Industrial action to the national grid

Edinburghlass_2

amcluesent wrote: »

>Me to, at least the beer pumps are handraulic so no leccy required<

I wouldn't want to leave the house with the looting starting with no street lights or working alarms, plus coppers overwhelmed as their own radios and computers conk out.

Me neither, I'd take my chocolate and the laptop to the pub with me

savemoney

You have to get your priorities right don't you?

Net and chocolate bliss

Edinburghlass wrote: »

Me neither, I'd take my chocolate and the laptop to the pub with me

Yolina

I wouldn't worry just yet - according to the article here: http://www.freshbusinessthinking.com/news.php?CID=&NID=7115&Title=National+Grid+Workers+to+Strike+Over+Pay

"Unite members voted 94 per cent in favour of the strike which includes a work to rule and an overtime ban." and "Around 750 Unite members work for National Grid throughout the UK." Somehonw I can't see them "flicking the switch" for days on end...

[Deleted User]

I don`t really think that we`ll see much, if anything. Voltage may be reduced so lights will be duller and so on but certainly no need to panic or worry and I am saying this being in an all electric house with no gas or anything else. I was a young struggling mum when the 3 day week happened and it was absolutely dire to have your dh come home and say that his salary was suddenly dropping by 2/5 but he was still working 5/5 in order to help keep his place of work afloat. There were so many shortages and it was a horrifically frightening time, the uk hopped from one crisis to another

The power cuts were the leat of our worries then. Just be sensible and have a couple of flasks, candles and matches handy

Seakay

mardatha wrote: »

Unite union is serving immediate notice on the national grid of industrial action. Think overtime ban and work to rule. So get ready for powercuts

"
National Grid workers vote to strike over pay

2011-01-14





Workers at National Grid have voted for industrial action after a dispute over three-year below inflation pay offer.

The deal, which consisted of a pay rise of 2.5% in year one and a 2.25% increases in years two and three, was rejected by members of union Unite. Talks over employees' pay packages have been taking place since April but no resolution was found.

Michael Tuff, a regional officer at Unite, said: "Industrial action is not our preferred route - we want a negotiated settlement, but the company's position of 'no further money available' has forced our members to go down this route."

The threat of industrial action came at a time when National Grid posted half-yearly profits, which showed operating profits were up 31% on last year."

Not looking forward to this going ahead, but was just musing on how weird it must be to work in a sector where you can expect to get any sort of wage rise at all.
I know people in call centres and other businesses where you have to compete for contracts where no one has had a wage rise of more than 1% for the last five years - often just told bad year for the company so no rise and no bonus/profit share at all. If you don't like it you can do the other thing because no one is irreplaceable. Industries like that are always having their employees put under pressure to pay subs to a union, but no union has ever supported people in a practical way unless they are part of one of the old industrial or nationalised industries (steel, coal, NHS, trains, grid etc)
On a more practical level, never knew that Lidl did generators but will certainly be on the look out now. If they are affordable would be a brilliant thing to have in reserve. Might get one for my sister who is in a very rural area and always getting stuff cut off even without strikes!

Gman0365

A 2.5% pay offer at a time when many people are facing pay freezes, cuts and redundancies seems like quite a good deal. Regardless of whether is below inflation or not.

Working to rule and impossing an overtime ban is simply cutting their own throat. If they even managed to negotiate a £1000 per annum increase in basic salary following this work to rule it could take years for an individual engineer to recoup the overtime he/she has missed out on.

The general public are quite realistic about the measures having to be taken by big business in order to provide continued growth. I'd imagine if the unions do take industrial action then they may face a backlash.

I'm not a union member any longer. I realised after 5 years that I can recieve junk mail for free, without having to give £11/month in subscriptions.

And for all those that are worried the lights will go off, think of the money you'll save not being able to use the electricity or gas central heating!

st3v1e

Typical of a big energy company to take advantage of the poor economic situation to rake up fatter profits. The rate it charges is regulated and inflation indexed to RPI so it'll be charging us all more this year irrespective of the pay deal. If it doesn't increase it's rate of pay at the same speed as it increases it's revenues, it can put the difference on the bottom line - simples.

Guess there banking on the fact that the workers won't get any sympathy when no-one else is getting payrises this year. I feel for them though - must be galling to be shafted with a two year real terms pay cut by a company whose profits are up 31% on this time last year.

At least it won't be anything like the 80s - back then it was a shortage of generation, but now National Grid just operates the electricity and gas networks. With the industrial action planned (overtime ban) it will have zero effect on the consumer, just hit the company in the pocket by putting the breaks on all the construction work going on.

sb44

fedupfreda wrote: »

Yep - and remember the mess when they exploded? Ewww!

:rotfl::rotfl:

Yep, they weren't worth the hassle really were they, it took ages to get the middles out and when you did they were scorched to bu**ery!

sb44

amcluesent wrote: »

>Me to, at least the beer pumps are handraulic so no leccy required<

I wouldn't want to leave the house with the looting starting with no street lights or working alarms, plus coppers overwhelmed as their own radios and computers conk out.

The alarms go off around here when we have a power cut, it's a pain in the harris as most people are at work so can't switch them off so they go on forever.

If you have a power cut and are in the house how do you switch the alarm off, I would have thought the controls were electric?

Can you tell we haven't got an alarm, haven't got much worth nicking although we do have full contents insurance just in case. It's amazing how many people haven't.

Owain_Moneysaver

grandma247 wrote: »

What size inverter do you think?

500W should be ample for boiler/pump/control. If you have electronic controls then you need a true sine-wave output from a generator or inverter. You need to allow capacity over the continuous load for pump starting.

200W @ 12v is 16A, so you would get up to 5 hours for an 80Ahr battery.

Depending on how well your house is insulated, you probably only need about 2 hours a day for heating and one tankful of hot water for essential washing.