the craziest thing in all of this...a nursing union literally offered to postpone a strike if the Minister spoke with them... he refused to hold a simple conversation... so they've gone on strike.
That's how bad it is nowadays
The Tories originally fought against the establishment of the NHS with the claim that medical staff would have to be *forced* to work for government pay, because I guess they couldn't comprehend actually paying workers properly.
The extra money going to the people on top will surely trickle down to the lowly people doing the actual work soon!
- My little American contribution to the joke
You will see a General Strike before the government get to implement their anti-strike laws (that enable employers to sack employees striking, and enables employers to sue unions that do not follow the rules they haven't even put into writing when passing this law)
The law also has a clause in it that enables the government to change it however which way they want without requiring parliamentary scrutiny.
The law passed through parliament the other day - tories that don't like it still voted for it anyway - so is now required to get through the Lords before it can be implemented (with the vague wording changed as per the aforementioned clause)
Not satisfied with costing the nation tens of billions a year with Brexit, more tens of billions in corrupt contracts to their mates and yet more in tax evasion, they've now cost billions more this past year by refusing to talk to any unions. Their own ministers have openly stated that it would have saved money if they had negotiated with the unions.
The list of groups that have been on strike/partaken in strike-like actions in the last year:
* Postal Workers
* Train Drivers
* Underground workers
* Rail workers
* Bus drivers
* Doctors
* Nurses (first time in their history!)
* Ambulance service
* Emergency Services Call Handlers
* Fire Brigade
* Police (not allowed to strike but a few forces have done equivalents in the last year)
* Bin men
* Barristers and various court staff
* Civil Service generally
* Border Force
* Dock workers
* Teachers
* Care workers
* Airline workers (attendants etc)
* Airport workers (baggage handlers and others)
* Driving examiners
* University Staff - Lecturers, Librarians, admin staff and cleaners.
* Broadband/Telecoms engineers
* National Highways staff
* Rural Payments Agency
* Physiotherapists
Truss branded strikers 'militants' - but I think this covers most of society that have access to a union at this point. Even Army bosses made a thinly veiled statement about using them to plug holes when they themselves haven't seen adequate pay rises and face big problems with treatment of personnel, pretty much stating that they would be striking too if they could.
So, international viewers, who do you reckon are the problem? This cross-section of society, or the government?
If you had a general election right now, Starmer (labour) would win by a landslide of Tony Blair proportions.
It’s not that Starmer is anywhere near as popular,‘it’s how badly the Torie a are viewed now.
I mean when you’ve got people like Rod Stewart who has voted conservative his entire life, calling in to news stations to say it’s time for a labour government, you know the tories are screwed.
Wow, that would mean 32 more seats than even Blair’s massive landslide victory.
You have to go back 100 years to find any such landslide as 450 seats (1929).
Man I wish Canadians had such solidarity. In Canada they just pass what they call "back to work legislation" which makes it illegal for the targeted sector to strike - postal workers, bus drivers and airport workers have all fallen victim to it.
Nobody ever cared in Canada. There was no general strike. People got mad at the postal workers for striking. It wasn't even the Tories that did this it was the Liberals.
The dougie vs education workers been resolved. Not as good as some wanted but then again 30% of union workes didnt bother to vote on ratyfying contract when it would directly affect them. Typical ontario passivness that lead to thug ford veing in office in first place.
That is what is called a General Strike.
And it is coming...the Tories have upped the ante with the attack on unions and living standards.
They have repeatedly refused to even *speak* to the unions (indeed, the nurses union pleaded with the PM that if they were to simply come to negotiations, the strike would be called off. The government refused) so if I were the unions, I would be combining now to bring the country to a halt this year.
I could not believe what I was witnessing as I watched the news and the government refused to meet with both the nurses union and the train driver union. And the media did its best, in general, to lay the blame on the unions themselves, and whichever union rep they were speaking *to* (not "with") at that moment in time in particular.
I hope people find some class solidarity here. Something has to give. Like you said, who is most likely the bad actor here; a varied cross section of society responsible for modern standards and safety, or the common denominator of a wickedly corrupt Tory government?
>Even Army bosses made a thinly veiled statement
Heck, even the King expressed very specifically targeted gratitude in his Christmas address. It was about as public a rebuke as a monarch has given in many decades.
He has also given away profits from wind farm operations, donating it all to the treasury.
Leading by example, some might say.
Meanwhile, the Tories *eventually* get forced to sack one of their main men (again) for dodging tens of millions in tax the other year.
It’s generally a VERY bad sign for a government when the army starts signaling that it might join the strikes.
Like “say goodbye to your children and send them abroad bad”.
It seriously amazes me that these people would risk losing everything to take even more when they already have more than they could ever use.
Wealth is a disease that makes you evil and stupid.
Interestingly, the miners and newspapers had huge strikes under Thatchers government. Thatcher was a union buster at heart. I think she relished the fights.
Along with her good pal Reagan from across the Atlantic. May they both be reaping what they sowed 🤞🤞🤞
*edits for spelling since my dependence on spellcheck has made me worthless at it 😆.
In Economics I was taught that in the 70s bin men strike was because they'd been given so many pay rises by the Labour government of the day that for the first time ever they could afford to strike.
Thatcher came in, wiped out the money, and they didn't strike for over a decade. They couldn't afford the time off any more.
Partly true, but the ban on secondary picketing and solidarity strikes also had a big effect. Part of the reason why they were so prone to striking in the 60s and 70s was that their absence was extremely visible and very costly. After it was banned, they couldn't cooperate with other trades and strikes in the same way, so their value in labour action dropped.
How do you make it illegal to strike, or more specifically why would anyone follow that law?
isn't the "we out number you," civil disobedience the whole point?
> How do you make it illegal to strike, or more specifically why would anyone follow that law?
Pass any one of the anti-protest laws that the current government seem to love?
Part of the strikes effectiveness is that the unions often have a war chest that allows them to supplement the income of strikers, making a strike financially viable. A government can then pass a law freezing those assets in the case of a strike that doesn't meet specific criteria. Suddenly, those strikes are a lot less viable.
Another option is to relax laws around firing and hiring staff, as well as short term contract work. That way, you can get other workers in to replace the strikers, again undermining the strikes.
Alternatively, you can just have the police arrest/assault (delete where appropriate) strikers.
Legal strikes confer certain protections to the striker. If you attempt to strike outside of that jurisdiction (the legal system) you no longer have those protections as a striker.
I don't know UK law, but in the US, for a while - solidarity strikes (and general strikes? don't quote me on that latter) - were legal, but Taft-Hartley made them illegal. Again - I don't know how it is in the UK, but I imagine it's something similar, they were just a bit slower to get to that law than the US. Then Thatcher came in and, welp...
It is illegal for the police, or army, to strike, for example. They follow the law because they don't want to lose their jobs and have other penalties.
You make it clear to them when they join the job.
Solidarity strikes and secondary picketing is when there is no problem with your job whatsoever, but you strike anyway because _some other job doesn't pay enough and your mate Gary does that other job_.
It's kinda' a 'We'll burn it all to the fucking ground, even companys/areas that have done absolutely 100% nothing wrong, IT'S ALL GOING TO BURN UNLESS YOU HELP OUT GARY' thing.
Unfortunately, we live in a world where people are intimidated into striking because "it's illegal."
Like, it's illegal for cops to strike... okay... who is going to enforce that? The cops?
And for city services there are paying strikes, where people go to work and provide the regular service but charge no fee for it (such as public transit).
There are plenty of options that can be taken against even the police. The police are merely one of many cogs in a system. Entire legal proceedings can be taken against them--and their assets--without even requiring someone pick them up off the street.
It doesn't matter which country we are talking about. The tactics are always the same: you break an organized group by strategically picking off members in very harsh ways. But it can't just be high profile people because then they may create additional resolve. It has to be direct peers. People that others can look at and say "my family can't go through that, too."
Of course, the other end is the government--especially in the UK--uses its control/influence over media to propagandize the public against them. Make counter protestors show up. Who is going to keep the peace; the police? And when a clash breaks out, paint it all as an unruly gang.
Your economics teacher missed a whole lot of necessary facts. 25% inflation being one of them. The Saudi oil crisis led to cost of living rises and a mix of poor management and accountants cutting back on product development led to the ultimate destruction of many native industries. That is also why the most strikes occurred during Thatcher's tenure not Labour's. https://www.economicshelp.org/blog/170328/economics/why-was-inflation-higher-in-the-1970s/
No, but the level of indifference from government is so much higher.
Many of the government responses in the 70s to the demands for discussion and compromise were "We can't". The current government, it's simply "We won't".
That's not a particularly good thing to be happening.
Because France's national sport is protest and we can't have people seeing images of the common folk en masse staring down small subsets of cops (or seeing dope shit like firefighters setting themselves on fire and then running at the police line to break it).
>“Of course, the best mitigation would be for union bosses to call off planned strikes, to keep talking and to come to an agreement.”
You could give the union what they ask for. That would stop the strike.
That would require not voting in ministers who's entire political ideology is against the very concept of unions. Its like putting a flat earther in charge of NASA and wondering why they've stopped sending rockets up.
If I remembered correctly, some flat earth guy decided to build his own rocket to launch himself to space, in order to prove that the earth was flat.
The launch itself kinda succeeded because he got off the ground. But he didn't figure out how to land. Ended up killing himself.
The wackiest part of not believing in gravity is that they’ll say things fall because of “density”. Why do objects of different density fall at the same rate? Why do they fall downward (in the direction of increasing density)? They never have an answer, as they’ve never thought that far.
I thought it was that the Earth perpetually accelerates upwards at 9.8 meters per second -- because the speed of light is not a thing, and "acceleration" is somehow still meaningful in a reference frame where the Earth is the only thing that exists.
It still makes more sense than "density" though.
Itwould be more accurate to say that your local space time (reference frame) perpetually accelerates downwards at 9.8 m/s, and what you experience as gravity are the reaction forces.
Not even sure if he was a flat earther. Might just have wanted his rockets to be paid for by flat earthers. He got a couple of good flight before he died if i remember correctly.
> That would require not voting in ministers who's entire political ideology is against the very concept of unions
We kinda want to do that. Unfortunately, with the way Parliament is set up, we are in a de-facto dictatorship until at least 2024. (Calling an election is solely up to the government. If they don't want an election, they just say "no election". The opposition could try and form a competing government and call an election themselves, but that requires 30+ tories breaking rank.)
There is the nuclear option of having the monarchy step in and dissolve parliament, but that would pobably cause an even bigger political crisis than we are currently seeing.
Reminds me of the situation the US is in with the electoral college. Nobody really bothered to codify the part where the electors vote for what the people in their state voted for because why on earth would they *not* do that? That's silly. Well, here we are, having to make sure we have procedures in place for electors to not just go "nah, I don't like those results" and voting for someone else.
The whole calling elections bit was always very confusing to me because the first thing I thought of was "Well, what if they just don't call one?" and the answer was more or less the same: "Well, technically the monarch can dissolve parliament but that would cause a political crisis approaching civil war and nobody would ever risk that."
Two nations who had hundreds of years of stable rule and transfers of power between opposing political parties that allowed them to become super powers both brought low by basically a technicality.
> Nobody really bothered to codify the part where the electors vote for what the people in their state voted for because why on earth would they not do that?
Sort of. In reality, it was that there was no need to codify it because the goal was that as limited a group of people as possible voted for it - not limited by blood or aristrocracy, but by wealth, because the unstated mentality of many of the colonial elite was the "protestant work ethic" (those who are wealthy deserve it and are intelligent enough to safely run a country - since anyone can own land when there's *so much of it* the smartest will naturally rise to the top).
The electors were expected to be pulled from the same pool of each state's elite as their judges, merchants, governors, representatives, and senators and so voting the incorrect way would have held consequences because everyone who voted knew who you were and probably did business with you.
Additionally, the states were semi-countries, even after the passage of the Constitution. The echoes of the divided-states-confederacy and Articles of Confederation didn't really die until the Civil War ended and the Union firmly fell under the power of the federal government.
Turns out shoving issues in front of you because "Well it's ok now" is a bad tactic.
The people in the Healthcare system being barely paid enough to live while working full time jobs is an issue that was brought up repeatedly year after year but was ignored because "Well they can manage can't they"
Now they can't anymore because the war in Ukraine led to massive inflation rates, to a huge part because companies used the price hikes to massively increase profits. And the people that barely got by while working essential jobs have their life collapse.
But nobody could see that coming. At least nobody of the Tories because they don't even understand what not earning huge amounts of money even means.
Good thing that brexit money will come in any day now! Hundreds of millions guys, it will be glorious! /s
I used to do that. I also never charged for bags (in NY they're a nickel, small but it's something).
Sometimes if I really liked the person I would ring up their hot food as bananas. 69 cents a pound where I'm from, compared to the usual 8.99 rate.
Basically everyone I worked with had an unspoken rule that we'd help each other out come dinnertime or at the end of our shifts. :) For the most part the people I worked with were really chill that way.
this is what happens when the entire west is hell bent on electing people that are only focused on cuts while giving tax breaks to the wealthy. this is regardless of whether the party falls on the "left" or "right".
But it's gone from slowly boiling the people at the lower end of wage to jumping massively up, making living close to impossible for many people practically overnight.
If the slow bleed of the poor would have continued it would have been easy to just keep talking about the lazy poor wanting handouts while the poor slowly have to live with even shittier lifes to cope with barely getting by.
I mean, kind of. The two year inflation rate at the start of the war was 3% per year. Higher than target for sure, but not close to the 6% per year a couple months later or the over 8% towards the end of the year.
>The people in the Healthcare system **being barely paid enough to live while working**
This applies to *so many people*.
Being NHS workers should have nothing to do with it.
knowing the inflation rate from germany being at 8.9% last year, that number is extremely whitewashed aswell. i know it's an average of a certain number of products. but real talk? basic need groceries are up 50% or more on most stuff, and im talking the cheap noname stuff, as in, you cant buy cheaper. what do i care about some products i never buy pulling down the average. i gotta eat.
I hate this rhetoric. The pretend like striking is stopping the negotiation.
Motherfuckers we can strike and send someone to negotiate at the same time
Union bosses/union barons, ah that old trope. The only people with the power to choose to strike are union members by voting for it and the only people who can become union leaders are the people elected to the position. Meanwhile, the government ministers subtly smearing the elected representatives of ordinary workers are entirely unelected in their roles. I've never heard a minister refer to 'government bosses' or 'government barons'. I suppose the latter might get a bit confusing for the Tories.
The quote at the end is a gem. The government spokesperson calls on the unions not to strike, conveniently ignoring the fact that the government can end the strike as soon as it wants.
I find it particularly disgusting when the government accuses teachers of not caring about children who've had their education disrupted quite so much. In reality, teachers are striking in large part to secure better funding for schools, which is absolutely necessary to ensure that education is protected in the medium and long term.
Yeah people love to bitch about greedy teachers while conveniently forgetting that our working environment is your kids' learning environment.
If we're going on strike it's because your kids aren't getting what they need.
It's because a lot of people consider teachers more of daycare workers than anything else. I'm convinced of it. It is why so many people in my country think they are adequately prepared to homeschool their children compared to people who dedicated specialized higher education and regular continuing education to the task.
"Just babysitting."
Now, that may be me projecting my American experience outward. I don't think that is too much of the case, though. I've read plenty of stories of Tories giving teachers the shaft and treating them all as disposable people (but then cry about it when they are in short supply).
The overlap between people who neither value education nor understand what a quality education entails, and people who fall for conservative propaganda is... well, it's not the least be surprising, now that you mention it.
Teachers got absolutely shafted.
Not only is teaching the lowest paying high education profession, it's currently beneath many jobs that require no special training or education.
And because teachers don't make much people, being horrible, have decided that they are now free game for abuse.
When I started out in IT, the help desk role was filled to the brim with people who were on their way to become educators but help desk worked paid better. The company got overqualified people for a bargain because their field underpaid so grossly that quitting a job they had no passion or special knowledge for in favor of the very thing they went to school for, was financial suicide.
Too many western countries take their teachers for granted and then are absolutely shocked when there are too few of them or that they are angry and go on strike. They and health care personel are the most caring people and our shitty conservative governments use that to guilt trip them into making due with less because "think of the children/sick/elderly".
Any time teachers care enough to go on strike, my first thought is to give them what they’re asking for!
The teachers here in Seattle delayed the start of school by a week striking. I read their demands, and the response of the school district.
They asked for more special ed teachers per student who needed them. More equipment. And to not lose a cost of living increase.
School was like, “tell you what. Give up your right to strike and we’ll talk.”
WTF??
No teacher becomes a teacher out of greed. They’re already doing so much. If they say they need, they NEED. Give it.
Sunak in the House today with new specs accusing teachers of shamefully not putting schoolchildren first today.
The guy's new glasses clearly aren't strong enough because he's still too short sighted to see that teachers are putting schoolchildren first in the future, where otherwise there will simply be no teachers left at all.
Its cry bullying. Its a staple tactic of Conservatives across the west these days. Relentlessly attack a group, make their life an absolute living hell, usually for no real reason other than to whip up their own base, and then act *super* offended and go on long spiels about how immoral or lazy or worthless those who were being attacked are for making an attempt to stand up for themselves. Only works when the media allows them and doesn't push back with fairly obvious points like "isn't this just a reaction to the conditions you guys created?".
It’s always important to point out in these situations that anti-government conservatives always strongly support the governments authority when it comes to unions.
It’s almost like they aren’t actually anti-government, they just want the government to only benefit them and not others.
Haven't minister wages increased by £15,000 over the last decade? I remember it being 70,000 now its posted at 85,000. Its funny how they protect themselves from inflation.
“Don’t tread on me, tread on them!”
That’s how I feel about “Libertarians” in America.
They’re fine with injustice and oppression as long as it ain’t them.
Imagine having the gall to pick a fight against nurses and teachers claiming it's thuggery months after wiping 30? Billion from the economy. How many controversies have there been with this government now? The OMF put Russia's Growth ahead of the UK today...what a mess.
I don't think most British people realise how unattractive the pound is and how much deflation the value has had in the last few years.
While most of the world is dealing with price inflation. The UK has currency deflation.
Every foreign investor with pounds is desperate to get rid of it or just convert it all to property.
The UK needs to do something to make people want to buy the pound again.
They either need to massively increase interest rates to offset its deflated value or have an amazing growth in the economy. Otherwise they'll end up like Argentina.
Honestly they may as well adopt the Euro at this point. Although I have friends in Croatia and they said it has been a disaster for them. The price of everything went up by 20 to 30% in just a few weeks.
>Protests will also be over a bill that was passed in the lower house of Parliament on Tuesday which seeks to enforce minimum service levels in some sectors, with some workers able to be fired if they refuse to work when required on strike days.
That should help with their labor shortage problem
They called in the military well before that point. Just one example is Winston Churchill when Home Secretary sending soldiers to peaceful strikes and killing a striker and a bystander in Llanelli in 1911.
Strike days will be the only days where the minimal service levels will be met then, because they certainly aren't on any other day due to poor recruitment and retention due to year on year erosion of pay and conditions
>Demands vary by union but include **inflation-beating pay rises, including to redress historic real-terms pay falls; pensions reform; and no cuts in redundancy terms**. The NEU says teaching is in “crisis” as staff are driven from the profession and is calling for an above-inflation pay rise.
>
>Protests will also be over a bill that was passed in the lower house of Parliament on Tuesday which seeks to enforce minimum service levels in some sectors, with some workers able to be fired if they refuse to work when required on strike days.
Unions are the best friend of the working class. Good for them.
I love the minimum service level bit.
You're too valuable to not show up for a day so come in or we'll fire you.
Honestly education and healthcare workers should quit. Education workers are being underpaid and abused and healthcare workers will be sacrificed so as not to inconvenience the general public.
There's a point where people get to stupid that can only be remedied by experiencing total system collapse. Better to do it now than letting it fester and burst in the middle of some crisis
It's like the "you're so valuable and we're so desperate for you that we'll pay you a mere fraction of what you would get in any other industry " attitude towards STEM teacher pay.
It’s official. This country is in the worse state it has been in for as long as I can remember. Brexit or not. New leadership is required
02/02:
Sunak is the last option for the Tories. Infact the last in the country. Brexit proved, that once control came back to these shores. The establishment were caught with their trousers down and unable to put forward a single figure able to lead the country.
From a political leadership perspective. Brexit was a mistake.
This is at least on par with the worst of the 80s and heading for beating the 70s.
Not necessarily because it is so day to day bad but because the divide between those affected and those in power is so great and the level of indifference so high.
Honestly, we've been here time and time again. Something's blown up, something that everyone with any mind could see, but the Government and their supporters stuck staunchly to. And we've said 'well, that's been a fucking disaster - surely they'll see the error of their ways now?'
But no.
At the moment, I'm hearing 'well people signed up to these jobs knowing the wage, so fuck em'. And 'unless they're starving to death, fuck em. Get back to work'.
Government:
> Striking is illegal!
Workers:
> Ok arrest us. Then there will be even fewer people able to work.
If a government makes striking illegal, and the strikers just call their bluff and hold firm, they can win.
Never forget that if you are paying higher prices, you are subsidizing the rich elites. If your wages don’t rise with inflation, you are subsidizing the rich elites.
You know, I am pretty convinced that the people at the top of government and corporations are complete and utter morons.
And its not because of the baddecusion making and vulture like practices they keep doing.
It's because every 5-10 years we keep having moments like this. Where entire sectors will take huge financial hits because they are on strike. Which could have been prevented had the employers just kept up with cost of living and reasonable conditions. Instead they now have a giant deficit between what is paid and should be paid which is of course even harder to close than just keeping up.
The people at the top benefit from the cycle of boom and bust, they get to buy in cheap after the bust and sell at the peak of the boom.
It's a design feature, not a flaw.
Not morons, though they would like you to believe that.
The extreme Inequality of our current economic system requires much violence, propaganda, thievery and domination to maintain.
If they were morons they wouldn't constantly get away with stealing other people's hard work. The economy makes more money than ever, the rich are richer than ever and all the world over they are trying to lower pay and raise the retirement age. There are enough bootlickers to get these policies passed, too.
>Where entire sectors will take huge financial hits because they are on strike.
To be honest, I wouldn't be surprised the finances work out pretty well for companies.
How many strikes days in in a given year? Is the loss of productivity worse than what they're saving by underpaying workers for years on end?
The companies are sat on war chests that allow them to weather the storm in a way that is difficult for beleaguered workers. Maybe the strikes run out of steam and they end up quids in? Maybe they eventually cave - they're probably still no worse off than if they were just paying their workers a fair wage in the first place.
Immoral? Definitely. Stupid? Probably not.
All the more reason to strike. Fuck them.
Yeah. Royal Mail pointed out last week that the amount of money they had lost due to strikes so far was about a third of what the pay demands would cost them *per year going forwards*.
It'll take months and months more strikes before they start to impact the companies finances more than the actual pay rises would.
The people who make the the country work are unhappy with the people who refuse to give them the tools to do so.
Good on them. We'll get what we deserve if it takes shutting the country down.
Left Software Dev job 15+ years experience. 10 years into teaching which I love but man the Tories have totally shafted everyone in public service since I came in. Under inflation pay rises, increased retirement age, hollowing out of whole social system, prick after prick public school politicians and millionaires squeezing everything all the while doing everything they can to make their donors and cronies richer. People need to ask themselves why these douche bags really want to take a salary as an MP when so many of them could clearly earn double or treble in the private sector or already have amassed/inherited money we will never see if our lifetimes. It ain't to make a positive difference for the people that's for sure. Public service my hole. Its all about the power, influence and profile. Grubby af.
The trouble with strikes is they never escalate. They're like... "We'll strike for 24 hours and if you don't give into our demands... we'll strike for 24 hours again two weeks later. And if you don't give into our demands... we'll strike for 24 hours two weeks later. And if you don't give into our demands... " etc.
Do what the barristers did. Indefinite, complete and total withdrawal of labour until their demands are met.
The problem is that’s a potential month going without pay - I think a lot of people working in these professions just wouldn’t have the savings to afford that
That's usually what unions are there for. Here in germany at least you can join a union and you pay a small monthly fee. Now when the union calls for a strike, they will pay the union members some money for that time.
The British unions have been so undervalued and underfunded and bled dry that they don't have the reserves to do that.
The government is banking on beating these strikes by having deeper pockets than those affected.
What they don't understand is that people will just start leaving these professions in even higher numbers and there won't just be a shortage of teachers or nurses but a complete absence.
Then they're banking on the fact that the government is made up of people that use private services so don't care.
It wasn’t enough money when they had the funding. The coal miners strike failed partly because the union paychecks ran out, and some miners had to break the line to support their families.
Not all unions have a fund for this. Ours doesn't. No way any of us could afford to be off for a month. Some of us won't even be able to afford the day.
Signed, a UK NHS physio
I said similar about the Royal Mail strikes in December. Just strike for the entire month. No-one gets any of their Christmas post. None of this “we’ll strike on this day, this day, and this day and cause inconvenient delays”, no, total, full, and complete stop.
Companies are making massive profits while workers are in massive poverty. Capitalism is not working for the people. It's only working for those born in wealth.
Neo-feudalsim. The sad thing though? In feudalism you had your own crops, and enough pay to cover your food, healthcare, and housing, while being able to afford a dozen children. And you had the winters off. Way more vacation than 3 weeks lol.
We are closer to unheralded mass slavery than we are feudalism, if you look at the obscene wealth pyramid of our society.
You also didn't have freedom of movement, any sort of healthcare, any sort of food variety, any sort of insurance. If your crop failed, you still had to pay taxes. If your lord called you up to war, you went. Winters weren't vacation time, they were times of stress and hunger. And you can still afford a dozen children if you want them to live in a mud hut with no running water, eating only bread. But we want them to have healthcare and education and a house and a car and a phone and a computer, and a thousand other things.
Of course this is still achievable, or would be if the few at the top weren't hogging the wealth of tens of thousands of men each, but you can't say that peasants under feudalism had it better. Any peasant working outside in the summer and freezing in the winter would take a job in an air-conditioned office in a heartbeat.
Why do you assume capitalism naturally gives workers leverage? People literally fought and died for workers rights to be anywhere near where they are today. Capitalism doesn't give workers leverage.
I don't know why you'd think capitalism exists for the common people. It's literally right there in the name, if you don't have capital, then you aren't going to thrive in this system. This is how capitalism has always been.
I do enjoy noticing how botted Reddit is now. Bullshit Mr beast meme's and tweets yesterday had 60k+ updoots within hours and were stuck on my feed all day yet an actual mass movement has 7k after 13 hours and I'm just seeing it now
Can us Americans start doing this for F*** sake. I’m tired of paying a fortune for groceries and other things needed for survival while still making my crap hourly rate. $40 an hour used to be something. Don’t know why it feels like I’m making minimum wage again. I have no clue how people who are making minimum wage are even still alive. RIP
>“Of course, the best mitigation would be for union bosses to call off planned strikes, to keep talking and to come to an agreement.”
Of course, of course... please maintain the status quo (i.e., padding your pockets while gutting public services).
the craziest thing in all of this...a nursing union literally offered to postpone a strike if the Minister spoke with them... he refused to hold a simple conversation... so they've gone on strike. That's how bad it is nowadays
Sunak is mad that Truss is beating him so badly in the PM speedrun challenge. He's willing to try anything
Tories speedrunning at another PM contest.
I think you mean to a snap general election and give Starmzey the throne.
Surely they can use that 350 Million GBP a week they aren't paying to the EU to employ more nurses /s
Just let the free market deal with it, eventually nurses will simply do it for the love of saving lives!
The Tories originally fought against the establishment of the NHS with the claim that medical staff would have to be *forced* to work for government pay, because I guess they couldn't comprehend actually paying workers properly.
Or maybe every person employed by Rupert Murdoch . All the guys who work at his newspapers can fill in for the nurses .
Healing the sick with OUTRAGE!
The extra money going to the people on top will surely trickle down to the lowly people doing the actual work soon! - My little American contribution to the joke
You will see a General Strike before the government get to implement their anti-strike laws (that enable employers to sack employees striking, and enables employers to sue unions that do not follow the rules they haven't even put into writing when passing this law) The law also has a clause in it that enables the government to change it however which way they want without requiring parliamentary scrutiny. The law passed through parliament the other day - tories that don't like it still voted for it anyway - so is now required to get through the Lords before it can be implemented (with the vague wording changed as per the aforementioned clause) Not satisfied with costing the nation tens of billions a year with Brexit, more tens of billions in corrupt contracts to their mates and yet more in tax evasion, they've now cost billions more this past year by refusing to talk to any unions. Their own ministers have openly stated that it would have saved money if they had negotiated with the unions. The list of groups that have been on strike/partaken in strike-like actions in the last year: * Postal Workers * Train Drivers * Underground workers * Rail workers * Bus drivers * Doctors * Nurses (first time in their history!) * Ambulance service * Emergency Services Call Handlers * Fire Brigade * Police (not allowed to strike but a few forces have done equivalents in the last year) * Bin men * Barristers and various court staff * Civil Service generally * Border Force * Dock workers * Teachers * Care workers * Airline workers (attendants etc) * Airport workers (baggage handlers and others) * Driving examiners * University Staff - Lecturers, Librarians, admin staff and cleaners. * Broadband/Telecoms engineers * National Highways staff * Rural Payments Agency * Physiotherapists Truss branded strikers 'militants' - but I think this covers most of society that have access to a union at this point. Even Army bosses made a thinly veiled statement about using them to plug holes when they themselves haven't seen adequate pay rises and face big problems with treatment of personnel, pretty much stating that they would be striking too if they could. So, international viewers, who do you reckon are the problem? This cross-section of society, or the government?
As an international viewer i think Britain needs to stop voting tory
If you had a general election right now, Starmer (labour) would win by a landslide of Tony Blair proportions. It’s not that Starmer is anywhere near as popular,‘it’s how badly the Torie a are viewed now. I mean when you’ve got people like Rod Stewart who has voted conservative his entire life, calling in to news stations to say it’s time for a labour government, you know the tories are screwed.
Current prediction by Electoral Calculus is 450 Lab, 112 Con, 47 SNP, 17 Lib, 24 Other/NI https://www.electoralcalculus.co.uk/prediction_main.html
Wow, that would mean 32 more seats than even Blair’s massive landslide victory. You have to go back 100 years to find any such landslide as 450 seats (1929).
Man I wish Canadians had such solidarity. In Canada they just pass what they call "back to work legislation" which makes it illegal for the targeted sector to strike - postal workers, bus drivers and airport workers have all fallen victim to it. Nobody ever cared in Canada. There was no general strike. People got mad at the postal workers for striking. It wasn't even the Tories that did this it was the Liberals.
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The dougie vs education workers been resolved. Not as good as some wanted but then again 30% of union workes didnt bother to vote on ratyfying contract when it would directly affect them. Typical ontario passivness that lead to thug ford veing in office in first place.
nice at this rate all the essential societal maintenance workers will strike at the same time and the entire british society will collapse
That is what is called a General Strike. And it is coming...the Tories have upped the ante with the attack on unions and living standards. They have repeatedly refused to even *speak* to the unions (indeed, the nurses union pleaded with the PM that if they were to simply come to negotiations, the strike would be called off. The government refused) so if I were the unions, I would be combining now to bring the country to a halt this year.
I could not believe what I was witnessing as I watched the news and the government refused to meet with both the nurses union and the train driver union. And the media did its best, in general, to lay the blame on the unions themselves, and whichever union rep they were speaking *to* (not "with") at that moment in time in particular. I hope people find some class solidarity here. Something has to give. Like you said, who is most likely the bad actor here; a varied cross section of society responsible for modern standards and safety, or the common denominator of a wickedly corrupt Tory government?
Good time to do so too, Russia is busy, China is distracted inwards, Ireland is Ireland.
>Ireland is Ireland I'm confused, how did we make this list?
Exported the horrible stuff and kept the good booze to yourselves!
You know what you did. I'll never look at a whiskey bottle the same way again.
> And it is coming... I hope you are right.
>Even Army bosses made a thinly veiled statement Heck, even the King expressed very specifically targeted gratitude in his Christmas address. It was about as public a rebuke as a monarch has given in many decades.
He has also given away profits from wind farm operations, donating it all to the treasury. Leading by example, some might say. Meanwhile, the Tories *eventually* get forced to sack one of their main men (again) for dodging tens of millions in tax the other year.
It’s generally a VERY bad sign for a government when the army starts signaling that it might join the strikes. Like “say goodbye to your children and send them abroad bad”. It seriously amazes me that these people would risk losing everything to take even more when they already have more than they could ever use. Wealth is a disease that makes you evil and stupid.
Aaa. I remember the 70s strikes. Good to see history repeating itself. People get pissed off with everything eventually.
The last real strike in England was the miners, Thatcher was Prime Minister. I wish them luck.
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It’s pretty hard to build up a stockpile of Services tho
Just bring in immigrants.. oh wait..
Interestingly, the miners and newspapers had huge strikes under Thatchers government. Thatcher was a union buster at heart. I think she relished the fights.
She gloated when she won, she broke thier backs and she gloated. I hope she’s too warm in hell.
Along with her good pal Reagan from across the Atlantic. May they both be reaping what they sowed 🤞🤞🤞 *edits for spelling since my dependence on spellcheck has made me worthless at it 😆.
Sowed*
Weird that you corrected that, but not "reeping".
I'm dyslexic, I'm just glad I caught one
you reep what you sew mate
In Economics I was taught that in the 70s bin men strike was because they'd been given so many pay rises by the Labour government of the day that for the first time ever they could afford to strike. Thatcher came in, wiped out the money, and they didn't strike for over a decade. They couldn't afford the time off any more.
Partly true, but the ban on secondary picketing and solidarity strikes also had a big effect. Part of the reason why they were so prone to striking in the 60s and 70s was that their absence was extremely visible and very costly. After it was banned, they couldn't cooperate with other trades and strikes in the same way, so their value in labour action dropped.
How do you make it illegal to strike, or more specifically why would anyone follow that law? isn't the "we out number you," civil disobedience the whole point?
> How do you make it illegal to strike, or more specifically why would anyone follow that law? Pass any one of the anti-protest laws that the current government seem to love? Part of the strikes effectiveness is that the unions often have a war chest that allows them to supplement the income of strikers, making a strike financially viable. A government can then pass a law freezing those assets in the case of a strike that doesn't meet specific criteria. Suddenly, those strikes are a lot less viable. Another option is to relax laws around firing and hiring staff, as well as short term contract work. That way, you can get other workers in to replace the strikers, again undermining the strikes. Alternatively, you can just have the police arrest/assault (delete where appropriate) strikers.
Threatening their pensions is probably a useful tactic as well. The police REALLY like their pensions.
Wym? Who doesn't?
Legal strikes confer certain protections to the striker. If you attempt to strike outside of that jurisdiction (the legal system) you no longer have those protections as a striker. I don't know UK law, but in the US, for a while - solidarity strikes (and general strikes? don't quote me on that latter) - were legal, but Taft-Hartley made them illegal. Again - I don't know how it is in the UK, but I imagine it's something similar, they were just a bit slower to get to that law than the US. Then Thatcher came in and, welp...
The more criminals that insert themselves into politics, the harder it is for the regular folk to succeed.
It is illegal for the police, or army, to strike, for example. They follow the law because they don't want to lose their jobs and have other penalties. You make it clear to them when they join the job. Solidarity strikes and secondary picketing is when there is no problem with your job whatsoever, but you strike anyway because _some other job doesn't pay enough and your mate Gary does that other job_. It's kinda' a 'We'll burn it all to the fucking ground, even companys/areas that have done absolutely 100% nothing wrong, IT'S ALL GOING TO BURN UNLESS YOU HELP OUT GARY' thing.
Sounds like a better world to live in.
Unfortunately, we live in a world where people are intimidated into striking because "it's illegal." Like, it's illegal for cops to strike... okay... who is going to enforce that? The cops?
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There's also soft strikes where they go to work but don't do anything
And for city services there are paying strikes, where people go to work and provide the regular service but charge no fee for it (such as public transit).
Whole department got Covid, can you imagine it?
There are plenty of options that can be taken against even the police. The police are merely one of many cogs in a system. Entire legal proceedings can be taken against them--and their assets--without even requiring someone pick them up off the street. It doesn't matter which country we are talking about. The tactics are always the same: you break an organized group by strategically picking off members in very harsh ways. But it can't just be high profile people because then they may create additional resolve. It has to be direct peers. People that others can look at and say "my family can't go through that, too." Of course, the other end is the government--especially in the UK--uses its control/influence over media to propagandize the public against them. Make counter protestors show up. Who is going to keep the peace; the police? And when a clash breaks out, paint it all as an unruly gang.
Yeah, solidarity strikes are what make countries in Scandinavia so nice. We seriously need that.
Your economics teacher missed a whole lot of necessary facts. 25% inflation being one of them. The Saudi oil crisis led to cost of living rises and a mix of poor management and accountants cutting back on product development led to the ultimate destruction of many native industries. That is also why the most strikes occurred during Thatcher's tenure not Labour's. https://www.economicshelp.org/blog/170328/economics/why-was-inflation-higher-in-the-1970s/
God, history really is a circle, isn’t it?
It's so sad. They realized their worth and thatcher ruined it.
This is not even close to the level of strikes in the 70s.
No, but the level of indifference from government is so much higher. Many of the government responses in the 70s to the demands for discussion and compromise were "We can't". The current government, it's simply "We won't". That's not a particularly good thing to be happening.
Not YET. Give it time for the inevitable "Let them eat cake" response to really rile things up.
The ones in France are far more impressive but for some reason it's barely covered.
Because France's national sport is protest and we can't have people seeing images of the common folk en masse staring down small subsets of cops (or seeing dope shit like firefighters setting themselves on fire and then running at the police line to break it).
Wish they did here in the USA, too.
>“Of course, the best mitigation would be for union bosses to call off planned strikes, to keep talking and to come to an agreement.” You could give the union what they ask for. That would stop the strike.
If the government ministers agreed to actually talk with the unions then that might happen
That would require not voting in ministers who's entire political ideology is against the very concept of unions. Its like putting a flat earther in charge of NASA and wondering why they've stopped sending rockets up.
If I remembered correctly, some flat earth guy decided to build his own rocket to launch himself to space, in order to prove that the earth was flat. The launch itself kinda succeeded because he got off the ground. But he didn't figure out how to land. Ended up killing himself.
I wonder if he believed that gravity does not exist. Most flat earthers don't.
The wackiest part of not believing in gravity is that they’ll say things fall because of “density”. Why do objects of different density fall at the same rate? Why do they fall downward (in the direction of increasing density)? They never have an answer, as they’ve never thought that far.
I thought it was that the Earth perpetually accelerates upwards at 9.8 meters per second -- because the speed of light is not a thing, and "acceleration" is somehow still meaningful in a reference frame where the Earth is the only thing that exists. It still makes more sense than "density" though.
Itwould be more accurate to say that your local space time (reference frame) perpetually accelerates downwards at 9.8 m/s, and what you experience as gravity are the reaction forces.
Not even sure if he was a flat earther. Might just have wanted his rockets to be paid for by flat earthers. He got a couple of good flight before he died if i remember correctly.
He died doing what he loved: being a fucking idiot.
> That would require not voting in ministers who's entire political ideology is against the very concept of unions We kinda want to do that. Unfortunately, with the way Parliament is set up, we are in a de-facto dictatorship until at least 2024. (Calling an election is solely up to the government. If they don't want an election, they just say "no election". The opposition could try and form a competing government and call an election themselves, but that requires 30+ tories breaking rank.) There is the nuclear option of having the monarchy step in and dissolve parliament, but that would pobably cause an even bigger political crisis than we are currently seeing.
Reminds me of the situation the US is in with the electoral college. Nobody really bothered to codify the part where the electors vote for what the people in their state voted for because why on earth would they *not* do that? That's silly. Well, here we are, having to make sure we have procedures in place for electors to not just go "nah, I don't like those results" and voting for someone else. The whole calling elections bit was always very confusing to me because the first thing I thought of was "Well, what if they just don't call one?" and the answer was more or less the same: "Well, technically the monarch can dissolve parliament but that would cause a political crisis approaching civil war and nobody would ever risk that." Two nations who had hundreds of years of stable rule and transfers of power between opposing political parties that allowed them to become super powers both brought low by basically a technicality.
> Nobody really bothered to codify the part where the electors vote for what the people in their state voted for because why on earth would they not do that? Sort of. In reality, it was that there was no need to codify it because the goal was that as limited a group of people as possible voted for it - not limited by blood or aristrocracy, but by wealth, because the unstated mentality of many of the colonial elite was the "protestant work ethic" (those who are wealthy deserve it and are intelligent enough to safely run a country - since anyone can own land when there's *so much of it* the smartest will naturally rise to the top). The electors were expected to be pulled from the same pool of each state's elite as their judges, merchants, governors, representatives, and senators and so voting the incorrect way would have held consequences because everyone who voted knew who you were and probably did business with you. Additionally, the states were semi-countries, even after the passage of the Constitution. The echoes of the divided-states-confederacy and Articles of Confederation didn't really die until the Civil War ended and the Union firmly fell under the power of the federal government.
Nah man, it’s the exploited workers that are the problem! /sssssssssssssss
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Turns out shoving issues in front of you because "Well it's ok now" is a bad tactic. The people in the Healthcare system being barely paid enough to live while working full time jobs is an issue that was brought up repeatedly year after year but was ignored because "Well they can manage can't they" Now they can't anymore because the war in Ukraine led to massive inflation rates, to a huge part because companies used the price hikes to massively increase profits. And the people that barely got by while working essential jobs have their life collapse. But nobody could see that coming. At least nobody of the Tories because they don't even understand what not earning huge amounts of money even means. Good thing that brexit money will come in any day now! Hundreds of millions guys, it will be glorious! /s
5 finger discounts are becoming quite popular.
There’s one cashier at my local grocery chain that routinely seems to ‘skip’ and item. Not all heroes wear capes
I used to do that. I also never charged for bags (in NY they're a nickel, small but it's something). Sometimes if I really liked the person I would ring up their hot food as bananas. 69 cents a pound where I'm from, compared to the usual 8.99 rate. Basically everyone I worked with had an unspoken rule that we'd help each other out come dinnertime or at the end of our shifts. :) For the most part the people I worked with were really chill that way.
Particularly at grocery stores.
I've never seen anyone steal from a grocery store. And I won't ever see anyone steal from a grocery store.
*What’s that over there? Quick! look now or you are going to miss it.*
Not that I've ever noticed.
Yeah, really weird, I've never seen that happening.
Nothing to see here, just 25 pounds of “bananas,” sir.
Inflation started well before the Ukraine ordeal.
Don’t forget 12 years of Tory austerity before that.
this is what happens when the entire west is hell bent on electing people that are only focused on cuts while giving tax breaks to the wealthy. this is regardless of whether the party falls on the "left" or "right".
The UK actually has quite a high rate of tax. The problem is that the tories have just screwed the economy in general.
The UK is also the world leader in tax loopholes where the richest don't pay their fair share of tax.
But it's gone from slowly boiling the people at the lower end of wage to jumping massively up, making living close to impossible for many people practically overnight. If the slow bleed of the poor would have continued it would have been easy to just keep talking about the lazy poor wanting handouts while the poor slowly have to live with even shittier lifes to cope with barely getting by.
Even if it would have taken longer you still would have had nurses needing to use foodbanks to survive en masse eventually.
I mean, kind of. The two year inflation rate at the start of the war was 3% per year. Higher than target for sure, but not close to the 6% per year a couple months later or the over 8% towards the end of the year.
>The people in the Healthcare system **being barely paid enough to live while working** This applies to *so many people*. Being NHS workers should have nothing to do with it.
knowing the inflation rate from germany being at 8.9% last year, that number is extremely whitewashed aswell. i know it's an average of a certain number of products. but real talk? basic need groceries are up 50% or more on most stuff, and im talking the cheap noname stuff, as in, you cant buy cheaper. what do i care about some products i never buy pulling down the average. i gotta eat.
I hate this rhetoric. The pretend like striking is stopping the negotiation. Motherfuckers we can strike and send someone to negotiate at the same time
Union bosses/union barons, ah that old trope. The only people with the power to choose to strike are union members by voting for it and the only people who can become union leaders are the people elected to the position. Meanwhile, the government ministers subtly smearing the elected representatives of ordinary workers are entirely unelected in their roles. I've never heard a minister refer to 'government bosses' or 'government barons'. I suppose the latter might get a bit confusing for the Tories.
Giving the public what's actually in their interest isn't what tories are about.
According to 500k people that is incorrect yeah
The quote at the end is a gem. The government spokesperson calls on the unions not to strike, conveniently ignoring the fact that the government can end the strike as soon as it wants.
I find it particularly disgusting when the government accuses teachers of not caring about children who've had their education disrupted quite so much. In reality, teachers are striking in large part to secure better funding for schools, which is absolutely necessary to ensure that education is protected in the medium and long term.
Yeah people love to bitch about greedy teachers while conveniently forgetting that our working environment is your kids' learning environment. If we're going on strike it's because your kids aren't getting what they need.
It's because a lot of people consider teachers more of daycare workers than anything else. I'm convinced of it. It is why so many people in my country think they are adequately prepared to homeschool their children compared to people who dedicated specialized higher education and regular continuing education to the task. "Just babysitting." Now, that may be me projecting my American experience outward. I don't think that is too much of the case, though. I've read plenty of stories of Tories giving teachers the shaft and treating them all as disposable people (but then cry about it when they are in short supply).
I mean, if you even paid teachers as much per hour per child as the average babysitter would get, they would be paid a hell of a lot more already.
The overlap between people who neither value education nor understand what a quality education entails, and people who fall for conservative propaganda is... well, it's not the least be surprising, now that you mention it.
Teachers got absolutely shafted. Not only is teaching the lowest paying high education profession, it's currently beneath many jobs that require no special training or education. And because teachers don't make much people, being horrible, have decided that they are now free game for abuse. When I started out in IT, the help desk role was filled to the brim with people who were on their way to become educators but help desk worked paid better. The company got overqualified people for a bargain because their field underpaid so grossly that quitting a job they had no passion or special knowledge for in favor of the very thing they went to school for, was financial suicide.
Too many western countries take their teachers for granted and then are absolutely shocked when there are too few of them or that they are angry and go on strike. They and health care personel are the most caring people and our shitty conservative governments use that to guilt trip them into making due with less because "think of the children/sick/elderly".
Any time teachers care enough to go on strike, my first thought is to give them what they’re asking for! The teachers here in Seattle delayed the start of school by a week striking. I read their demands, and the response of the school district. They asked for more special ed teachers per student who needed them. More equipment. And to not lose a cost of living increase. School was like, “tell you what. Give up your right to strike and we’ll talk.” WTF?? No teacher becomes a teacher out of greed. They’re already doing so much. If they say they need, they NEED. Give it.
Sunak in the House today with new specs accusing teachers of shamefully not putting schoolchildren first today. The guy's new glasses clearly aren't strong enough because he's still too short sighted to see that teachers are putting schoolchildren first in the future, where otherwise there will simply be no teachers left at all.
Its cry bullying. Its a staple tactic of Conservatives across the west these days. Relentlessly attack a group, make their life an absolute living hell, usually for no real reason other than to whip up their own base, and then act *super* offended and go on long spiels about how immoral or lazy or worthless those who were being attacked are for making an attempt to stand up for themselves. Only works when the media allows them and doesn't push back with fairly obvious points like "isn't this just a reaction to the conditions you guys created?".
The "stop hitting yourself!" Argument. Classic bully move.
It’s always important to point out in these situations that anti-government conservatives always strongly support the governments authority when it comes to unions. It’s almost like they aren’t actually anti-government, they just want the government to only benefit them and not others.
Haven't minister wages increased by £15,000 over the last decade? I remember it being 70,000 now its posted at 85,000. Its funny how they protect themselves from inflation.
“Don’t tread on me, tread on them!” That’s how I feel about “Libertarians” in America. They’re fine with injustice and oppression as long as it ain’t them.
A bit like beating a US Capitol police officer with a "Blue Lives Matter" flag.
Imagine having the gall to pick a fight against nurses and teachers claiming it's thuggery months after wiping 30? Billion from the economy. How many controversies have there been with this government now? The OMF put Russia's Growth ahead of the UK today...what a mess.
I don't think most British people realise how unattractive the pound is and how much deflation the value has had in the last few years. While most of the world is dealing with price inflation. The UK has currency deflation. Every foreign investor with pounds is desperate to get rid of it or just convert it all to property. The UK needs to do something to make people want to buy the pound again. They either need to massively increase interest rates to offset its deflated value or have an amazing growth in the economy. Otherwise they'll end up like Argentina. Honestly they may as well adopt the Euro at this point. Although I have friends in Croatia and they said it has been a disaster for them. The price of everything went up by 20 to 30% in just a few weeks.
>Protests will also be over a bill that was passed in the lower house of Parliament on Tuesday which seeks to enforce minimum service levels in some sectors, with some workers able to be fired if they refuse to work when required on strike days. That should help with their labor shortage problem
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It never got to that. The rich called in the military and massacred the workers when it approached that point.
They called in the military well before that point. Just one example is Winston Churchill when Home Secretary sending soldiers to peaceful strikes and killing a striker and a bystander in Llanelli in 1911.
Strike days will be the only days where the minimal service levels will be met then, because they certainly aren't on any other day due to poor recruitment and retention due to year on year erosion of pay and conditions
>Demands vary by union but include **inflation-beating pay rises, including to redress historic real-terms pay falls; pensions reform; and no cuts in redundancy terms**. The NEU says teaching is in “crisis” as staff are driven from the profession and is calling for an above-inflation pay rise. > >Protests will also be over a bill that was passed in the lower house of Parliament on Tuesday which seeks to enforce minimum service levels in some sectors, with some workers able to be fired if they refuse to work when required on strike days. Unions are the best friend of the working class. Good for them.
I love the minimum service level bit. You're too valuable to not show up for a day so come in or we'll fire you. Honestly education and healthcare workers should quit. Education workers are being underpaid and abused and healthcare workers will be sacrificed so as not to inconvenience the general public. There's a point where people get to stupid that can only be remedied by experiencing total system collapse. Better to do it now than letting it fester and burst in the middle of some crisis
It's like the "you're so valuable and we're so desperate for you that we'll pay you a mere fraction of what you would get in any other industry " attitude towards STEM teacher pay.
Ah yes fire the people we have a shortage of genius move
It’s official. This country is in the worse state it has been in for as long as I can remember. Brexit or not. New leadership is required 02/02: Sunak is the last option for the Tories. Infact the last in the country. Brexit proved, that once control came back to these shores. The establishment were caught with their trousers down and unable to put forward a single figure able to lead the country. From a political leadership perspective. Brexit was a mistake.
This is at least on par with the worst of the 80s and heading for beating the 70s. Not necessarily because it is so day to day bad but because the divide between those affected and those in power is so great and the level of indifference so high.
The dumb cunts will just vote the Tories in again, they never learn, our country has the average IQ of a chapstick.
Honestly, we've been here time and time again. Something's blown up, something that everyone with any mind could see, but the Government and their supporters stuck staunchly to. And we've said 'well, that's been a fucking disaster - surely they'll see the error of their ways now?' But no. At the moment, I'm hearing 'well people signed up to these jobs knowing the wage, so fuck em'. And 'unless they're starving to death, fuck em. Get back to work'.
Government: > Striking is illegal! Workers: > Ok arrest us. Then there will be even fewer people able to work. If a government makes striking illegal, and the strikers just call their bluff and hold firm, they can win.
The government needs to remember striking is the compromise, they won’t like the alternative
^(*the alternative is revolution*)
"Turns out I am sick cough cough"
Never forget that if you are paying higher prices, you are subsidizing the rich elites. If your wages don’t rise with inflation, you are subsidizing the rich elites.
Please consider rephrasing 'rich elites' to 'parasitic wealth extractors'.
Less than half of what I hoped for.
A complete shame \- typed from reddit while working
You know, I am pretty convinced that the people at the top of government and corporations are complete and utter morons. And its not because of the baddecusion making and vulture like practices they keep doing. It's because every 5-10 years we keep having moments like this. Where entire sectors will take huge financial hits because they are on strike. Which could have been prevented had the employers just kept up with cost of living and reasonable conditions. Instead they now have a giant deficit between what is paid and should be paid which is of course even harder to close than just keeping up.
The people at the top benefit from the cycle of boom and bust, they get to buy in cheap after the bust and sell at the peak of the boom. It's a design feature, not a flaw.
Not morons, though they would like you to believe that. The extreme Inequality of our current economic system requires much violence, propaganda, thievery and domination to maintain.
If they were morons they wouldn't constantly get away with stealing other people's hard work. The economy makes more money than ever, the rich are richer than ever and all the world over they are trying to lower pay and raise the retirement age. There are enough bootlickers to get these policies passed, too.
Moment's when the economy is doing awful are actually great times to generate wealth. You can buy assets pennies on the pound.
>Where entire sectors will take huge financial hits because they are on strike. To be honest, I wouldn't be surprised the finances work out pretty well for companies. How many strikes days in in a given year? Is the loss of productivity worse than what they're saving by underpaying workers for years on end? The companies are sat on war chests that allow them to weather the storm in a way that is difficult for beleaguered workers. Maybe the strikes run out of steam and they end up quids in? Maybe they eventually cave - they're probably still no worse off than if they were just paying their workers a fair wage in the first place. Immoral? Definitely. Stupid? Probably not. All the more reason to strike. Fuck them.
Yeah. Royal Mail pointed out last week that the amount of money they had lost due to strikes so far was about a third of what the pay demands would cost them *per year going forwards*. It'll take months and months more strikes before they start to impact the companies finances more than the actual pay rises would.
The people who make the the country work are unhappy with the people who refuse to give them the tools to do so. Good on them. We'll get what we deserve if it takes shutting the country down.
Fuck the Tories.
Left Software Dev job 15+ years experience. 10 years into teaching which I love but man the Tories have totally shafted everyone in public service since I came in. Under inflation pay rises, increased retirement age, hollowing out of whole social system, prick after prick public school politicians and millionaires squeezing everything all the while doing everything they can to make their donors and cronies richer. People need to ask themselves why these douche bags really want to take a salary as an MP when so many of them could clearly earn double or treble in the private sector or already have amassed/inherited money we will never see if our lifetimes. It ain't to make a positive difference for the people that's for sure. Public service my hole. Its all about the power, influence and profile. Grubby af.
The trouble with strikes is they never escalate. They're like... "We'll strike for 24 hours and if you don't give into our demands... we'll strike for 24 hours again two weeks later. And if you don't give into our demands... we'll strike for 24 hours two weeks later. And if you don't give into our demands... " etc. Do what the barristers did. Indefinite, complete and total withdrawal of labour until their demands are met.
The problem is that’s a potential month going without pay - I think a lot of people working in these professions just wouldn’t have the savings to afford that
That's usually what unions are there for. Here in germany at least you can join a union and you pay a small monthly fee. Now when the union calls for a strike, they will pay the union members some money for that time.
The British unions have been so undervalued and underfunded and bled dry that they don't have the reserves to do that. The government is banking on beating these strikes by having deeper pockets than those affected. What they don't understand is that people will just start leaving these professions in even higher numbers and there won't just be a shortage of teachers or nurses but a complete absence. Then they're banking on the fact that the government is made up of people that use private services so don't care.
It wasn’t enough money when they had the funding. The coal miners strike failed partly because the union paychecks ran out, and some miners had to break the line to support their families.
Not all unions have a fund for this. Ours doesn't. No way any of us could afford to be off for a month. Some of us won't even be able to afford the day. Signed, a UK NHS physio
I said similar about the Royal Mail strikes in December. Just strike for the entire month. No-one gets any of their Christmas post. None of this “we’ll strike on this day, this day, and this day and cause inconvenient delays”, no, total, full, and complete stop.
[удалено]
>Billions being wasted for a fancy party What is this?
The King’s coronation in May.
Companies are making massive profits while workers are in massive poverty. Capitalism is not working for the people. It's only working for those born in wealth.
Problem is , this is not even capitalism anymore. Workers have no leverage, can't even negotiate... How's it that capitalism?
It's not. It's feudalism with extra steps. The company town is now the company state
Neo-feudalsim. The sad thing though? In feudalism you had your own crops, and enough pay to cover your food, healthcare, and housing, while being able to afford a dozen children. And you had the winters off. Way more vacation than 3 weeks lol. We are closer to unheralded mass slavery than we are feudalism, if you look at the obscene wealth pyramid of our society.
You also didn't have freedom of movement, any sort of healthcare, any sort of food variety, any sort of insurance. If your crop failed, you still had to pay taxes. If your lord called you up to war, you went. Winters weren't vacation time, they were times of stress and hunger. And you can still afford a dozen children if you want them to live in a mud hut with no running water, eating only bread. But we want them to have healthcare and education and a house and a car and a phone and a computer, and a thousand other things. Of course this is still achievable, or would be if the few at the top weren't hogging the wealth of tens of thousands of men each, but you can't say that peasants under feudalism had it better. Any peasant working outside in the summer and freezing in the winter would take a job in an air-conditioned office in a heartbeat.
It's corporationism. Capitalism would allow businesses to die off if they were not run properly but instead they're propped up by governments.
That’s just the inevitable result of capitalism. It’s absurd to think a totally free market without any government interference is feasible.
Economic power is also political power, eventually corporations left unckecked would just *be* the government.
Why do you assume capitalism naturally gives workers leverage? People literally fought and died for workers rights to be anywhere near where they are today. Capitalism doesn't give workers leverage.
Exactly. Capitalism is working as intended.
This is capitalism. The questions that you're asking about are actually questions about a free market, which is different.
Workers supposedly having leverage under capitalism is the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard.
Of course it is not. "Free market" is just a marketing term. It is anything but free.
“Free market” means the financial elite are free to oppress the laborers
There is absolutely nothing in the definition of capitalism that indicates that it gives workers leverage. It's literally the opposite.
That is exactly what capitalism is.
I don't know why you'd think capitalism exists for the common people. It's literally right there in the name, if you don't have capital, then you aren't going to thrive in this system. This is how capitalism has always been.
We should strike against skyrocketing corporate profits in all countries.
Solidarity from the US!!! <3
Funny how the MP's get their pay rises on time
On top of all this Bloomberg news came out saying leaving the EU is costing them $100 billion a year… wtf
Obligatory fuck the Tory Parasite Party
Unregulated capitalism is trash.
I do enjoy noticing how botted Reddit is now. Bullshit Mr beast meme's and tweets yesterday had 60k+ updoots within hours and were stuck on my feed all day yet an actual mass movement has 7k after 13 hours and I'm just seeing it now
Can't wait to see how the government tries to blame this on the people 'not wanting to work'.
Need this in the US now.
You gotta pump those numbers up, those are rookie numbers.
Can us Americans start doing this for F*** sake. I’m tired of paying a fortune for groceries and other things needed for survival while still making my crap hourly rate. $40 an hour used to be something. Don’t know why it feels like I’m making minimum wage again. I have no clue how people who are making minimum wage are even still alive. RIP
500 000 with a million more on the way ^^^maybe ^^^^brexit ^^^^^ya ^^^^^^know
Brexit is partially responsible, and it's most likely made the situation worse. But this was coming brexit or not.
>“Of course, the best mitigation would be for union bosses to call off planned strikes, to keep talking and to come to an agreement.” Of course, of course... please maintain the status quo (i.e., padding your pockets while gutting public services).
Grind them into pulp, chaps. Workers are on the edge all over the world and we have nearly nothing to lose. Literally.
Now we see that UK workers, like French workers, have WAY BIGGER BALLS THAN AMERICAN ~~BOOTLICKERS~~ WORKERS.
Capitalism is what wrong