Reply to post: Re: 19th Century England or 21st Century USA?

Tesla fires gigafactory staff after someone made the mistake of mentioning unions

Helcat

Re: 19th Century England or 21st Century USA?

"Incidentally, after the 1980s I thought that unions were effectively illegal in the UK."

No, Unions had their wings clipped to stop them destroying the economy.

What was learned from the Miners strikes in the UK was that if a Union gets too powerful, it demands more and more until the business collapses, which can have a cascade effect on dependent industries. If the Business management is too powerful, they run rough shod over the workforce, reducing productivity and worker cooperation with equally disastrous effects. What is needed is that delicate medium when unions and employers keep each other in check and the work force is able to flourish as the business grows. While that balance remains, you don't hear much about the Unions because they don't have anything to shout about. Rather, they do their business of looking after employee rights, and are fair to the employers should there be a problem and downsizing is needed or there's a troublesome employee.

But a Union that's hostile to the management just causes trouble. This I learned from a former millionaire. He never had much money, and lived modestly: He and his partners drew the same salary as a manager in the company and reinvested profits into the business. This grew the business and hence its value until it was worth millions, hence the owners being millionaires. However, they invested in the people and in the machinery and were working to make the business safer as tech advanced. Then came the strikes and the union wanted the workers to be paid more, more holiday, better benefits, and better facilities. Forget that most of this was already planned and being worked on (new workshop with new machinery being in progress so workers would move in there while the old area was refurbished, for example, and the company paid a decent wage to its workers already) - the Unions called a strike to get what they wanted, and everyone walked out.

Now, the Managers and owners all stopped drawing pay, the owners put their own money into the business to keep it going despite it not producing anything, covering costs and debts and they tried to talk to the Unions, who simply kept adding to their demands, not negotiating on when things would be delivered. End result: An ultimatum. Either the workers returned for ONE WEEK to clear the backlog of orders, or the company would close. The union leaders were delighted! They REFUSED! Next day, the company was shut, and receivers were in, sorting out debts. Employees got nothing.

The Union reps and employees were furious and went to the owners houses to find them moving out as they'd mortgaged their homes to pay workers wages while they were on strike. The owners were bankrupted by the Unions, and every single worker was out of a job WITHOUT redundancy pay. Worse, there were precious few jobs out there due to the various strikes that were happening. Worse still, employers were not about to hire people who had been on strike: Way too risky. So those workers had to find low paid jobs where they would be easy to replace if they made demands and caused trouble.

That former millionaire was only so because of the value of the company he part owned. He didn't have millions to spend on things: It was all invested in the business. He built his wealth back up slowly, and never trusted others after that: He'd been stung once that way and it cost him his marriage. He worked in a paper shop, got promoted to manager, and raised enough money to establish his own shop. He ran it, with his son, and that's how I met him. He was a nice guy, too: Friendly, helpful, but he would not longer give you the shirt from his back because he wanted to keep his trousers, thanks... (and if you don't understand that one: he'd learned that some people, when given help, only go on to demand more). Was some time before I learned of his past, and then only because he'd had a stroke and I'd asked him why he didn't hire someone to look after the shop for a bit. He wouldn't because he'd lost trust in people. After learning about his past, I could understand why.

It's a fine balance, and it's one easily disrupted by greed.

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