Tories place barriers to Employment Tribunals | 33 comments (33 topical, editorial, 0 hidden)

Re: Tories place barriers to Employment Tribunals (none / 1)

In Britain at least there's a problem - it's not easy to join a union if you're in a non-union workplace...

by Metatone (metatone [a|t] gmail (dot) com) on Wed Jul 31st, 2013 at 02:06:11 PM EST
[ Parent ]

You say there are unions that are not clapping their hands when someone wants to become a fee-paying member? Why on earth?

by Katrin on Wed Jul 31st, 2013 at 02:17:17 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Pardon? (4.00 / 2)

No, he's saying there are employers who will fire you if you so much as think the word, never mind do anything practical, like joining one - or worse, suggest everyone joins one.

by ThatBritGuy (thatbritguy (at) googlemail.com) on Wed Jul 31st, 2013 at 05:00:39 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Pardon? (none / 1)

So the problem is not joining the union, but it is starting open activism for the union before it has critical strength in that workplace. I see. Yes, that is always a critical phase.

by Katrin on Wed Jul 31st, 2013 at 05:05:39 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Tories place barriers to Employment Tribunals (none / 0)

In what way is it not easy? You sign up, you pay your dues, you don't necessarily tell your boss about it, if your boss does not like unions.

Of course, the union might decide to hold this week's "let's picket a non-union shop, because non-union shops are lame" event at your boss' place. But that's got nothing to do with you, does it now?

- Jake

Friends come and go. Enemies accumulate.

by JakeS (JangoSierra 'at' gmail 'dot' com) on Wed Jul 31st, 2013 at 02:17:27 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Tories place barriers to Employment Tribunals (none / 1)

I think Thatcher did more than you think to demonize unions.

by afew (afew(a in a circle)eurotrib_dot_com) on Wed Jul 31st, 2013 at 06:02:32 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Tories place barriers to Employment Tribunals (none / 1)

Considering that the demonization was only the icing on the cake.

"It is not necessary to have hope in order to persevere."

by ARGeezer (ARGeezer a in a circle eurotrib daught com) on Thu Aug 1st, 2013 at 12:49:01 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Tories place barriers to Employment Tribunals (none / 1)

A tangential example is given by this incident (see Newsroom):

Two more arrests at fracking protest | Environment | theguardian.com

Police at an anti-fracking protest in Balcombe, West Sussex, pushed back demonstrators on Wednesday afternoon to allow the entry of an articulated lorry carrying pipes. It was the first successful delivery of equipment to the site since the protest began last week.
Earlier in the day two people were arrested over the ongoing protests against plans to drill for oil at a site a few miles outside the village.
The pair - a man and a woman - had glued themselves together at the gates of the site in an attempt to prevent machinery from being brought through the gates. Sussex police said the pair had been arrested under section 241 of the Trade Union Labour Relations Act.

Section 241:

Trade Union and Labour Relations (Consolidation) Act 1992

241 Intimidation or annoyance by violence or otherwise.E+W+S
(1)A person commits an offence who, with a view to compelling another person to abstain from doing or to do any act which that person has a legal right to do or abstain from doing, wrongfully and without legal authority--
(a)uses violence to or intimidates that person or his [F1spouse or civil partner]F1 or children, or injures his property,
(b)persistently follows that person about from place to place,
(c)hides any tools, clothes or other property owned or used by that person, or deprives him of or hinders him in the use thereof,
(d)watches or besets the house or other place where that person resides, works, carries on business or happens to be, or the approach to any such house or place, or
(e)follows that person with two or more other persons in a disorderly manner in or through any street or road.
(2)A person guilty of an offence under this section is liable on summary conviction to imprisonment for a term not exceeding six months or a fine not exceeding level 5 on the standard scale, or both.

As far as I can see, no trade unions are involved, but the "right to work" is being invoked to quash any kind of determined protest or picketing.

by afew (afew(a in a circle)eurotrib_dot_com) on Thu Aug 1st, 2013 at 02:12:57 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Tories place barriers to Employment Tribunals (none / 0)

Nothing in that law as written prevents an ordinary picket line.

And of course, unknown parties with no provable affiliation to the union, who take some measure of care to not get caught have much wider latitude in their methods.

- Jake

Friends come and go. Enemies accumulate.

by JakeS (JangoSierra 'at' gmail 'dot' com) on Thu Aug 1st, 2013 at 01:05:22 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Tories place barriers to Employment Tribunals (none / 1)

An "ordinary picket line", that the law pretends to protect (sic), is one that has no effect.

by afew (afew(a in a circle)eurotrib_dot_com) on Thu Aug 1st, 2013 at 02:10:34 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Tories place barriers to Employment Tribunals (none / 0)

It gathers attention and permits a platform for disseminating propaganda. And if you're a little smart about it, it also gathers intelligence. For customer-facing locations, they can directly impact the topline without ever resulting in work stoppages.

Finally, one should not forget that showing up and simply standing around in union colors sends a message to prospective recruits: "We are here, and we are many." Same principle as is behind election posters and sticker campaigns.

It won't stop work, but picket lines are not a good tool for stopping work unless you are willing to go full 19th century. And, to be blunt, there aren't enough starving people in our cities to make that particular part of the 19th century playbook politically viable.

- Jake

Friends come and go. Enemies accumulate.

by JakeS (JangoSierra 'at' gmail 'dot' com) on Thu Aug 1st, 2013 at 03:42:47 PM EST
[ Parent ]

No, I think unions are too gunshy (none / 0)

If unions are still playing by 20th century rules and the Tories and employers are collaborating to restore the 19th century rulebook, then of course the unions will keep losing.

I guess when they get tired of losing, they'll dig the 19th century rulebook back out again.

- Jake

Friends come and go. Enemies accumulate.

by JakeS (JangoSierra 'at' gmail 'dot' com) on Thu Aug 1st, 2013 at 01:09:55 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: No, I think unions are too gunshy (none / 0)

Well - the standard narrative is that obstructive union action is destroying the economy.

It's like it's still 1977 in the UK. There are plenty of older people who quote the party line, even though the union movement was reduced to a rump by the end of Thatcher's evil reign, and its influence has been waning ever since.

But I'm not convinced we need 20th century unions back in the form we had them.

We probably need 21st century freelance associations, and a determined push to get independents into parliament where they can gum up the works for the 'serious' parties - which is a different game.

by ThatBritGuy (thatbritguy (at) googlemail.com) on Thu Aug 1st, 2013 at 01:17:08 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: No, I think unions are too gunshy (4.00 / 2)

Labour Party (UK) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

After a debate, the 129 delegates passed Hardie's motion to establish "a distinct Labour group in Parliament, who shall have their own whips, and agree upon their policy, which must embrace a readiness to cooperate with any party which for the time being may be engaged in promoting legislation in the direct interests of labour." This created an association called the Labour Representation Committee (LRC), meant to coordinate attempts to support MPs sponsored by trade unions and represent the working-class population.^[48] It had no single leader, and in the absence of one, the Independent Labour Party nominee Ramsay MacDonald was elected as Secretary. He had the difficult task of keeping the various strands of opinions in the LRC united. The October 1900 "Khaki election" came too soon for the new party to campaign effectively; total expenses for the election only came to £33.^[49] Only 15 candidatures were sponsored, but two were successful; Keir Hardie in Merthyr Tydfil and Richard Bell in Derby.^[50]
Support for the LRC was boosted by the 1901 Taff Vale Case, a dispute between strikers and a railway company that ended with the union being ordered to pay £23,000 damages for a strike. The judgement effectively made strikes illegal since employers could recoup the cost of lost business from the unions.

Does not sound to different from the last part of your prescription.

Sweden's finest (and perhaps only) collaborative, leftist e-newspaper Synapze.se

by A swedish kind of death on Thu Aug 1st, 2013 at 01:55:52 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Tories place barriers to Employment Tribunals (none / 1)

National archives: Margaret Thatcher wanted to crush power of trade unions | UK news | The Guardian

The Cabinet papers published under the 30-year rule lay bare the scale of Margaret Thatcher's long-held ambitions to crush the power of Britain's trade unions even before she had won her historic 144-seat majority landslide victory.
The Downing Street papers from 1983 show she told Ferdinand Mount, then head of her policy unit, that she agreed that Norman Tebbit's gradualist approach to trade union reform was too timid and that they should "neglect no opportunity to erode trade union membership".

by In Wales (inwales aaat eurotrib.com) on Thu Aug 1st, 2013 at 05:01:58 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Tories place barriers to Employment Tribunals (4.00 / 3)

You don't necessarily tell your boss about it.

But if (for example) you're a construction worker in the UK, your boss gets weekly reports of who has joined the union.

He'll then find some pretexts to make your life harder.

by Metatone (metatone [a|t] gmail (dot) com) on Thu Aug 1st, 2013 at 03:47:19 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Tories place barriers to Employment Tribunals (none / 1)

Many construction workers are on a temporary contracts, so employers don't have to do much more than not recontracting the worker.

res humà m'és aliè

by Antoni Jaume on Thu Aug 1st, 2013 at 05:24:00 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Tories place barriers to Employment Tribunals (none / 0)

"your boss gets weekly reports of who has joined the union"

Help! Who gives him the reports?

by Katrin on Thu Aug 1st, 2013 at 05:26:52 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Tories place barriers to Employment Tribunals (none / 0)

It's a long and ugly story. Perhaps I'll have time to diary it one day.

by Metatone (metatone [a|t] gmail (dot) com) on Thu Aug 1st, 2013 at 09:12:33 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Tories place barriers to Employment Tribunals (4.00 / 6)

In short - there was a long time government surveillance unit dedicated to monitoring union activity in the construction industry. This came out recently. However, much like the NSA thing, there's circumstantial evidence that the monitoring goes much wider.

by Metatone (metatone [a|t] gmail (dot) com) on Thu Aug 1st, 2013 at 11:14:00 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Tories place barriers to Employment Tribunals (none / 1)

BBC News - Construction industry workers blacklisted for 20 years

The union Unite says it has evidence that the vetting of individuals by name in the building industry is still happening, four years after the discovery of a secret list that denied people work for years.
BBC Panorama reporter Richard Bilton has the first TV interview with the woman who helped run that blacklisting operation.
Howard Nolan did not know he was on the list. As an electrician he spent years working on Britain's biggest building projects, but then the jobs dried up and all he had were his suspicions.

Any idiot can face a crisis - it's day to day living that wears you out.

by ceebs (ceebs (at) eurotrib (dot) com) on Thu Aug 1st, 2013 at 07:13:49 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Tories place barriers to Employment Tribunals (none / 1)

BBC Panorama reporter Richard Bilton has the first TV interview with the woman who helped run that blacklisting operation.

Sounds like an individual in dire need of a bit of moral suasion, from people whose connection to the union cannot be proven to the satisfaction of a court of law.

- Jake

Friends come and go. Enemies accumulate.

by JakeS (JangoSierra 'at' gmail 'dot' com) on Fri Aug 2nd, 2013 at 03:33:52 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Tories place barriers to Employment Tribunals (none / 1)

Then your union needs better cryptography and internal security.

If your legitimate political activity is viewed as sedition, then you need to take appropriate measures to maintain operational security.

- Jake

Friends come and go. Enemies accumulate.

by JakeS (JangoSierra 'at' gmail 'dot' com) on Thu Aug 1st, 2013 at 01:07:02 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Tories place barriers to Employment Tribunals (none / 1)

Agreed.
But as you said, many people don't realise that we're back playing by 19th century rules.

by Metatone (metatone [a|t] gmail (dot) com) on Thu Aug 1st, 2013 at 01:31:43 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Tories place barriers to Employment Tribunals (4.00 / 2)

In the UK the primary motivating factor for people joining a union is because they have been asked to and provided with the forms. That requires a unionised workplace.

Many employers (illegally) actively discourage workers from joining a union and workers can get blacklisted, especially in the construction industry, for union activity or membership.

Construction - blacklisting

In March 2009 the Information Commissioner's Office raided the offices of the Consulting Association and exposed the existence of a blacklist containing the details of 3,213 construction workers. They also found that the blacklist had been used by over 40 UK construction companies.

by In Wales (inwales aaat eurotrib.com) on Thu Aug 1st, 2013 at 03:28:58 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Tories place barriers to Employment Tribunals (none / 1)

So the bad guys have electronic warfare capabilities.

Maybe the unions should get themselves some of that too.

- Jake

Friends come and go. Enemies accumulate.

by JakeS (JangoSierra 'at' gmail 'dot' com) on Thu Aug 1st, 2013 at 03:47:21 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Tories place barriers to Employment Tribunals | 33 comments (33 topical, 0 editorial, 0 hidden)

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