THE MONEY GRABBING FRED KITES at UNITE are at it again. This time threatening disruption of the Olympic games unless their 20,000 bus drivers are each given a £500 bonus for working between July 27 to August 12.
I have no love for the spectacle of the Olympics as I once did. Since many of the athletes became tempted by performance enhancing drugs, I can no longer watch them with the same appreciation and respect for their performance that I once did.
So the event matters little to me; but what does matter is seeing an avaricious union boss timing strike action to meet a great public event where it is thought an extra 800,000 people will be in need of London’s transport service.
Modern trade unionism is still garnishing sympathy because of their early history when they were a force for good that stood up for the interests of the truly impoverished and exploited workers, of which there were many millions before the Second World War. As with socialism, the unions were performing a progressive task by standing up to the industrial oligarchy that ran our manufacturing base. The social history of Britain from the mid 18th century until the mid 20th century proves that the trade unions had much to do to overcome the exploitation of the factory owners and their arbitrary treatment of their workforce.
The unions then, were a truly progressive force that did much to promote social reform by their actions, including the creation of a political party to represent trade unionists in parliament.
Today, however, the piping chimneys that poured their smoke into the atmosphere and clouded many northern towns and cities, have long since gone and with it the many casualties that such industries caused among their workforce.
Today the coalmines have been (largely) erased from the landscape as well as the many deaths such a vile industry caused - either through cave-ins or disease. The miners held the admiration and sympathy of the country. But thankfully such sacrifices (for this what they were) are longer part of the social history of Britain.
THE UNIONS TODAY have become like the employers of old – out, not for their members, but purely for themselves as well as their own political agendas. They seek to orchestrate their members into bringing down or damaging a Tory or Lib Dem government (or both in a coalition) whenever the chance presents itself. They also practice the same strategy with the party they helped create; but only if it is led by a week leader – one that has been chosen by themselves to do their bidding, under the ridiculous voting system that the party they created have been forced to adopt.
In the age of steam, the unions provided the working people with their only hope; in the age of electrical capacity, they still mattered greatly; for the change in the nature of energy was yet to resolve the many injustices that the beginnings of the industrial revolution set in motion - but resolved, they eventually were.
We no longer send children up chimneys; we no longer send children down mines, or in the many mills that dotted the North of England. Modern governments of all political persuasions, have, through reforms, rightly brought an end to the cruelties of the past. No-one can possibly contest that the London bus drivers’ conditions bare any kind of comparison with any of those working people who I have referred to above.
No- one today has to visit a workhouse; no-one today is brought to penury and has to beg on the streets in the hope of avoiding the workhouse. If such inhuman and degrading social conditions existed today, then I would welcome UNITE’s decision to call a strike during the UK Olympics. But of course, such evil conditions no longer exist.
The modern trade unions, but especially those who represent the public sector, are trying to still live off the respect gained by their union antecedents, at a time when much work was needed to be done to elevate the conditions of the British working class.
UNITE’S THREAT to disrupt the Olympics will only lower their standing among the British public, and will no doubt, in the future, cause ordinary people, including all of the many millions of people the various unions have on their books, to wonder whether their union’s representation is indeed needed.
Whenever a union calls a ballot for strike action, the turnout is miserable; more so even at a local government election. Yet the union leaders, defiant as usual, proclaim such ballots a success: they do so on a low turnout of say 50 per cent. This means that, from this turnout, no vote in favour of a strike could possibly encompass any kind of majority among the union’s members. In the current vote, for instance, among UNITE’s membership, 70 per cent of the union never voted. So the real ballot encompassed only 30 per cent of UNITE’s bus drivers; of which a majority voted for the action the union proposes to take.
Is it little wonder that modern trade unionism is unpopular – especially when they always chose the most inconvenient moment (for the general public), in order to strike. We have had threats from railway unions, as well as baggage handlers at our airports, who all chose their moment to strike at the most vulnerable time for the traveller.
If the modern public service union movement is not careful, they will render themselves as unpopular as the 19th century industrialists from whom they gained their raison d’être. They will find themselves unpopular in the country as well as history. Something they cannot afford to be, especially in the light of being the beacon for the Labour Party; who they will drag down with them.
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