUNKEY:
I know this is an age old post Baroness Thatcher(rip) topic…but I feel that it may be time to bargain collectively with our employers. Especially with regard to pension funds/job descriptions/working hours e.t.c.? Bring it on!Not much time before i leave for work but here’s my pennies worth .
Until the unions clean themselves up they are a liability.The principle of unions is a good thing but over the last 30-40 yrs they have taken more than they have given right across the industries they represent and i wouldn’t trust a single one of the champagne socialists
The T&G are now in bed with them leaving the oldest “Cartage Association” as the only viable option if
mac12:
Before it could happen you would need at least 2 drivers to agree with 1 thing, I cannot ever see that happening.
What do we want? There have been some solid suggestions and possibly some hiding in the rants? The Rail collective is a good example of something that is still going and seems bullet proof?
The EU truckers are attempting some thing; but I feel that as historical leaders that us approaching the only remaining stand alone Union: urtu.com/ to collectively bargain company by company through out the U.K. then there would be strength in numbers! It’s 12.84/month and there are benefits/legal assistance. I any one a member?