| We hope you enjoy your visit! You're currently viewing Catholic CyberForum as a guest. This means you are limited to certain areas of the board and there are some features you can't use. If you join our online cyberparish, you'll be able to access member-only sections, and use many member-only features such as customizing your profile, sending personal messages, and voting in polls. Registration is simple, fast, and completely free. Join our community! Messages posted to this board must be polite and free of abuse, personal attacks, blasphemy, racism, threats, harrassment, and crude or sexually-explicit language. If you're already a member please log in to your account to access all of our features: |
- Pages:
- 1
- 2
| Trades Unions and the right to strike | |
|---|---|
| Topic Started: Thursday, 29. July 2010, 09:40 (398 Views) | |
| garfield | Thursday, 29. July 2010, 09:40 Post #1 |
|
I have recently started a part time job and received an invitation to join the union, I wondered whether to join as I'd heard years ago from the pro-life movement that some of the big unions funded the 'abortion rights' cause. But then unions play an important part in defending workers against exploitation. Does the forum have any thoughts on union membership? |
![]() |
|
| Rose of York | Thursday, 29. July 2010, 11:29 Post #2 |
![]()
Administrator
|
Some unions got out of hand during the sixties and seventies, but if there had never been any trade unions, the workers would have had no means of seeking fair treatment, reasonable wages and conditions. If you don't join you will have no means of voting on decisions affecting your own well being and job security. If you do join, you can attend the meetings, and through those and the union magazine you can raise the matter of a trade union promoting abortion. i suggest you enquire whether there is still a membership levy, added to the subscription, that goes to Labour Party funds. There used to be, and if you did not want to sipport the party it is up to you to complete a fom opting out. The Boilermakers and Blastfurnacemens union had a Catholic leader, Tom Walsh, at the huge Middlesbrough steelworks, who based his work on the social encyclicals. In twelve years he negotated pay increases, improvements in safety and conditions, lot of things, without calling one single days strike. His policy, put over to members, was that if the workers destroy the company, there will be no jobs, and employer and employee contribute to the profit so must be fair with each other. |
|
Keep the Faith! | |
![]() |
|
| Peter | Thursday, 29. July 2010, 16:35 Post #3 |
|
Hello Garfield I'm strongly in agreement with Rose when it comes to union membership. I belong to Equity and they support me and others when it comes to pay and working conditions in our industry. I'm also owed money from a broken contract at the moment and although it's taking an awfully long time to resolve (16 months so far) it's now going to the county court. The union do appear to be like a dog with a bone, which is very comforting as far as I'm concerned especially as the people that owe me money won't enter into negotiations at all. On top of all that my union cover me for public liability insurance. As members of a union we can all effect rule changes by turning up at meetings and bothering to vote on topics that concern us. For me, it's really good to know I have the strength of a union behind me and that it will fight my corner if necessary. Good luck with your deliberations! Peter |
![]() |
|
| CARLO | Thursday, 29. July 2010, 23:46 Post #4 |
|
Good advice from Rose and Peter. I am with them. Pax CARLO |
| Judica me Deus | |
![]() |
|
| pat | Thursday, 29. July 2010, 23:46 Post #5 |
|
When I had a job, I belonged to NALGO (known affectionately as "not a lot going on"). Where I worked it was important to have the backing of a union because management would do you over every time. Actually you are lucky to be offered the choice: these days anyone wanting to join a union is seen as a troublemaker by some companies and you don't last long. Any funding of campaigns and causes not directly to do with the union comes out of the "political levy" this could be the Labour Party, CND, whatever, and you have the right to opt out of paying that levy -it's just a question of filling in a form. The fact that some fundamentalist sects and people like the JWs forbid membership inclines me to think being in a union must be a good thing! |
![]() |
|
| tomais | Friday, 30. July 2010, 20:29 Post #6 |
|
Pat think unions today- think NALGO and tkink just what their annual inome is/are! Think Cuba! |
![]() |
|
| OsullivanB | Friday, 30. July 2010, 20:55 Post #7 |
|
Zero for NALGO since 1993 when it ceased to exist |
| "There is a principle which is a bar against all information, which is proof against all arguments and which cannot fail to keep a man in everlasting ignorance - that principle is contempt prior to investigation." Herbert Spencer | |
![]() |
|
| pat | Friday, 30. July 2010, 23:21 Post #8 |
|
My great grandmother, may she rest in peace was generally pretty right wing on most issues except when it came to unions. When she was a girl, she worked in a factory making tin boxes and some of the machinery was lethal, as you can imagine (lots of fast moving cutting machines). She lost a finger there, and lost pay because she got taken to hospital.They worked on piece rates, having a quota to fill each day and if not filled, it had to be finished the next day before that day's work could begin. So she and some of the other girls decided they would join a union, so they could campaign for hourly rates, and better, safer conditions. they ended up on strike, and won the right to join a union. Conditions and wages may have improved, but when you look into the faces of some of our badly paid, casual workers who serve us in cafes, or clean our offices, you would think we're back in the early years of the last century. |
![]() |
|
| Rose of York | Wednesday, 28. March 2012, 23:39 Post #9 |
![]()
Administrator
|
The Guardian has a useful map we can check if we need to buy petrol or diesel. Click the link, scroll down the page to the map showing filling stations where there have been reports of excessive queueing, closed petrol stations and panic buying due to the threat of a strike by tanker drivers: http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog/2012/mar/28/panic-buying-petrol-your-stories As the forum exists for discussion of Catholic and other faith related matters, I had better comment about the moral angle of this. Here goes. I fully support the right to strike when the demands of the workers are fair, implementing them is reasonably feasible, and the benefit to the workers outweights any harm done. The country, the whole of Europe, indeed the world, is in economic crisis. Now that the very small local shops are finished off, and the typical supermarket is a hundred times the size of the largest convenience stores, what will be the result of a petrol tanker drivers' strike? In a similar situation in the early nineties I went into a supermarket at half past nine in the morning. There were two loaves on the bread shelf. The vegetable department had one cabbage, nothing else. Milk was limited to one bottle per customer. Smaller independent shops closed down, due to being completely cleaned out of supplies. I suggest government should be considering what they can do about food miles. A food processing factory near us is quite a sight at four o'clock every afternoon. A fleet of container lorries leaves, prior to causing a long tailback on a ten mile old fashioned A-Road with one lane on each side. They then join the motorway and proceed on a 350 mile journey to deliver the food to a central warehouse. One driver told me it is his job to drive up there fully loaded, then call at the despatch bay to collect another load, to deliver to a supermarket next door to the factory where they were made. Due to such nonsense, a motor fuel strike brings the nation to a standstill. Workers are stuck at home. Sales staff cannot travel to customers. That has a negative impact on production and sales, due to fewer orders. Hotels where sales staff spend their nights have high vacancies. It would please me if workers on high wages were to make a sacrifice and refrain for the time being, during the current economic crisis, from taking industrial action. |
|
Keep the Faith! | |
![]() |
|
| Anne-Marie | Thursday, 29. March 2012, 07:50 Post #10 |
|
The workers seem to think they have a good cause... but what is a good cause to one group can all too easily be perceived as very different indeed by another. As you rightly point out, Rose, at a time of crisis like the present, we should all be pulling together, not tearing one another apart for our own self-interest - we're all hurting.
|
|
Anne-Marie FIAT VOLUNTAS DEI | |
![]() |
|
| PJD | Thursday, 29. March 2012, 09:17 Post #11 |
|
Yes I agree Anne-Marie. PJD |
![]() |
|
| Chris | Thursday, 29. March 2012, 09:29 Post #12 |
|
I was a member for the bulk of my career. When I really needed them, they (GMB) were a spare wheel. Absolutely useless. When I became a manager from the early part of my career, I stayed in the union as they still represented management grades. My personal view is that in our inter-connected world, no group has the right to infringe of the rights and liberties of the majority. To that extent, I've long held the view that a list should be drawn of essential services and providers, and the right to strike be replaced by compulsory and binding arbitration. A detached, calm and professional look at both arguments is much better than the emotions and macho behaviour I experienced on both sides of the 'negotiating' table. |
![]() |
|
| OsullivanB | Thursday, 29. March 2012, 10:39 Post #13 |
|
It is also essential in a free society that no group has the right to infringe the rights and liberties of a minority. From my reading of newspaper reports about the current dispute, the employers are seeking to vary the terms of employment of the drivers to make their jobs less secure. That seems to me to be a legitimate grievance driven by an important and fundamental need rather than greed. As for "these hard times".Aa least one of the most important constitutional law cases was decided during the second world war when the courts decided that mandatory identity cards could not be imposed. Freedom overrode security issues in that time of grave peril. |
| "There is a principle which is a bar against all information, which is proof against all arguments and which cannot fail to keep a man in everlasting ignorance - that principle is contempt prior to investigation." Herbert Spencer | |
![]() |
|
| Chris | Thursday, 29. March 2012, 16:22 Post #14 |
|
Whatever the rights and wrongs of either case (rarely outlined accurately in the media) it is the method of resolution I have an issue with, i.e. industrial disputes irrespective of impact on the majority, hence binding arbitration as an alternative. Take essential services as an example. This from a Police inspector blogger:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/blog/2012/mar/29/fuel-panic-live-updates-petrol Being in the NHS, I know this rationale is being widely applied. Edited by Chris, Thursday, 29. March 2012, 16:27.
|
![]() |
|
| OsullivanB | Thursday, 29. March 2012, 16:53 Post #15 |
|
Binding arbitration is an excellent system, more widely used than ever before as an alternative to litigation. It is of the essence of arbitration that both (all) parties repose total trust in the ability and impartiality of the arbitrator(s). Binding arbitration is not a conceptual problem. The "binding" nature of arbitration is at the heart of the process and is rigorously respected by the courts of this country and elsewhere. Compulsory arbitration presents very different difficulties, not necessarily insuperable, but requiring time and goodwill to resolve. |
| "There is a principle which is a bar against all information, which is proof against all arguments and which cannot fail to keep a man in everlasting ignorance - that principle is contempt prior to investigation." Herbert Spencer | |
![]() |
|
| 1 user reading this topic (1 Guest and 0 Anonymous) | |
| Go to Next Page | |
| « Previous Topic · General Catholic Discussion · Next Topic » |
- Pages:
- 1
- 2







3:42 PM Jul 11