Unions and Pensions

BobQ

Meeper wrote: »

Don't members of something get to choose which facets of the membership she makes use of? I'm a member of the AA, but I can change my own tyre, so I don't call them out for that. I'm a member of my local cricket and hockey club. I play cricket, but not hockey. Should I be censured or treated as a lower-grade of member because I don't use all the facilities?

.

Its very easy to start a thread about unspecified unions and unspecified workplaces claiming unions are evil or whatever. The fact is that you claim there is evidence of these practices but you do not cite any in a verifiable form. You claim to be an IFA. It would be very easy to post a succession of examples of poor advice given by IFAs, claiming they lied and deceived and provided advice based on their personal interests. But saying it would not make it true.

As a member of a TU you can choose not to support a strike, its your legal right. Equally you cannot expect your colleagues who accepted the result of the ballot to be chuffed by your lack of support for the action agreed by the membership as a whole.

BobQ

atush wrote: »

A quick search or troll back through this board will give you several employees (particularly the NHS funnily enough) who have been told by union reps their pensions will be 'rubbish'. Posted here by employees who are union members.

Saying it does not make it true. I cannot see any union in the public sector telling their members to leave their employers pension scheme. A rogue IFA maybe....but still unlikely.

lvader

BobQ wrote: »

As a member of a TU you can choose not to support a strike, its your legal right. Equally you cannot expect your colleagues who accepted the result of the ballot to be chuffed by your lack of support for the action agreed by the membership as a whole.

Isn't that a bit like being !!!!ed off at Labour voters for not supporting the government that the people voted in?

Everyone has the right to go to work and not be intimidated by mob rule.

BobQ

lvader wrote: »

Everyone has the right to go to work and not be intimidated by mob rule.

Correct. But what is the evidence that this is happening? You seem to be making silly suggestions of a mob terrorising people in the workplace. If it were to happen (which there is no evidence of) the employees would be disciplined.

The reality of this debate is that workers rights, terms and conditions were appalling in most industries before unions existed. Conditions and legal protections only improved when unions were strong. Unions have become weaker, and working conditions and legal protections are following a decline. Loss of pensions in the private sector are part of this decline and those in the public sector are following.

Personally I do not have to worry about this, but were I in my 20s or 30s I would wake up and smell the coffee. Of course if large numbers of people are happy to work for low wages and till they drop, I agree its their choice.

Moby

BobQ wrote: »

The reality of this debate is that workers rights, terms and conditions were appalling in most industries before unions existed. Conditions and legal protections only improved when unions were strong. Unions have become weaker, and working conditions and legal protections are following a decline. Loss of pensions in the private sector are part of this decline and those in the public sector are following.

Personally I do not have to worry about this, but were I in my 20s or 30s I would wake up and smell the coffee. Of course if large numbers of people are happy to work for low wages and till they drop, I agree its their choice.

Totally right....At a risk of being patronising.....doesn't anyone ever read any history anymore! My strength of view on this issue comes from my Welsh mining background, (not myself but my father and grandfather). I grew up seeing the appalling conditions my Grandfather worked in and the way that was only changed through collective action and protest. The safety record in our mines was appalling prior to nationalisation.

The simple truth is although there are good companies...... the ultimate purpose of a business is profit. To increase those profit margins/remain competitive, (especially in a recession) an owner/manager will look to squeeze staffing costs as much as possible. In effect that means doing whatever they can to reduce the terms and conditions of service of their employees. It happens every day all over the world. Unions are there to challenge that and what must be remembered that often the mere existence of a union is sufficient to stop abuse. There is always need for balance and unions are equally capable of abusing their power....no argument with that.... but to believe that workers rights do not need protecting is simply naive and displays a callousness which beggars belief in my view.

lvader

It's wrong when ANY kind is pressure is put on workers that don't agree and just want to go to work.

It's also wrong when unions are fighting for something that the majority of tax working people don't get and expect them to pay for it.

It's wrong when we are effectively putting the debt burden on future generations. It's like passing massive credit card bills onto our children and grand children.

Meeper

Read history? Not really. I prefer to consider the present because although it's important to learn the lessons of the past, there is no need to re-learn them over and over in perpetuity. Yes, the unions were valuable in particular with respect to the miners and other higher-risk professions initially to improve their safety and then in other professions to improve their working conditions generally. They are to be commended. Their actions historically brought about massive changes in employment legislation and human resources departments now run companies. Don't be fooled about that. An employee now cannot be dismissed for poor performance. They have to go through an expensive and time-consuming series of additional coaching, personal development plans, improvement plans, and so on. If you identify an employee who cannot perform his role to satisfaction, the onus is on the employer to train them more adequately. If that employee is simply not competent and you made a mistake in recruiting him/her, you're stuck. No need for a union here, if the guy gets fired he can toddle off to a tribunal and get his satisfaction that way.

What I'm saying is - yes, let's look at the past for the value of the union, but let's recognise that the country is not stuck in the 70's and the working conditions are NOTHING like those that the miners had to put up with. Looking to the past to validate the current of the union is ridiculous, and tantamount to saying that people in their comfortable offices nowadays need the same level of protection as those putting their lives at risk digging for coal. Ludicrous.

The ultimate purpose of a business is profit, quite right. But to what end? For the shareholders, certainly. Who are the shareholders? The employees in many cases. The tax-payers, the pension funds, the general public can all be shareholders of these organisations. An owner looking to squeeze staffing costs as much as possible will not have a business which prospers in the long-term, because the more you squeeze the cost, the more you reduce the qualiy of what you have. As you reduce your quality, you reduce your service levels and you lose business, costing you money. That having been said, let's consider British Airways again. Recently, the union, via the employees, held the company to ransom. The company identified that there was an area where it was over-spending and did not require so many individuals on a flight in order to offer a comparable service, and with the company not making any profit (it was making a loss), they identified that they could sustain their service with one attendant less per flight. By doing this, the company could reduce its loss-making position and be able to offer stability and a long-term future for the employees which remained. They had to make some redundancies for the longer-term good of the company as a whole. The actions of the union in this case put the whole company at risk, and rather than accepting that some redundancies were inevitable, they almost cost EVERYONE their jobs, driving the company to the brink of bankruptcy. How can anyone defend this appalling action?

But, back to the matter at hand, and the union telling people to get out of their pensions - people on here may not believe me. I'm not overly concerned with their belief, to be honest. There is nothing I could do to prove this point. I could attach an audio file of a hidden mic conversation, but that could be argued as "made up". I could post a video, which would be called "staged". I could tell you which union and company, but of course you're not going to find anything official on their websites or in the public domain, because there's no way that they would be brave enough to put the information in the public domain that they prefer to whisper to people and spread by way of speech to members.

You ask for proof. I can give you none, other than the fact (indeed, a fact, whether you believe it or not) that this is what I was told by a client of mine recently, and I had no reason to disbelieve him, just like nobody here has any reason to disbelieve me. If you choose to disbelieve, that's up to you, but saying "prove it or it didn't happen" is just childish and silly. Why else would I have put up the thread in the first place?

jem16

BobQ wrote: »

As a member of a TU you can choose not to support a strike, its your legal right. Equally you cannot expect your colleagues who accepted the result of the ballot to be chuffed by your lack of support for the action agreed by the membership as a whole.

That's part of the problem though.

The Unison result shows that only 30% of the membership actually voted with a 78% vote for strike action. What about the other 70%? Perhaps the membership as a whole did not want strike action.

The EIS ( Scottish teachers ) had a 54% turnout with 82% voting for strike action. Most of my colleagues in my own school are saying they would have preferred a work to rule but were not given that choice. Again what did the other 46% want?

le_loup

Meeper wrote: »

You ask for proof. I can give you none, other than the fact (indeed, a fact, whether you believe it or not) that this is what I was told by a client of mine recently, and I had no reason to disbelieve him, just like nobody here has any reason to disbelieve me. If you choose to disbelieve, that's up to you, but saying "prove it or it didn't happen" is just childish and silly. Why else would I have put up the thread in the first place?

Quite right.
But, one person telling you something off the record does not make it a generality. Were it so, do you not think Panorama (for all it's faults) or other media organisation would take it up. It would make a terrific program about Evil Trade Unions Giving Disastrous Information to Their Innocent Members and It's About Time a Law Was Passed!

real1314

Meeper wrote: »

The ultimate purpose of a business is profit, quite right. But to what end? For the shareholders, certainly. Who are the shareholders? The employees in many cases.

If that's your standpoint, then the thread is completely pointless.

Such an incorrect assertion suggests a defiance against facts. Therefore any sensible argument will fall on deaf ears.

Unless of course by saying "in many cases" you actually mean "in about 10% of cases".

Somewhere between 75-85% of wealth is held by 10% of the population.

So the 90% left own 15-25%.

That's why unions are needed. Money is power.:cool: