If the RMT, do buckle, are they the last of the powerful unions who can and do influence workplace practices.

Lots of powerful unionised workplaces have seen their unions destroyed or the workplaces closed, eg Miners , car industry, etc.Just what thatcher always wanted and failed.

1. Aren’t the proposed job cuts covered by voluntary redundancies?

What do you think that proves, though? If you’re told that a whole bunch of people are going to be made redundant, and you’ll get a bigger termination payment if you volunteer than if you’re selected, then you’re just balancing the uplift for voluntary redundancy against the chance you’ll keep your job. It’s a gamble. It doesn’t mean that you wouldn’t rather have a permanent job!

The industries (and people) the tories were happy to crush in order to win an ideological battle. They didn’t die naturally they were destroyed by intention and the people employed thrown onto the scrapheaps as necessary casualty’s in creating an even more unequal society.

I’m sure I read somewhere that something like 200 pits were closed in the four years after Skargill took over as mine workers union leader, and that under Labour…

Thanks to excellent union leadership, LU has yet to compete in a race to the bottom. Meanwhile you have to waste time recruiting a replacement.

awesome, I quite agree take what you can and pass on the cost to customer everyone else. LU is a completely private organisation isn’t it?

and now the office workers who work with the police are going on strike for 2 days,Uni staff out today, but nobody noticed them. winter of discontent happening quite fast.

I want 10 weeks holiday a year. How can I get that?

I’m not quite sure about this concept of striking. In the early days, it was an essential tool to bring working clases to a decent standard of living and the labour movement has undoubtedly improved society immeasurably. But where are the checks and balances? What’s to stop the union leaders of public services to ransom for whatever they fancy? Surely we need a better system.

kimbers – Member
yes THM soon the nobility and bankers will be unopposed once again, we’ll be able to go back to 6 day weeks, no holiday or maternity/paternity leave, dump the minimum wage, itll be a capitalists paradise I tell ya!

People not agreeing with what Bob does is not necessarily a sign of being anti union.

I don’t agree with Bob Crow because I think he in the long term is very bad for unions in general, and particularly the RMT. Because he has had strikes over such silly things and the pay and condition are so out of whack with similar roles empathy and support is largely lost from the general public. Once you have lost support your clock will start ticking. This increases the chance of statute to be passed to restrict unions.

He is playing into the hands of people who would like to create the situation you jest about.

I personally think offices should be manned. But what does the decision not to do so have to do with bob crow or boris Johnson? They don’t run tfl. at my place over half have gone in the last year or so, but everyone doesn’t stop work in sympathy! You work harder and look for another job.

Anyone saying the strike is a good thing doesn’t have to put up with the sheer misery of all this crap and have their own job made even more fragile by some who think they have a right to a job for life.

Stick boris and bob in the stocks, they both have chauffeur driven cars I’m sure and never have to deal with the effects if this awful strike.

And breathe.

Stick boris and bob in the stocks, they both have chauffeur driven cars I’m sure and never have to deal with the effects if this awful strike.

Boris is well known as a bike commuter. HTH.

My post last night was a bit ranty. Apologies, but under the circumstances etc.

Konabunny, although I don’t know I am pretty certain he is. In the style of David Cameron, ie for photo shoots only and followed by his car.

I’ve seen Boris cycling loads of times around Notting Hill and Westminster and he definitely turns up by bike to many of his meetings – to the point he’s had about 3 bikes nicked in as many years… he doesn’t seem to have a car following and normally chats to other cyclists in the advanced stop boxes.

I’m not sure he ever goes by “chauffeur driven” car but one other thing to note is that that one of the first things the current government did was to significantly reduce spending on ministerial cars – putting an end to the ridiculous sort of abuses that saw John Prescott being driven twice a day in a chauffeur driven car the 100 metres between his grace and favour apartment and the office.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-16576674

He definitely does. I’ve seen him riding through the City over London Bridge, and my wife nearly got run over by him on a zebra crossing in Angel.

Well I’m sure for some here, toad of city hall riding a bike makes him an alright geezer.

I’m sure I read somewhere that something like 200 pits were closed in the four years after Skargill took over as mine workers union leader, and that under Labour…

Thank you for pointing out that the industry was in decline. I think the point needs to be made was that if it was managed decline, then we quite possibly wouldn’t still have social/economic problems we have in those former mining towns and villages we have today thirty or so years after the plug was abruptly pulled.

Crow and Johnson ‘will succumb to sexual tension’

In a recent poll, 75 percent of commuters said they could handle the mental image of the pair writhing on the floor, their meaty hands crushing each others’ thighs and shoulders, if it meant not having to go on buses.

The London buses I’ve used so far seemed fine to me.

awesome, I quite agree take what you can and pass on the cost to customer everyone else. LU is a completely private organisation isn’t it?

Whereas what you do is extract labour as cheaply as possibly, so maximum profit can be passed on to the already-rich, and screw everyone else.

I don’t agree with Bob Crow because I think he in the long term is very bad for unions in general, and particularly the RMT.

Given that unions seen as less militant don’t seem to be faring too well, I suspect the opposite is true.

I think the point needs to be made was that if it was managed decline, then we quite possibly wouldn’t still have social/economic problems we have in those former mining towns and villages we have today thirty or so years after the plug was abruptly pulled.

Managed decline of former pit villages – ah, that wonderful concept!

You do realise of course that ‘managed decline’ through the history of the closure of mines actually meant stopping investing in villages that were seen as ‘doomed’ and watching them descend into social/economic deserts before bulldozing them into the ground?

And its resulted in a lot more than thirty years of pain, and wasn’t done by the Tories:

Welcome to the Durham D – villages