Jobcentre staff are not robots or battery hens

I don't always agree with unions when they declare a strike. However I believe Jobcentre call centre staff are quite right to kick up a fuss about being monitored so closely.

It's wrong to monitor staff in the way done by job centre management. For example recording how long and often you go to the toilet and how long your call takes when not all calls are simple to deal with. Staff are dealing with people that may have complicated queries and require emotional assistance for there stressful situation of being out of work and needing a job. So the targets set do not allow for the human needs of both customer and provider. People are not battery hens or robots.

Link here to the story at the BBC, which interestingly doesn't appear to cover the real problem which is not having targets in themselves but what those targets are and how unrealistic they are.

TUC approves co-ordinated strikes

I'm not so sure co-ordinated strikes are really going to help protect jobs during cuts? This move will split the country and could build a concenus against the unions. I would prefer the union to offer other ideas to the coalition such as detail on where taxes could be increased and on what could be cut.

Lets not go back to the old days of industrial action. We need to change the economy so that we are not reliant on public sector jobs but have our own industrial and services base. We need to redirect funds to change our economy so we are not reliant on public spending to keep the wheels turning. It is a false economy.

I also wonder why the unions did not support Labour more before the general election. The unions were involved in industrial action that hurt the Labour government and yet they did not defend Labour policy until after they lost the election.

Can the right to strike be scrapped?

Ollie Crowmwell who is an independant Conservative blogger who posts at The Reg Rag has written an excellent article called 'It is time to scrap the right to strike and restore the right to manage'. This is in light of the recent British Airways strike and a possible railway signal workers strike.

Ollie Crowmwell opens with;

'Much has been said about the right to strike, some even saying "it is a fundamental human right" without which workers would be little more than serfs or slaves. This is errant nonsense. Of course any individual worker has the absolute right to withdraw his labour, nobody is forced to work for anybody in this country, any worker who does not like the terms and conditions of his or her employer may give notice and having fulfilled their contractual notice period are completely free to work elsewhere.'

After making his case he concludes;

'Unions cannot have it both ways, they claim to demand the right to strike to ‘protect the workers’ from management imposed changes to terms and conditions but in most cases they seek to use it to force management into changing terms and conditions in their favour. Employment law protects the workers, unions do not, they are often led by politically motivated socialists who in many cases do not even believe in the right of the company to exist and would seek to see it in state hands.

The right to manage should be absolute and belong to the owners of the business or their delegates.'

I do understand why he believes the market can decide and I also believe that this is a liberal point of view. Workers would still have the right to work to rule.

I also believe that its not a good idea for British Airways to have a strike at this time see On the twelfth day of Christmas Strikes. I would also add that British Airways do offer great terms for their employees but their management does seem to be detached from it employees and that appears to be the main problem. Members of staff won't talk about the BA problems on television because they fear for the repercussions on them, this demostrates that there are other fundamental problems. British Airways are also well know for spending money not just on staff but also inefficiently on the whole structure of the organisation and management.

However I also agree that this is now a right of workers to join a union and remove there labour on mass for the right reasons. Perhaps if a business is making a loss for example then this right could be held and only used if business are making a profit?

But I don't think it is now possible to remove the right to strike. If a government tried to remove this right then they would have industrial action on a scale worse than the miners strike or the strikes in the states during the great depression. Workers who are members of unions would strike against this law before it was introduced and afterwards whether its against the law or not. There would be riots in the streets.

It would be against the law for unions to do this as its not related to action by the employer over employee but the people would fight this on their own backs. Unions wouldn't have to call for action but the members of those unions could organise it independently. This could have the surprising effect of causing a new rise of the Left.

So for those reasons I would not scrap the right to strike.


Todays link is Constantly Furious who swears alot and is very angry about many subjects in this world but he is also very entertaining and not scared of any subject. According to his Political Spectrum Quiz results he is a Far-Right Social Libertarian, figure that out.

On the twelfth day of Christmas Strikes

On the twelfth day of Christmas,
my true love sent to me,
Twelve Strikers Picketing,
Eleven customers waiting,
Ten lords aren’t flying,
Nine ladies not on dancing holidays,
Eight maids not going home for Christmas,
Seven continents without BA,
Six geese are the only ones flying,
Five golden wings,
Forty two Thousand BA workers striking,
Three French airlines laughing,
Two hundred and ninety two loss,
And a partridge in a Unite union!

Unite are planning twelfth days of strikes. I understand that its because BA are planning a cabin crew reduction which will result in contractual changes, extended working hours and reduced wages for new starters.

Problem is British Airways are fighting for their survival. After years of making profits they are now making a loss of £292m for the first part of the financial year.

It also appears that the union question of simply asking for a strike but not specifying any options on the length of a strike could lead to legal action by British Airways.

What is Unite thinking off here? I’m no fan of low cost carriers myself, as I don’t like being treated like cattle but BA does need to make cuts to survive. How on earth is 12 days of strikes during Christmas a good idea? Are they not concerned that their members may not have a company to work for in the future?

Did someone in the Unite offices think that choosing twelfth days was somehow Christmassy?
If this strike black mail does go ahead then I will feel very sorry for all those planned Christmas get a ways. I will also feel sorry for the possible future loss of our national carrier. Well-done Unite judging from what I have heard on BBC Five Live this morning, I think you have managed to get the British public to unite against you.