Trade unions

Oh indeed – I remember the demarcation disputes and so on. Personally I would prefer the german model of co operation to the UK one of adversarial combat but it takes both sides to do that and our bosses simply don’t want to even if the unions do

seen a few different flavours of unions and reps, they vary wildly.

back in previous employment, union reps were just the most er ‘vocal’ members on the shop floor, who then thought they had to make an impression by making everything as difficult as possible for management. much the same as both sides of that shower of sh1te in parliament, they just object to what the others doing whether its a good idea or not. also seen good union reps that work with management to get mutually acceptable compromises.

these days im still not happy with my union, but as others have stated, its ‘insurance against bad things happening to you’. ive thought about dropping out as pretty much every vote i take part in im on the losing side 😀 yes, i realise that means the majority are being represented rather than just little old me but i dont like the way ours try and sway the vote to go the way they want. theyve also lied to us to get their way, so i just dont trust them at all.
theres also the gleeful rubbing of hands when theyre off on another p1ss-up er jolly er union meeting dahn london or whatever paid by us, leaves a bad taste. like i say, i dont trust em at all, so i still may drop out sometime and save meself £30 a month, what stops me is i just feel we should still all stand together and id be letting mates down not paying anything but still getting any benefits they fight for.

all a bit negaitive isnt it, however, i do still think people should join a union. i agree with what they stand for, i just personally dont think ours are effective. others will differ.

back in previous employment, union reps were just the most er ‘vocal’ members on the shop floor, who then thought they had to make an impression by making everything as difficult as possible for management.

I’m sure this is not unusual. We had the same experience and the union didn’t really achieve anything until said father-of-chapel departed.

I was later persuaded to stand for the role as it looked like we’d get a similar character otherwise. We then took a softer approach which better represented what members wanted, leading to more recruits and some great outcomes for people facing redundancy.

Mine is pretty invisible tbh but they’re generally there when it really counts- interventions with problems, we had a sucessful strike for pay a while back. But I have a broadly reasonable employer so it’s not like they’re intervening day to day to stop us getting bummed.

Back in the bank essentially every management process went like this:
Management bullshit
Union intervention
More management bullshit
Union upgunning
Brief outbreak of sanity.

Essentially nothing happened without the union involved. I’m sure to some people they were troublemakers and we were all bolshy but it was a direct result of middle managers being led to feel like they were gods, and HR people who thought their job was to agree with managers even on points of law. Not even big stuff, little random gems like “If you’re not here 30 minutes before your official start time, you’re late”

+1 tj – again 🙂

Unions aren’t always that great, but having worked in a job with a fairly ineffective but well-intentioned union, and one where there was no union recognition at all, there’s no question which I’d prefer. At least in the former case the union did manage to bring management to heel when they seriously overstepped their authority and ignored their own procedures (new boss trying to stamp his authority on the place). Whereas in the latter the management was seriously, ludicrously incompetent even when they were trying to do the right thing. And with no checks and balances, they just ran the company into oblivion.

Unless you work for a large company, a council or the nhs, or in a niche job, train driver/bus driver, steelworker or skilled manual trades,or similar, you have little hope of any help from a union as they are basicly a talking head,they can talk to your management but with no real power, the power still comes from the workforce withdrawing their labour, eg striking.

The current train strikes down south are still ongoing due to the power of the workforce not giving in, scotrail caved in and agreed to guards keeping their jobs, many bus companies have also agreed pay increases,prison officers are getting a pay rise for some, and for some reason the firemans strikes failed to achieve much, only job loses and station closures.

So join a union if you want, but better to just ask for advice on here, its worked for a lot of people in smaller enterprises.

If you don’t like your rep, become one too.

Tried that after we hadn’t had a rep for 18 months, put my name forward and waited for the 2 week waiting period to end where anyone else could put their name forward. I only put my name forward as I was fed up of management basically doing what they wanted for the last year, didn’t really care who as long as we had someone! On the last day one other name was put forward, someone who had said before that he wasn’t interested in it at all. Turned out the boss practically told him to put himself forward as she knew I’d actually put up a fight over various issues! This other person is completely in the bosses pocket, always doing extra jobs for her, even openly admits he fancies her rotten! In the ensuing vote between us we drew the first time (a union first!) then he won by two votes in the second round. No-one at work will say they voted for him and there’s been plenty of talk of it being fixed etc. I don’t believe it was a fix, more people saying one thing then doing the other.

In the 3 months of having a new union rep he’s been accused of:

Talking to the management about matters members have spoken to him in confidence.
Sweeping a claim of racial abuse by one employee to another, stating that there was no evidence despite there being three statements saying they witnessed it (including me).
Safety issues swept under the carpet after they had been reported.
Smoking inside the premises ‘allowed’ in two areas!

The union regional rep refuses to do anything about it, saying he needs time to settle in. Meanwhile three staff have quit due to the above. My current union stinks.

One good comment above – the Germam model is superior to our adversarial one

Very easy to judge the quality of Trades Unions (dont both words have an s ?) – what has happend to long term trends in wages as a percentage of national income and what has happened to income equality. Is there any correlation with trends in TU membership?

Of course, if you increase wages without improving productivity, you get fewer people in work but on higher wages ie, greater inequality. One union has a great record of this and of paying its top people very well indeed. A different take on we are all in it together 😉

I was forced, and I mean, forced, to join a union, this was back in the bad old days of closed shops in the print industry, when a company had to have union members in order for anything they produced for another company, like advertising artwork in order for it to be accepted for publication.
The company I worked for had a couple of people who were members of SLADE, the Society of Lithographic Artists, Designers and Engravers, so the NGA demanded equality, and I was one of two people eligible so I had to join or the company would be blacked. My union sub was £1.20/week, out of my weekly pay of £9.50, at the time the highest Union sub in the country, and when I was threatened with redundancy, the best they could manage was a suggestion that they may, possibly, be able to find me a job somewhere miles away, when I didn’t own a car and couldn’t drive.
So excuse me for being exceedingly cynical about Unions and how those at the top seem to do pretty well off of the membership, while doing the bare minimum for those at the bottom.

this was back in the bad old days of closed shops in the print industry,

I remember that, my Dad was MD of a company and the best paid employees were the printers, earned more than all the Directors!

Thm you couldn’t have spent any longer typing the answer to the questions/suggestions in your post than you did typing what you did, errr, type.
Particularly interested in which union you are referring to in last paragraph, and whether the higher paid employees (of the union in question that is, as opposed to their members) are being rewarded for doing a better job at employer or indeed Labour Party policy level.

Which is another thing, 2 pages and no comments on unions lobbying government?
Particularly interested in the parallels and differences with conventional businesses (U.K. and inter/multi national) lobbying government and funding political parties. My impression is that the messages and the money are many degrees more transparent when it is (to pick a random union supporting virgin healthcare employees) Unite doing the lobbying on health versus virgin care lobbying on [/w]health.

I’m a rep for my union at work. We have achieved a great many improvements for the members, most of which goes unnoticed or the credit for which is pinched by someone else. I am proud to be a union member and a rep.

I work for a large company and I’m both in HR and a manager so I must be doubly incompetent. Some of our workforce are represented by a union, whose main job is to negotiate the annual pay increase for their members. Every year they trumpet the excellent deal they’ve won for their members and every year it’s either exactly the same or a slightly smaller increase than the non-union members get. People are cottoning on but not as quickly as you’d think.

They may have access to good legal advice when the need it, but in my experience the union reps will often overstep their role and a little knowledge is a dangerous thing. I’ve seen them mess things up for their members for than once.

Personally I wouldn’t join a union. I think they had their place at one time but they’re now outdated and often unnessarily adversarial.

IF HR object then they is probably a good thing 😉
I had one great, one honest and one incompetent and dishonest to deal with. I would only converse by e-mail with her.

I’ve seen them mess things up for their members for than once.

How many employees have you seen mess it up for you ?

IME most of it was just a way for the workforce to speak to the management and most of what we did was pastoral rather than juicy complaints- though we did do them. I cannot think of an example where people were not helped by us and one of the most important bits we did was when we also said that mgmt were not being excessive as they were more likely to listen to us than them.Yes employees can be unreasonable too.
Personally I only ever witnessed employers grandstanding but that was more a reflection of the CEO’s personality than anything else.

It may be true that “we dont need them” but that requires rather a lot of faith in shareholder multinationals to look after your rights above their profits. That seems unlikely to happen and 50 years of no unions will look very different from 50 years of everyone in a union.

@tj: interesting post with potential to be as contentious as the trump & eu threads.

@project: agree that unions have been more effective in some industries but less so in others – but this could be media coverage more than actual performance.

Personal experience is limited: one day strike once whicb achieved nothing other than one day unpaid.
Have been self-employed in organisations where union reps talked about representing the membership but delivered nothing.
Legal support is always worth having.
Southern rail, to me, is much more about employer incompetence and government disengagement than unions ‘flexing their muscles’.

On balance, yes – join.
The strength of yes depends on the sector/industry in which you work.

As an aside, unions will typically assist their executive members to buy property in area of union hq by providing low/0% loans from union funds – that is, from members contributions. The CWU is a great example if this.
Does your union do the same?

really frank? Unions contentious on here who would have thought it?

Actually my reason was simply as I said in the opening post. I have lost count of the number of times people ask on here for employment advice and a union is a good source of it at a very low cost. That for me is their main role these days along with campaigns and lobbying.

think of your union membership s insurance for when your employer tries to shaft you or when you are in disciplinary bother.

@tj: agree that self-help (through union membership, if that’s the preferred route) is better than using a bike forum for advice on employment issues.
My point was, as you know, this thread will polarise views – wait until chewkw finds it and the mods give ninfan his ‘get out of jail card’; then the ‘big thinkers’ etc start pontificating and then…..i’m off.

You’re nhs and i fully understand your supportive comments about union representation but the story is different in other sectors.
To reiterate my earlier comment – on balance, join a union.

@countzero, where are the print unions now? Ah yes that’s it finished! I had the same row with the NGA, they wanted £16 a month off me in 1992! bloody dreamers that was more expensive than sky telly at the time! I cancelled it as did most other print workers.

I’m GMB and to be honest I can’t wait to be shot of them and join a professional union. My last union, Nautilus (formerly NUMAST) was industry specific and was actually worth being a part of if for nothing else having the joy of seeing my sponsor company on the front page of the newspaper every month for some boiler fire or sunk ship or another.

I’m not keen on my money subbing a political party or the adversarial role they like to take. For instance there is a low carbon forum or such just formed in Scotland that they have proudly turned round and said they won’t join since Friends of the Earth are part of it and they can’t work with such a vehemently anti-nuclear group. So now we have no representation. Nice one, you sure showed them. They’re also useless when it comes to representation and frankly if it wasn’t for the “what if” I’d be shot of them anyway as £156odd a year for a crappy diary isn’t good VFM.

no – but £156 a year will suddenly seem very cheap if you need representation! thats about 40 mins of an employment lawyers time. How much is your house insurance and when did you last use it?

YOu can opt out of the political levy you know

First I’ve been told!

EDIT: on reflection it would appear that the “political fund” is actually the lobbying money as opposed to direct Labour Party funding.

My sister’s just been made redundant while on maternity leave. She’s not in a union.

Yes join a union even if it is only for the legal representation the union may provide. My “local” branch is based so far away from where I actually work that it is no use to me, but with our current government repealing the Human Rights Act and leaving the EU I would not even consider leaving my union

Took us years to get union recognition, finally got it and tbh I was amazed at how amateurish and disorganised they were – Unite fwiw.

First time management tested our resolve post recognition, a wildcat overtime ban was called for and seconded (as usual, by 2 Phukwits that didn’t even do any overtime, but were the loudest shouters), That kind of shit was the reason I wanted a union, ie a steadying hand, experience in such situations….

Anyway, that ban ran for months, eventually lead to 200 redundancies, though I shouldn’t complain, it gave me the kick up the arse required to get out and a nice wee package walloped half my mortgage away.

I still believe that a mature attitude from both management and union would have been a benefit to the company, but alas, it wasn’t to be.

Regarding HR input, it can be as variable as union representation. In my experience it was the HR’s interpretation of the relevant legislation advising management that caused the issue, the union legal team said it was not the first and would certainly not be the last time.