Quote of the day - transport technology and strikes

We are in for a decade and more of transport strikes as those working in that industry resist the technological changes - here's Tim Newman commenting about Paris and driverless cars:

I seem to recall Parisian taxi drivers rioting, tipping over cars, and burning tyres when Uber came to town, leading to the government caving in by lunchtime and banning the app in Paris. Presumably they’re going to take the introduction of driverless cabs without a murmur.

Add to taxi drivers the bus and tram workers, the train drivers and the lorry drivers - a recipe for industrial strife if ever there was one. And the nation that manages this change most swiftly and with least disruption is the one that will reap the quickest and earliest changes. It won't be France for sure and probably won't be the UK either.

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How doctors strikes save lives...

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It's OK dear reader, I'm not getting all soft in my dotage, I still think that doctors - give the oaths they swear and the moral high ground they inhabit - shouldn't go on strike. But, slightly ironically, the strike may save a few lives:

Curiously enough, it has been shown that patient mortality typically falls during doctors' strikes, a finding replicating on a number of occasions across different nations. Cunningham et al's meta-analysis is the most notable recent review of this peculiar fact. In one of the most entertaining studies in the literature, the researchers interviewed the directors of major Israeli burial societies, who seemed slightly disgruntled at the loss of business associated with a major doctors' strike in 2000.

One, bemused, reported a 39% drop in funerals as compared to the same month in 1999. Another, much more confidently, was sure that his loss of custom was due to the striking doctors, because he had been in business long enough to see the exact same phenomenon occur in 1983, the last time Israeli doctors had walked out.

As they say - most peculiar. And it raises the question of whether it's all that expensive medicine stuff that's driving our longer, healthier and happier lives or something else.

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Quote of the day: Why doctors shouldn't strike

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Nothing to add to this:

When a country operates under a healthcare monopoly, its citizens are fundamentally at the mercy of the provider. That provider has an ethical responsibility to show up to work every day and look after its patients; if they don’t, no one else will.

Absolutely spot on. It's unethical for doctors to strike.

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About those teachers striking...

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As you know I don't like it and see it as counterproductive - worse striking undermines the idea of teaching as a professional vocation. More to the point, the Unions are dressing the dispute up as something far grander than it is in reality:

“The teachers who marched are not political activists, they are here for education and are concerned about young people entering the profession and their future.

“This has been a very important show of solidarity, the two unions represent 90 per cent of all teachers, and we are standing up for education.” 

If the strike is about policy rather than the self-interest of teachers then, if my understanding is right, it is illegal. So it isn't about that at all:

We are asking that he establishes a series of meetings with the NUT and NASUWT, chaired by himself to address the issues under dispute and that he suspends the implementation of the changes proposed to the School Teachers’ Pay and Conditions Document, pending the outcome of these discussions. We are also asking that he publish the valuation of the Teachers’ Pension Scheme conducted on the basis of the 2010 criteria and factors.

Not about children at all. Nor is it about qualifications. Or free schools. Or academies. Or indeed the education policies of the government. It's absolutely and specifically about the proposed changes to teachers' pay and conditions.

And those pay and conditions result from the recommendations of an independent body - the School Teachers' Review Body. This body has proposed:

The STRB has recommended an increase of 1% from September 2013 in the values of:

• all points on the unqualified, main and upper pay scales for classroom teachers (including main scale points which will be discretionary reference points for pay decisions thereafter)
• the minimum and maximum of the pay range for leading practitioners and all pay ranges for individual posts set before taking account of the September 2013 uplift
• all points on the leadership pay spine
• any individual allowances in payment and to the minima and the maxima of the ranges of all teacher allowance

Get that folks - the STRB is proposing a pay increase! And - wait for it - the government has "...accepted all of the key recommendations in the report." Plus there's a consultation period with the Unions and other relevant partners running for a month.

What the teachers' unions want is for the government to ignore the recommendations of an independent body (and not one of recent invention either) to impose a more favourable settlement - one using up more of that precious resource going to schools.

Either that or the 'dispute' is simply a canard and this really is a political strike and not a genuine dispute.

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Can we have more BBC strikes please?

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I understand that the BBC's journalists went on strike today.

And there was a refreshing change to my morning listening. Normally the news is interrupted by Nicky Campbell's writhing, self-indulgent metroliberalism or overly aggressive interviews by Humphries.

This morning we got none of that - just news and interviews presented pleasantly and professionally. I felt informed and my annoyance was limited to the content of the news not the outlook of the news presenter.

Perhaps more strikes might continue to raise standards!

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I always knew a lot of doctors were in it for the money...

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Not all, of course, as this comment shows:

Dr Dan Poulter MP said: "As a doctor, my first duty is to my patients. That is why I would not participate in strike action. Doctors have taken the wrong decision today, urged on by their trade union the BMA.

"Industrial action will harm patient care. With the Government's final offer to doctors being a pension of £68,000 a year, the public will simply not understand why doctors have called for strike action over pensions that private sector workers and many other frontline NHS workers can only dream of."

I watched a row of wealthy men in suits - the BMA bosses - lined up at a press conference claiming to be hard done by because some doctors will have to wait until they're 65 (like the rest of us do) to get their pension of nearly seventy grand a year (like the rest of us don't).  And I wanted to put a bar stool through the telly. How dare these people act in this way, how dare the BMA - usually so ready to lecture us on how we're living our lives wrong - threaten patient care so they can retire to the golf course or the Dordogne a few years early. How dare they....

...they're only in this for the money it seems so perhaps they'll shut up with all the "caring public sector professionals" rubbish now. I do hope so.

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Strikes - this comment just about sums it up for me...

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From the comments to this piece in the T&A:

The recession forced my company to make redundancies. So I do have to do other peoples work. I have not had a pay rise in 4 years. We were also asked to take a 20% pay reduction every 3rd month to avoid more redundancies (this lasted for 14 months) So I am worse off. A lot of of the Public Sector got a pay rise - even though there was a pay freeze. Because you moved up the scale in your payment band. I know this, because my sister is a teacher.
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I took it. Because that is how the world is at the moment. Sure I want 3% pay increase every year, and I don't want to have to work 9 and a half hour days and Saturday mornings when I am contracted to a 39 hour week.
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But when my alarm goes off, I wake up in 2011, in England. Not in a Fairy Tale or some make believe land.

Absolutely - in fact read the whole comment thread. Not a lot of support there for the strikes.

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It's not Unity if you achieve it through bullying....

Raise your banners high
Strength to strength and line by line
Unity must never die
Raise your banners high

Firstly – before I dive into the politics – a plug – folk legend Martin Carthy will be launching Bradford’s celebration of (mostly leftie) political song at the Topic Folk Club on Thursday. Sadly, I won’t be there as I’m already double-booked that evening. All the details of Raise Your Banners can be found here.

Next I shall speak of scabs, blacklegs and the evils of the political bully.

Regardless of the emotion, the history and the passion – the things that are celebrated in these songs. Despite the cry for unity and the desperation of the cause....

...you have a right to withdraw your labour, to strike. It is a right hard won by men and women in times past. It is a right cherished by everyone – a notion of liberty, if only group liberty.

But you have no right to bully, assault, ostracise, condemn or otherwise mistreat another person because they choose not to go on strike. 

That is their choice – their right - and if you use violence to prevent that choice, to remove that right, you are no better than those you condemn for removing or reducing workers’ rights.  You are no better that the fascist thugs you condemn.

There are no scabs, no blacklegs – just men or women who made a different choice from you. Men or women exercising their rights in a free land.

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The problem with trade unionism - revisited...

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OK it's America and this sort of thing is illegal in the UK (although don't pretend for a second that no pressure is ever put on non-union labour or on contractors in this country):

A Quincy mom has disconnected her support for striking Verizon workers yesterday after a group of mouthy picketers surrounded non-union repairmen and turned a phone-line fix at her home into what she is calling a “ridiculous” protest scene.

“I looked in the street and there are picketers, 10 of them or more, doing a circle around the Verizon truck,” said Karen Austin, 64, a mother of five who lives on Forest Avenue. “Every time (the repairmen) would walk up to my house they would follow them. I couldn’t believe my eyes. This is ridiculous. Why are they picketing my house?”

 

Now understand this, workers have every right to withdraw their labour. But they have no right - no right at all - to prevent another man from choosing to the job for which he is paid and contracted.

This is absolutely the problem with trade unionism - too many of its leaders and vocal apologists believe that having 50%+1 means they can berate, threaten, bully and cajole others into complying with their wishes.

This is wrong and should not be allowed in a free society.

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Tell me again about those strikes?

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The latest figures confirm the public-private sector pay gap:

Information released by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) yesterday revealed that public sector workers are paid on average 7.8% more than their private sector counterparts. This figure has risen by 2.5% since 2007, when the pay gap was estimated to be around 5.3%.

And an index-linked, final salary pension to boot!

Forgive me if I don't weep beef tea at the plight of public sector workers.

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You're all right, Ian!

Dave Prentiss, the highly-paid leader of Unison is leading the charge:

'It will not be one day of action. We know that won’t change this government’s mind. It will be long-term industrial action throughout all our public services to prevent destruction of our pension schemes.'

Yes, that's right. The pensions of public sector workers are being ripped away, cast aside - there will be thousands of retired clerks starving in the gutters. Revolution will fill the air...

...perhaps not - the dispute is over:

Treasury plans to increase public sector staff pension contributions by an average of 3% from next year.

In order that public servants may - in one form or another - maintain a vastly better pension scheme than the rest of us mere mortals (the one's who, working in the private sector, actually earn all the money) they are being asked to pay a few quid more in contributions. Sounds like a deal to me!

And all this while Mr Prentiss - supported with enthusiasm by Labour Councillors - ensures that member subscription aren't paid out on anything prosaic like the wages of union convenors:

But Bradford Council leader Ian Greenwood said at a time of massive threat, union representatives were clearly important to staff and to the Council as it negotiated through what he described as “the most difficult time our Council has ever seen”. 

So it's OK that, while we shut down libraries and swimming pools, Bradford Council should spend half-a-million pounds on subsidising unions? Cllr Greenwood wouldn't be a member of Unison now, would he?
 
Nothing changes. The Labour Party will always put the interests of its pals running the unions ahead of the public.

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Bring it on!

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The public sector trade unions - or at least their leaders - are threatening us with strikes again. After assorted teachers' union leaders calling for strike action because their pension contributions will rise a little, we have Dave Prentiss from Unison:

Unless this government changes direction, it is heading for industrial turmoil on a massive scale,'he added. 'The government must understand that UNISON will fight tooth and nail to protect and defend public services.'

I remember the late 1970s when we buckled time and again to these sort of threats. And I remember the damage that unions did to the economy, damaging - even destroying - good businesses, creating misery for millions and using their power to demand preference for their members at the expense of the old, the sick and the poor. We should never do so again. Never.

So bring it on Mr Prentiss.

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The Blackleg Miner

Some of you will know I have something of a penchant for lefty folk music – well folk music really but quite a lot of it is pretty lefty! And, while driving back from Carlisle to sunny Cullingworth, I was listening to a little ditty entitled “The Blackleg Miner”. Let me share with you some of the lyrics:

Oh, Delaval is a terrible place,
They rub wet clay in the blackleg's face,
And around the heaps they run a footrace
to catch the blackleg miner.
And even down near the Seghill mine,
Across the way they stretch a line
To catch the throat, to break the spine
of the dirty blackleg miner.

Harkening to this, a thought struck me about strikes, unions and the problems of collective action. Essentially, what right do these men have to enforce what they desire through violence, bullying and intimidation? What right do they have to treat someone who just wishes to go to work, earn a wage and feed his family with such bullying intimidation?

By all means disagree with the strike-breaker, perhaps even have nothing to do with the blackleg. But violence and intimidation are wrong however much they are enforcing the desire of the majority. And the punishment meted out to those who break a strike – the intimidatory bullying – continues long beyond the end of the dispute. Here’s a report from 2009 in the Scottish Daily Record:

None of the strike-breakers approached by the Record would agree to be interviewed. Some have died, some moved away, a few defiant individuals stood their ground pleading their case but, to a man, they were reluctant to re-open old wounds.

This includes Jim Pearson, 76, of Dunfermline, who worked at the Longannet pit and was the first-miner in Fife to return to work. Pearson regularly appeared in the Record during 1984 after breaking the strike.

There were furious scenes on the day he returned. More than 150 police clashed with 200 pickets as he made his way to work. His van was ambushed by around 100 brick-throwing pickets and he ran the gauntlet for two terrifying miles with blood running down his face.

All because he chose to challenge the majority decision – to make a different and pretty tough choice about his life.

I guess we make our choices but no-one deserves this kind of treatment just for going to work.

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A reminder to Britain's left about Libya

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From The Times October 28, 1984:

Arthur Scargill, the president of the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM), and Roger Windsor, the union’s chief executive, have been holding secret talks with the Libyan government.

Three weeks ago, on October 8, the two men flew to Paris to meet Salem Ibrahim, described by French intelligence as Colonel Gadaffi’s paymaster. Last Monday, Windsor flew to Tripoli, where he met Gadaffi, the Libyan leader.

Windsor’s visit was arranged by a Pakistani living in England named Mumtaz Abbasi, who admits he is the “European representative” of Al-Zulfikar, a Libya-backed terrorist group. Windsor was in the Libyan capital on Thursday when the High Court in London ordered the sequestration of the NUM’s assets after seven months of its national strike. 

But then the NUM took money from any stray left-wing totalitarian dictatorship didn't they!

Newly discovered documents showed substantial sums of money in hard currency were secretly transferred to the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) during the major industrial action.

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Go on BBC News - go on strike. We don't give a fig, you know.

It’s hard to be sympathetic with very well paid BBC journalists who may (or may not depending on a revaluation and the impact of indexing changes) get a marginal reduction to their pensions. A change already agreed with other BBC staff. So I don't care about them striking about it.

But then I’m not going to miss BBC News coverage – it might even be better without Nicky Campbell, Kirsty Wark and assorted other members of our righteous media elite laying their hearts-on-sleeve left-wingedness on us over the airwaves.

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Using strikes to change policy is wrong

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I had planned to pen a little rant about the iniquities of the assorted teacher trade unions who - as it their Easter wont - are threatening all kinds of dire consequences should the government not do what they say. All the familiar public sector union buzz words are featured - "cuts", "privatisation", "overwork", "under pay" - plus a selection of moans specific to the education industry such as SATs and training.

But instead I want to meander around a rather important issue - the point at which trade unions overstep their proper role of representing members and stray into the running of overtly political campaigns directed at changing policy. Now this latter role is - if members ordain - a proper role for the union. Clearly those who work in a given industry and especially one predominantly government directed have a legitimate (and often informed) voice that trade unions can direct. So the NUT are quite entitled to argue for the abolition of SATs, for a wholly state-managed education system and for the compulsory teaching of Marxism if that is the wish of its members. But they are not entitled - in my judgment - to support such arguments with the threat of industrial action.

Nor is it right for trade unions - whether mandated by their members or not - to seek to prevent others, through private adventure from challenging the current status quo. The stifling of competition has been a theme in trade union activism across time - ironic in the case of the very competitive world of teacher trade unions!

What is clear is that the public sector unions are lining up a series of oppositional positions ahead of a possible Conservative government. And, given the radical nature of Conservative proposals in education, the teaching unions are at the forefront in developing this opposition. However, to propose industrial action because someone else - in line with Government policies - has set up a competing school outside the cuddly local authority sphere should be a matter of concern. And - as an overt political act - such action should not be taken.

There is a big difference between lobbying for policy change - a quite legitimate act - and using industrial power to achieve policy change - which is illegitimate.

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Why we needed Maggie.....starting with the Russian spy who owned the Labour Party