Jason Ford
News Editor
The Monday Briefing would like to extend a very warm welcome to those of you who work in London and normally rely on London Underground to deliver you to work.
The RMT and TSSA unions began 24 hour strike action last night and it appears to be causing moderate travel disruption, judging by the number of colleagues who’ve so far made it into The Engineer’s offices for their 9-30 start. Some have reported a trickle of activity on some underground lines whilst others are sending text messages to The Engineer HQ to say they have fought their way onto buses, which are now crawling through heavy traffic.
The strike – described by RMT general secretary Bob Crow as action to defend ticket offices and safety-critical station jobs – coincides with a report published today by the CBI that calls for changes in the law to curtail industrial action.
The CBI report, entitled ‘Keeping the wheels turning: modernising the legal framework of industrial relations’ sets out measures that it believes will ‘modernise employment relations legislation and keep the recovery on track.’
With the 2010 Spending Review due on October 20, the CBI believes industrial action across the public sector could increase as the government takes steps to reduce the deficit.
To mitigate this, it suggests that strike action should only go ahead if 40 per cent of balloted members vote in favour of action, as well as a majority of those voting.
Other proposals among many in the report include increasing the notice period for strike actions from seven to 14 days after the ballot takes place and giving employers the right to use agency staff to cover for striking workers.
The Conservative Party’s annual conference began in Birmingham yesterday, and fringe events that caught Briefing’s attention include ’New Nuclear: From debate to delivery’, with energy minister Charles Hendry and ’The Challenges Ahead For Defence’, with defence secretary Liam Fox, which take place today and tomorrow respectively.
Defence remains firmly on the agenda on Thursday, when the National Security Council is expected to convene to consider options for the Strategic Defence and Security Review (SDSR) to meet Treasury demands for a 10 per cent cut in the £37bn defence budget.
Prominent topics for discussion are likely to include retaining the Trident nuclear deterrent, and the fate of two Queen Elizabeth class aircraft carriers currently under construction.
In Spain, Elsevier is hosting ‘Fuel Cells Science & Technology 2010’, a conference that will address scientific, engineering and technology challenges underpinning fuel cells.
Robert Selman, a research professor at the Illinois Institute of Technology, will be presented The Grove Medal at the conference in recognition of his contributions towards the development and success of fuel cell technology.
Still with awards and news that the winner of the James Dyson Award will be announced tomorrow. The international design award has 15 finalists whose innovations include a resuscitation vest and a portable water bottle for filtration and UV sterilisation of water.
No solution really.
One half wants the other half to work while they shuffle paper and get rich. The paper shufflers think they have a right to cream off the cash by any devious means however immoral, yet legal, and those little people should be grateful that we allow them to work for us.
If I have lots of cash, even though it was plundered during the 16th century, explioting the colonies, the slave trade or whatever, I’m going to keep it at all costs.
If I don’t have the price of a decent meal, never seen a dentist in 10 years, and have a life expectancy 10 years less than I could, and my kids have no chance of a first class education, then of course I’m not too happy.
“giving employers the right to use agency staff to cover for striking workers.”
Seems like a great idea. That way, the striking workers can sign on for the agancy and do their own job for more money while still being on strike. That will really improve matters!!
Why do I get the impression that these very expensive reports aren’t always fully thought through?
The Right to Strike availability to employees and Unions has always been manipulated by Unions to enhance their hold on power in the supposed mandate to “Improve Working Conditioins and Wages”. Laudible though the aim manipulation of the members is the game. The hub of the manipulation is the “Branch Meeting” where Local Union Officers meet with the members to promote Union activities and hear members comments and complaints. Union recommendations are put to the members at the Meeting and, as long as the meeting has a quorum which could be ten or less, decisons are taken that affects all of the Branch Members whether they like it or not. The reasoning on this is that if the members do not like it then they should be at the Meeting to vote on it. This allows Branch Officers to push through rules, measures and actions leading up to a full vote for action based on a few regular attendees at these Meetings.
This is of course, democracy in action, but it also allows the extreme left to get hold of a Union and use it for unlikely purposes in the name of the Members. A law requiring 40% or even 50% of Members votes to enter into strike action would make sure that proper discussions take place with the Members before action takes place.
Labor unions need to go the way of the dinosaur. Just another corrupt organization. While we are busy blaming our government for their corrupt deeds, labor unions get a free pass. We don’t have 8 year olds working in the coal mines anymore = goodbye labor unions.
Lets ask ourselves a question, who ensured the new Labour leader Milliband got this position, it was the union vote.
From this we can conclude that they are supporting their own and playing politics instead of doing the job they were elected to do. Instead of political dabbling they should be working together to ensure their sector expands and thrives, thus promoting existing and future jobs, and profitibility.
Instead many of these play fast and loose with politics, if these union leaders wanted to be politicians then why did they take union jobs. One other significant factor is their dwindling numbers due to umemployment, with decling members subscriptions, how many of these union leaders will be for the chop. With fewer numbers, fewer union officials are needed, so we could add self interest.
We live in a society that can generally be deemed as “stable.” Although times have been hard and the unions possibly too tied into party politics for the 21st century, there haven’t been that many strikes over the last 10 years or so. Therefore I think an appropriate response would be to ask “just why do workers feel the need to strike now?” rather than “workers are striking we must make it more difficult within law to strike.” That road merely leads back to the oppression and exploitation of the proletariat.
Stephen Mosley:
A valid point, but look at this from another perspective, how many threats of strike action have their been. How many have been averted, and how often is strike action threatened as a first, rather than last resort.
How many of these threatened strikes were politically, or self interest motivated, or just certain unions trying to flex their muscles.
If you find these answers, as i have; it puts a different and very interesting perspective on the issue.
At the risk of seeming to turn this into an electronic conversation carried out via the medium of The Engineer would you mind awfully posting some links please S. Martin? I would find these very interesting, then of course there is also the important aspect of the engineer’s role in industry as a whole (rather than “just” designing, manufacturing and servicing) and I suspect we would all benefit from widening our views of the current state of labour relations.
In an ideal world there would be no need for trade unions,Industrial action etc. Just as it is wrong for union officials to indiscrimanantly call for strikes , there is no excuse for being patronisingly told by the leader of a flimsy coalitionthat all the latest cuts are “in the National Intrest”. That kind of rhetoric does not go down well with the common working man on the street!.