Viewing 12 posts - 121 through 132 (of 132 total)
  • not so Red Ed?
  • konabunny
    Free Member
    wobbliscott
    Free Member

    Krona bunny, that’s not entirely true. Lots of private firms have some form of share purchase plan for their workers that usually enables them to buy shares with a tax benefit. My company does this and every 5 yrs or so as a scheme matures you’ll see an increase in nice new cars on the car park. And I’m not talking about the managers car park. Most large companies see significant benefit in such schemes and the employees being shareholders too.

    rudebwoy
    Free Member

    konabunny– thats a great article–shame that not many will see/read/ digest it !

    konabunny
    Free Member

    Sadly the guy who wrote it just popped his clogs. Even if one doesn’t care for Marx as a political theorist, that foreword is a good piece of journalism/literary criticism – zingy and wheeling, just like Marx the journalist could be on a good day.

    Lots of private firms have some form of share purchase plan for their workers…

    …and those plans are neither public nor flotations.

    ninfan
    Free Member

    Again – thats a question of methods of allocation and distribution, if the workers retain the majority of shares then its still worker owned.

    binners
    Full Member

    Moving back to the unions, too many people have lapped up Miliband and the media’s spin without checking the facts. My union – representing over 1 million people – already requires its members to choose whether they pay into affiliated (i.e. to Labour) or independent campaigns.


    RIGHT-WING PRESS IN TOTALLY INACCURATE UNION SCAREMONGERING SHOCKA!!!!

    teamhurtmore
    Free Member

    Kona, thanks for the link. An interesting read over breakfast this morning. Berman shares the poetic style of his subject. He is correct to note Marx’s admiration and criticism of capitalism and naked forms of communism at the same time. He is also correct to focus on the central theme of freedom to develop picked up libertarians after him. Which leads to his conclusion – the fact that at the start of the 20ceople were prepared to die for what was written in the Commuinist Manifesto whereas today they’re are simple happy to live with it. Why is that? Perhaps because those who sought individual freedom in communism found that they were neither provided for “according to their ability nor there needs.” 😉 They did not find individual freedom of development and the end of a major communist experiment was marked by a dramatic and extensive rejection. Marx’s “inevitability” proved anything but. Voting with their feet, millions voted for an alternative to Communism as their path to personal development and freedom.

    So we moved on (fortunately) and had alternative critiques of social justice. The rise of Rawls as core reading even at the Harvard Business School is a good example of this. A theory of Justice was written in 1971 but still seems alive today. Indeed Harvard’s Michael Sandel is doing his best to keep his ideas fresh and to limit the power of markets on everyday life. (Sandel’s latest book) IMO Rawls Liberty and Difference Principles combined with his debate with the likes of Nozick are better and more applicable reads for addressing modern inequality than the CM!

    wobbliscott
    Free Member

    Konabunny, you’re missing the point. The view that normal workers cannot benefit from company shares is not true. And though workers may not be able to benefit at the point of floatation, opportunities to enter into some form of share/investment programme will most likely be made available to the workers once the organisation is privatised. Many normal workers in the private sector benefit signficantly from such schemes which is an opportunity denied to public sector workers.

    Yes you can ‘opt out’ of the union donation to the labour party thing, but the Unions still prop up labour financially and I don’t want to contribute to that organisation, especially when all they seem to succeed in doing is driving british companies abroad, which I think is a great shame and significant failing of the Unions to be able to work with companies and help them find innovative ways to remain competitive in a very fast changing and dynamic global market. Can’t they see and appreciate the global market that companies operate in and the fact that it is a case that if they’re not competitive they go out of business? It is a reality completely and utterly lost and ignored by the Union representative i’ve ever spoken to. All they want to do is ‘Stick it to the management’ no matter what the cost. They’re full of hate and jelousy.

    Lifer
    Free Member

    wobbliscott – Member
    Yes you can ‘opt out’ of the union donation to the labour party thing, but the Unions still prop up labour financially and I don’t want to contribute to that organisation, especially when all they seem to succeed in doing is driving british companies abroad, which I think is a great shame and significant failing of the Unions to be able to work with companies and help them find innovative ways to remain competitive in a very fast changing and dynamic global market. Can’t they see and appreciate the global market that companies operate in and the fact that it is a case that if they’re not competitive they go out of business? It is a reality completely and utterly lost and ignored by the Union representative i’ve ever spoken to. All they want to do is ‘Stick it to the management’ no matter what the cost. They’re full of hate and jelousy.

    What’s needed is an end to the confrontational way that Unions and Management work over here. Look at Codetermination in Germany where larger companies have workers’ represantives as members of the board.

    And if you opt out surely you aren’t supporting Labour financially, which is the whole point of the opt-out?

    And

    especially when all they seem to succeed in doing is driving british companies abroad,

    🙄 – examples?

    binners
    Full Member

    Absolutely. What the board of Virgin Rail needs is….

    😆

    binners
    Full Member

    Getting back to the original point, The devastatingly effective, fearless crusader for workers rights Mr Milliband. Can anyone fill me in on his bold statements regarding the ridiculous, ill-thought-through mad rush realistic timescale to hand over to their profiteering mates privatise the Royal Mail, and the call for large scale strike action it has provoked?

    Somehow I seemed to have missed them

    teamhurtmore
    Free Member

    Binners, Ed is quiet because he had plans to do the same – albeit to limit the sale to a minority stake. So Labour is in a tricky position on this one. It left Chukka looking rather naked as a potential Business Secretary on BBC QT last night. He was left to argue (poorly) that since RM had delivered a £400m profit and was In recovery that it should stay in state ownership. Two problems with that. One, it is contrary to Labour’s previous stance on the future of RM. Second, his analysis of the performance of RM – not just the one-offs in the £400m but the financing needs that it requires going forward – was desperately shallow for someone with his mandate as a (potential) representative of UK business.

    I am not sure what was more ridiculous – Chukka on the RM or Justine Greening defending Cameron’s performance on Syria.

    The guy from the Tines was funny and accurate when asked whether GO had won the argument. H said he didn’t know especially since he couldn’t see any difference between what Conservatives and Labour were proposing as solutions!

    I am surprised that the Greens didn’t complain. Caroline? Was very interesting but more often than not left to the last person to speak. Poor show from DD.

Viewing 12 posts - 121 through 132 (of 132 total)

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