\”I cannot talk to you properly now,\” an air traffic controller at Madrid\’s Barajas Airport told The Sunday Telegraph in a half whisper, his voice quavering on his mobile.
\”There are civil guards here, with pistols. If we don\’t start work now, we will be arrested.
…
Threatened with immediate imprisonment for sedition if they did not obey their new military commanders, and the show of force as in Madrid, the controllers capitulated.
Harsh but fair I feel.
Er, just as a bit of context , the Guardia Civil aren’t actually available in a pistol-less option so not quite as dramatic as it sounds.
A few of the greedy workshy bastards should have been shot, to encourage the others. Selfish job-dodging pirate bastards.
This is a formally Socialist government forcing workers back to work at gunpoint, right? And using rhetoric about holding the country to ransom. Well I never.
“This is a formally Socialist government forcing workers back to work at gunpoint, right? And using rhetoric about holding the country to ransom.”
Franco would be proud.
Actually, watching the antics of Polly “Top Shop” Toynbee and the dim Left with its massive sense of entitlement, I’m starting to see Franco in a whole new light.
Whatever the merits or otherwise of their strike the cowardly bastards should have told the bluebottles to shove their pistols up their bluebottle rectums and pull the trigger.
It is one thing to not like strikes etc. It is quite another for Govt thugs to start waving shooters about. Strikes may have cost a few lives here and there.Mostly they just make life inconvenient for a while. Govt thugs have willingly killed the best part of 200 million people in the last 100 years alone.
The sort of argument that Nurdgaia types routinely advance, to the effect that XYZ is a vital public service which therefore ought to be nationalised, also justifies the employees being forbidden the right to strike.
“Harsh but fair I feel.” ???
Unless of course the right to strike was waived in whatever employment contract the air traffic controllers had agreed to, forcing employees to work under fear of arrest under the military penal code in no way, shape or form could be considered “fair”.
Totalitarian – seemingly
Frightening – certainly
Funny and about as much as these cunts striking for no good bloody reason deserve – without doubt
but not fair
I’m not sure I would want to be flying round in airspace controlled by controllers who are doing so with a metaphorical gun gun to their head. Is a stressful job at the best of times.
Will,
Heads on pikes sited at strategic points in a city are a better deterrent.
One of the most ridiculous notions there is, is the supposed “right to strike”, if you don’t like your conditions of employment then piss off and let someone else take the job. Employers should have the right to terminate the employment of anyone who doesn’t turn up for work without good reason. Idle, workshy bastards.
I’m not sure a 9mm Parabellum is a metaphorical gun (gun), SimonF.
I’m quite conflicted by this sort of story, I hate the power of the state but I also hate employees feeling it is okay not to pitch for work.
MrsBud was quite conflicted this week, all her colleagues in Queensland Health went on strike so she felt there was little point in going in as standards require multi-disciplinary teams. I’d have gone and sat in the office but she didn’t like the idea and she also had a dinner party to shop and plan for. Her husband didn’t help by phoning her and asking how her commie day was going.
Ronald Regan faced a similar strike of ATC personnel in violation of their contract. He fired the lot.
@Mr. Ecks: Govt thugs have willingly killed the best part of 200 million people in the last 100 years alone.
Incorrect. It is the ideology behind union thugocracy–which is socialism–that has killed between 100- and 200 million people in the last century. Look to governments that follow the path of Marx, Lenin, and Stalin (the UK and the US(to a lesser extent)) for evidence of nanny statism being the root cause of evil among men.
Surely there must be, in a free country, a right to strike.
Likewise, there must be an employeer’s right to withdraw employment from said (non-)workers.
Shooting one occasionally “pour encourager les autres” might seem a little harsh to some Libertarians, but then again, they did cause Tim a hard time this week in the Ramada Inn without cigarettes, so fair’s fair.