trade unions need to be recognised for the massively important roll they have to play in society,
Because that’s what trade unions are. They’re a deliberate attempt to construct a monopoly of supply of a certain type of labour in order to roll the rest of society.
Eggcorn
They were a pretty efficient bunch of gangsters. A few acts of violence in the early days and you could cow a whole labour force for years, with just a few well chosen top-ups. “We know where you live; we know where your kids go to school”: threats were often enough.
Anyway, the answer to your question is a “typright”.
Tim
This is a festive season comedy gem:
‘………is matched by a belief not just in the justice of the issues that I write about but also in the fact that those who argue as I do are simply right. I do think the world works broadly speaking as I describe it. Evidence has suggested I am not bad in forecasting outcomes based on those ideas.’
Translation – Despite being singularly unable to mount a coherent defence of my position under even the slightest scrutiny I have reached the conclusion that my critics are simply wrong and I am right based on my unshakeable arrogance. I am a serial fantasist but based on those fantasies I can confidently predict in my own imagination things will be as I want them to be.
Every day when I commute into London I ask myself why the train still has a overpaid driver who wont work 24/7 and goes on frequent strike, a new meaning to the term “rolling stock”.
Yes, the UK economy is much better without active trade unions keeping up wage levels so people can afford to buy the goods and services produced.It is so much better that a significant proportion of the electorate has given up on wages and looks to their houses for unearned capital gains instead.Freedom? Freedom to employ on zero hours contracts and get in a nasty little tizz about the lack of demand in the economy.Bye bye coal / Bye bye steel. This is public school “anarchy”: is n’t it fun? None of that tiresome work: we have destroyed all the jobs.
What’s the word? I suspect the Rog would call it a ‘Freudian Fingering’.
DBC Reed
Isn’t employment currently at an all time record level?- and isn’t it the likes of yourself that insist people on low wages shell out near 30% of their income in tax which is then recycled back to them as tax credits? Aren’t we besieged at the channel tunnel by migrants seeking to get over here precisely because there is work available? Any of this ringing a bell?
DBC Reed: which other clapped out loss making firms would you rescue apart from coal and steel? British Leyland?
The Left wants to abolish coal to fix “Climate Change”.
The Left screams when coal mines are shut.
The dissonance should be enough to make people fall over.
Spelling mistake? Oh you think it’s missing a T
“………is matched by a belief not just in the justice of the issues that I write about but also in the fact that those who argue as I do are simply right. I do think the world works broadly speaking as I describe it. Evidence has suggested I am not bad in forecasting outcomes based on those ideas.”
This attitude is not limited solely to him (though he exhibits it to a pathalogical degree) but is common across the Left. They have conflated ethics/rightness with their own thoughts for so long now it is almost unthinkable for them to believe themselves wrong/malign on just about any issue.
It is what makes arguing with them very difficult. They just blank any contrary argument as evil/wrong/product of a vast conspiracy, etc.
Rob
I agree – it’s a common attitude amongst fringe cranks in the US as well – which is why whichever contributor made the comparison between Murphy and David Icke was probably closer to the truth than he realised!
Van P
I have made it abundantly clear that I favour as little tax on incomes and profits as possible with, instead, a Land Value Tax.
But people like you don’t like an unearned capital gains in land values either. Or taxes of any kind. When I take the old Social Credit line that the need to tax could be avoided by the State creating money out of thin air, there is unison pooping of pants on this site.
Oh, the “thin air” stuff again.
Create money without creating value and you just have more money units.
Mr Reed, has it ever occurred you that there may be a downside? That the developed world is stuffed with politicians looking for votes, AND NOT ONE OF THEM has suggested what you’re proposing?
Jeepers.
Trade unions once served a purpose, when employees had few choices. You took a job at t’mill and couldn’t easily go elsewhere. And unions were a way of getting better conditions because you could all walk out and the employer’s production would be knackered (because he couldn’t easily get more people). There were many bad examples, but the smarter ones understood that you could only extract some of the company, not all of it.
Most people don’t need them today because of cars and buses. Don’t like your job? Leave, get a better one. Outside of the public sector, what is unionised? A few old manufacturing companies, theatre, broadcasting. Cinema is slowly de-unionising because producers are tired of their shit. They’ll go and shoot something in China with a crew that will put in long days rather than the absurd 11 hr days in the US.
It’s why the link of Thatcher and the Unions gets it wrong. It was the Ford Escort that destroyed the unions, which happened to come along at roughly the same time.
DBC Reed
The idea of an LVT is not without merit, although we need to tackle the idea that the state can do everything and look to restrict state expenditure first rather than ‘ringfencing’ every pound if enough people kick up a fuss on social media as this government seems wont to do. You are advocating what seems to be the Murphy solution of ‘Green QE’, ‘People’s QE’, ‘The Democratic People’s Republic of QE’ or ‘Ein Volk, ein Reich, ein QE’ (whatever moniker it’s going under now) – I have lost count of the times you have been told this will be inflationary but still you keep banging the drum…….
I was surprised how strong the unions are in Canada, if a company is unionised you can’t take a non-management job there unless you join the union when you start, in some cases you need to be a member of the union first. The unionised positions can go up to a reasonably high level and I’ve known UK people turn down jobs because they don’t want to join the union.
What’s interesting is that despite all the constitutional and other human rights nobody seems to have argued that being forced to join is a breach of your personal rights and freedoms, apart from where it conflicts on religious grounds which is one of the very few exemptions.
Having worked in both union and non-union jobs I have to say that at this point in time at least 80% of the union’s effort just goes into making life more convoluted for everyone involved.
Almost everything that caused the original formation of unions is now a law. Workplace safety regulations me employers are required to have common sense systems, like unlocked fire doors and an MSDS, in place. Wages, for the most, part are paid in an orderly system and the old company store concept is gone. Hours have been standardized with, in the US, anything more than 40 hours a week being paid overtime to help avoid abuses of the past.
For myself I know do everything I can to avoid union entanglements. This only means that I believe that unions are a necessary evil that, although they must continue to exist in some form, should be avoid by everyone. Basically any business that has managed to avoid union entanglement just needs to pay attention to the needs of it’s workers so a union doesn’t form. As Tim has explained before jobs are a cost of doing business and if the employee’s are screwed to the point they have to unionize the blame rests solely on poor management decisions.
Strange that there’s no sign yet of IanB claiming that life was better in the 70s and that trade union legislation is an assault on freedom of association.
[obvious troll]
How could anyone claim life was better in the 70s? Thanks to global warming I can wear shorts this December.
[/obvious troll]
” the smarter ones understood that you could only extract some of the company, not all of it.”
Unless of course the company had been nationalised
TU legislation is an assault on freedom of assoc.
It is a great shame that the poison of socialism took root in Unions but the concept of people choosing to try and create a–non-violent–voluntary association to boost their position is not inherently bad.
There should be no legislation either one way or the other–either boosting or attacking Union activity.