Labour's Employment Rights Bill

[Fergie 307]

Basically archaic management did for UK motor industry, helped by lacklustre government support and failure to join the EEC.
The unions were just fighting for their jobs, which was exactly what they are supposed to do, especially in the face of unimaginative poor management.
Modern makers like Toyota have a much more constructive relationship with the unions, to everybody's advantage.

Oh please!
Practices like demarcation were rife, how do you justify that. A colleague worked at Longbridge as a welder. He said to get the tips changed on the machine could take half a shift if they were being bloody minded. First you had to get someone from one union to shut the machine down, another one to get at the parts, then yet another to actually change the things. Then the whole process had to be reversed. You could have done the job yourself in a couple of minutes. But if anyone so much as touched anything for which a different union member was responsible, they would call everyone out.
My dad worked for Borg Warner and was a regular visitor to BLMC factories, some of the tales he told of the workforce behaviour were hilarious. He often said he had never encountered such a bunch of thieving bone idle scum as worked at Speke, and the cars they produced reflected that.
The fact is the likes of Red Robbo seemed to think the company owed them a living. The idea that their wages were dependent on the success of the company, which was in turn dependent on them turning out a decent product, that people might actually want to buy, seems to have completely escaped them.
Henry Ford ( III I think) said if it was still within his power he would have closed down the UK operation in its entirety.
They produced the worst cars of all their European plants, and we're more trouble with strikes and restrictive working practices than all the other European operations put together.
So yes Jacob Unions can be a powerful force for good, but they can also be completely counter productive in the wrong hands.

 

[Jacob]

Oh please!
Practices like demarcation were rife, how do you justify that.

Archaic practices and bad management echoed by intransigent behaviour amongst the workers.
A very common occurrence.
There are betters way to manage businesses - giving the workers some shareholders rights is one; recognising that they are all in it together.

 

[Fergie 307]

One incident I found particularly funny was where they had identified a fault in a particular batch of gearboxes.
They had the effected cars, Rover P6 if I remember correctly, put in a compound, and a team from BW went up and changed the faulty boxes for new ones.
When the job was finished they found that about 30 gearboxes had gone missing from the supposedly secure store where they had been put.
On each car they had taken a new box out of its wooden crate to fit it. The faulty ones went in the same crates, ready to be shipped back to the factory in Letchworth for the faulty parts to be changed.
What tickled him was that all the boxes that had been stolen were the faulty ones, so anyone putting one in their car was going to have it fail within a couple of weeks.

 

[Spectric]

Modern makers like Toyota have a much more constructive relationship with the unions, to everybody's advantage.

I believe it is much less of a union than a workers co-operative where both sides show each other respect and work together for the good of the company which was very much lacking in the british motor industry with the blue and white collars divisive working practices.

A big problem with wages is the unfairness of the pay, it should be related to skills, experience and qualifications along with how well you contribute to the business in terms of objectives rather than what we have now where you can earn silly money for being an some idiot on Tv compared to say a highly skilled and productive machinist or where a politician can earn more than a top consultant.

 

[Jacob]

..... you can earn silly money for being an some silly person on Tv compared to say a highly skilled and productive machinist ....

Or being management on a massive salary and free to pay yourself huge bonuses for no apparent reason. Thames Water, Post Office and thousands of others.

 

[niemeyjt]

I have twice seen my companies move from more expensive to less expensive places - Firstly a move from Paris to Amsterdam and more recently a move from Switzerland to Barcelona and Warsaw.

If the UK becomes an expensive or inefficient place to employ people due to some piece of legislation I expect UK companies to look to do do similar. They are companies with shareholders, not charities.

Similarly, anyone who has used McDo in past five years will have seen you now order at a kiosk - not a person - another cost saving measure that has depleted jobs. And when it becomes cost effective expect to see more robotics - like flippy the burger robot - https://misorobotics.com/flippy/

As I say - you cannot repeal the law of unintended consequences - but you can rely on politicians to make any situation worse.

 

[Terry - Somerset]

The right always trot out objections to any improvement in workers rights and conditions and are best ignored, not least because their unimaginative doom-mongering usually proves to be utterly mistaken.
Better wages and conditions filters through society in so many ways, not least in the way the money is spent, benefitting other businesses, the economy and society as a whole.
What goes around comes around.

Changing workers rights is effectively a redistribution of wealth and income within a society and economy. No problem with that - it is a democratic choice having elected a Labour government.

Some will clearly benefit from the changes. Balancing the beneficiaries are losers. It is not a "win-win" outcome.

• cost and price Inflation will reduce real spending by non-beneficiaries
• it will make exports less competitive
• it may be that cheaper imported goods will substitute for more expensive UK sourced goods
• if demand for UK products falls, unemployment will rise

No right answers - it is not some sort of unambiguous societal benefit - whether on balance it is right is debatable.

 

[HOJ]

I do need to ask @Jacob have you ever had any connection with a Union, either as a member or affected by their actions in the course of carrying out, or doing the work you were paid to do, or trying to?

 

[Jacob]

....

Some will clearly benefit from the changes. Balancing the beneficiaries are losers. It is not a "win-win" outcome.

Couldn't be more mistaken! Nearly all social progress towards civilisation has been by virtue of pressure from the left, often at great cost. Otherwise we would still be in the dark ages. Often quite recent; women's franchise 1928, NHS 1945 and a host of other things. Unions (and their precursors) have always played a major role in these things, against frantic resistance from the establishment.
One for all and all for one! Win win!

 

[Yojevol]

Couldn't be more mistaken! Nearly all social progress towards civilisation has been by virtue of pressure from the left, often at great cost. Otherwise we would still be in the dark ages, often quite recent; women's franchise 1928, NHS 1945 and a host of other things. Unions (and their precursors) have always played a major role in these things, against frantic resistance from the establishment.
One for all and all for one! Win win!

Conversely none of that social progres would have been possible without the wealth created by capitalist entrepreneurs many of whom were, and are, keen to dispose of their profits in altruistic ways.
Truth is Left and Right depend on each other.
Brian

 

[Blackswanwood]

Conversely none of that social progres would have been possible without the wealth created by capitalist entrepreneurs many of whom were, and are, keen to dispose of their profits in altruistic ways.
Truth is Left and Right depend on each other.
Brian

Come on Brian, there’s no room for balance or common sense in these arguments

 

[Jacob]

Conversely none of that social progres would have been possible without the wealth created by capitalist entrepreneurs many of whom were, and are, keen to dispose of their profits in altruistic ways.
Truth is Left and Right depend on each other.
Brian

The wealth was provided by the people doing the work.
The British Empire at its height was built on slavery. Direct slavery in the colonies and de facto slavery in the appalling conditions of the working class in 18th and 19th centuries.
The wealthy were not at all keen on disposing of their profits in altruistic ways in the slightest, any more than they are now, but accumulated it in land, country houses, etc. much of it still in the same families. There were exceptions of course; Robert Owen and other reformers.
The great wealth of Great Britain was built on the exploitation and impoverishment of millions. Even when slavery ended the reparations were paid not to the freed slaves but to the slave owners having had their "property" taken away. Huge amounts of money involved, paid out to the already well off.
Everything which they did in the colonies they practiced first on their own people with violence and land grabs on the Welsh, Irish, Scots and the English lower orders.
Read David Olusoga "Black and British" and EP Thompson "The Making of the English Working Class".
https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b062nqpd/britains-forgotten-slave-owners-1-profit-and-loss

 

[MikeJhn]

I do need to ask @Jacob have you ever had any connection with a Union, either as a member or affected by their actions in the course of carrying out, or doing the work you were paid to do, or trying to?

Good question!

 

[highwood122]

I have twice seen my companies move from more expensive to less expensive places - Firstly a move from Paris to Amsterdam and more recently a move from Switzerland to Barcelona and Warsaw.

If the UK becomes an expensive or inefficient place to employ people due to some piece of legislation I expect UK companies to look to do do similar. They are companies with shareholders, not charities.

Similarly, anyone who has used McDo in past five years will have seen you now order at a kiosk - not a person - another cost saving measure that has depleted jobs. And when it becomes cost effective expect to see more robotics - like flippy the burger robot - https://misorobotics.com/flippy/

As I say - you cannot repeal the law of unintended consequences - but you can rely on politicians to make any situation worse.

the ford transit operation moved from Southampton to Turkey for said reason

 

[highwood122]

Surely a wage should supply enough money for a worker to exist. Any business that cannot survive without paying a reasonable wage to their workers is one that is not economically viable.

A business whose staff are predominantly on zero hours contracts and minimum wages. will be having their labour costs subsidised with working families, tax credits. This applies not only to retail businesses, like the some of the major supermarkets but also to the NHS.

There is going to have to be a readjustment of relative wages. We are none of us immune to this or the price that will have to be paid for all that "quantitative easing" that has gone on in response to Covid and the various economic storms. I believe there is going to be a very difficult reckoning over the next few years.

i know people that work just the number of hours that do not affect their benefits credits e.t.c.

 

[Jacob]

i know people that work just the number of hours that do not affect their benefits credits e.t.c.

It's called "the poverty trap". The benefit system does not easily allow the transition from work to unemployment and back again and people can be caught out with zero income. It's not fit for purpose, as with so many public services following 45 years of tory rule.

 

[Fergie 307]

Oh Jacob you do love your sweeping generalisations. There were many who could hardly be viewed as reformers who invested vast sums of money to the benefit of their fellow citizens.
Take Mr Colston, who's statue ended up in the harbour.
Yes he made much of his money through slavery, but in his day that was an accepted norm.
He stood out locally because he chose to spend the equivalent of tens of millions in today's money on projects like schools and other civic amenities for the benefit of the local community.
His legacy continues to this day with people still benefitting from trusts he set up.
So the reality is a little more complicated than the very black and white image you do love to portray.
In his case I would suggest it might have been much better to have left his statue alone to be used as a point of discussion. Like many figures he did some things that are viewed very badly now, but he also did an awful lot of good. So let people acquaint themselves with the facts, and come to their own judgement.
There was a very good interview in a programme made before the statue incident where they spoke to a young black lady who had actually been put through university largely as a result of a fund set up by Colston for the education of disadvantaged children.
The presenter, a black reporter, who's name I forget, came to much the same conclusion as outlined above, use these cases as a learning opportunity about our past, both good and bad.
I believe I am right in saying that during the making of the programme he discovered that one of his own relatives might well have been one of Colston's slaves.
Well worth a watch if you can find it on I player.
I suspect the majority of those shoving his effigy into the harbour actually knew nothing about the man, other than his connection to the slave trade.
Wherever you go I suspect you will find similar stories, and similar figures. We tend to only know about the more famous examples like the Cadbury's. There are many others.

 

[Jacob]

....In his case I would suggest it might have been much better to have left his statue alone to be used as a point of discussion.

Dumping it in the river made it a focus of discussion. That was the whole idea.
It's a great pity they didn't leave the brilliant Jen Reid replacement in situ, to stimulate further discussion.
https://www.theguardian.com/artandd...e-colston-jen-reid-black-lives-matter-bristol
I've never read such a complacent whitewashing of slavery as the rest of your post! Whatever next, the holocaust; not as bad as it's cracked up to be?

 

[Yojevol]

Oh Jacob you do love your sweeping generalisations. There were many who could hardly be viewed as reformers who invested vast sums of money to the benefit of their fellow citizens.
Take Mr Colston, who's statue ended up in the harbour.
Yes he made much of his money through slavery, but in his day that was an accepted norm.
He stood out locally because he chose to spend the equivalent of tens of millions in today's money on projects like schools and other civic amenities for the benefit of the local community.
His legacy continues to this day with people still benefitting from trusts he set up.
So the reality is a little more complicated than the very black and white image you do love to portray.
In his case I would suggest it might have been much better to have left his statue alone to be used as a point of discussion. Like many figures he did some things that are viewed very badly now, but he also did an awful lot of good. So let people acquaint themselves with the facts, and come to their own judgement.
There was a very good interview in a programme made before the statue incident where they spoke to a young black lady who had actually been put through university largely as a result of a fund set up by Colston for the education of disadvantaged children.
The presenter, a black reporter, who's name I forget, came to much the same conclusion as outlined above, use these cases as a learning opportunity about our past, both good and bad.
I believe I am right in saying that during the making of the programme he discovered that one of his own relatives might well have been one of Colston's slaves.
Well worth a watch if you can find it on I player.
I suspect the majority of those shoving his effigy into the harbour actually knew nothing about the man, other than his connection to the slave trade.
Wherever you go I suspect you will find similar stories, and similar figures. We tend to only know about the more famous examples like the Cadbury's. There are many others.

Thanks Fergie, I thought somebody with a bit of sense would express this view more eloquently than I could have.
The lives we live today are all based on the trials, tribulations, experimentation and enterprise of our predecessors.
Brian

 

[Phil Pascoe]

Dumping it in the river made it a focus of discussion. That was the whole idea.

Billhooks.