2005 - lowest strike days for 200 years
Feb 18 2006 09:29
http://business.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,8210-2043766,00.html
Quote:
Analysis
The Times February 17, 2006
Britain has bloomed by striking out its winters of industrial discontent
Graham Searjeant, Financial Editor
FEWER working days were lost through industrial disputes in 2005 than in any year since records began nearly 200 years ago.
Feb 18 2006 11:03
#2
Yeah not really surprising. Shit though.
It's be good to see stats on sick days - I bet they've risen a lot!
Feb 18 2006 11:07
#3
Its funny that he blames strikes for lowering productivity, when we had virtually full employment and a stronger (relatively) economy in the old days.
He also blames the strikes for loss of production yet admits that the miners' strike was engineered by the government.
I reckon the boy used to have some principles before he worked for the times
Feb 20 2006 08:16
#4
ok, maybe not the biggest culprit, but i also blame these stupid one day strikes which are a product of the good relationship between union leadership and the management, and strike as a tactic has been reduced to this symbolic act which doesn't really want to disrupt production (because it is apparently in our interests not to do so).
sorry, had to vent, we may be coming up to another one day strike soon, and it's bollocks! Just means we all do 5 days work in 4 on that week, lol!
Feb 20 2006 09:38
#5
I see exactly what you mean JDMF. And because they don't pay you for the strike day you give them the work for free too. Hardly anyone seems to strike until they get what they want. They just carry out these tokenistic and pointless acts.
I worked for a public Sector organisation and the union held a three day strike for a pay rise. The raise won by the strike was a fair bit less than the wages lost on the strike, as it was a public sector organisation which didn't lose money by not producing they actually made a profit on the deal 
Not that I'm a firebrand in the workplace or anything.
Feb 20 2006 13:26
#6
aye, thats exactly right. Though the good thing in the last two day strike we had here was that management didn't deduct any pay for it.
They did try though and sent an email around which asked workers to notify payroll if they have been on strike so they can deduct two days pay! Of course no one did, lol!
Anyways, this pisses me off because one day strike lets off a lot of steam and allows the union to do militant posturing without any real impact on the business. Perhaps in other industries like retail, transport, heavy industry etc one day strikes can be effective, but not in education. I know in finland the paper factory workers did sometimes just couple hour strikes because just winding down the paper machines cost the company about £150 000!
Feb 20 2006 13:53
#7
Hi
Quote:
Though the good thing in the last two day strike we had here was that management didn't deduct any pay for it.
The money was already in the bank thanks to the hard working tax payer, who'll be forking out for child care on top whilst you’re on strike. Thanks a lot for that comrade. (I am sort of joking).
Quote:
I know in finland the paper factory workers did sometimes just couple hour strikes because just winding down the paper machines cost the company about £150 000!
Ho ho. You wait, it won’t just be Nokia who’ll be offshoring their facilities. I understand a lot of Finnish businesses are looking to Eastern Europe as a means of combating the job security enjoyed by the Finns under their “protectionist” government.
Love
LR
Feb 20 2006 14:06
#8
Lazy Riser wrote:
(I am sort of joking).
only sort of?
Quote:
Ho ho. You wait, it won’t just be Nokia who’ll be offshoring their facilities.
they actually have offshored very little, its been the expansion which has taken place in cheap labour countries, there hasn't been any significant reduction in Finland. Some yes, but not as much as one would think.
besides, its only the crap jobs which go, the R&D is still firmly in finland. And Nokia is finnish, they wouldn't betray their fatherland would they?
Quote:
I understand a lot of Finnish businesses are looking to Eastern Europe as a means of combating the job security enjoyed by the Finns under their “protectionist” government.
sure. manufacturing jobs have gone and a lot of the expansion of the finnish industry takes place in eastern europe rather than in finland.
While finland may have tons better social security, job security, workplace rights, holidays, working times etc than in UK, funny enough the productivity is still higher than here. And capitalists are not ideological, if the productivity is good, they don't care if you have 100 paid holidays a year (until there is a place where productivity is equally high but with 99 paid holidays).
This goes a long way explaining why there hasn't been such dramatic job offshoring than in other countries.
one more comment (this is turning to an essay): finnish trade union movement started already back in about 1990 to work closely and financiually supporting eastern european labour movement because it was understood (at least by many union activists) that the best way to protect the privileges of the finnish workers is to make the labour movement strong in eastern european countries to balance out the huge differences in labour cost.
Feb 20 2006 14:36
#9
JDMF wrote:
sorry, had to vent, we may be coming up to another one day strike soon, and it's bollocks! Just means we all do 5 days work in 4 on that week, lol!
here we go, just got this message!
Quote:
Dear Member,
Following last week's vote for industrial action, AUT and NATFHE have now agreed to ask their members to take strike action on 7th March, with action short of a strike beginning the following day on 8 March and continuing until further notice. This follows the lack of a positive response on pay by UCEA following the announcement of AUT and NATFHE ballot results.
Feb 20 2006 15:25
#10
Hi
Quote:
And capitalists are not ideological, if the productivity is good, they don't care if you have 100 paid holidays a year (until there is a place where productivity is equally high but with 99 paid holidays).
There is an internal contradiction here. Wanting to reduce holidays is ideological. Finnish social policy is geared towards reducing income differentials and protection of local wealth creating industry, this accounts for the “enlightened” approach.
Why don’t the Germans and the French (not to mention the UK) adopt the same policy? Not something to do with U.S. economic support given Finland’s strategic position versus the USSR in the cold war was it?
And whilst we’re at it, doesn’t Finland’s economic success and “workers paradise” validate afraser’s Market Socialist economic model? Ho ho, you’re on thin ice now and no mistake.
And finally, if it’s so good, why don’t you go back there? (This is definitely a joke).
Love
LR
Feb 20 2006 15:32
#11
Lazy Riser wrote:
There is an internal contradiction here. Wanting to reduce holidays is ideological.
of course it is, you missed my point: as long as finlands productivity is higher than UK's, no matter how many paid holidays the finnish workers get, capitalists will prefer finnish workers.
Quote:
Not something to do with U.S. economic support given Finland’s strategic position versus the USSR in the cold war was it?
finland was one of the only countries not receiving a penny from US, and in fact had to pay compensation to USSR for the war costs.
Quote:
And whilst we’re at it, doesn’t Finland’s economic success and “workers paradise” validate afraser’s Market Socialist economic model? Ho ho, you’re on thin ice now and no mistake.
i dont have any idea what you are on about here.
Quote:
And finally, if it’s so good, why don’t you go back there? (This is definitely a joke).
but i'll answer it anyway 
Its not "so good", its a capitalist country with some nice social democracy, kind of like being fucked with vaseline rather than without - has its benefits, but still far away from anarchist communism
But i do prefer any small inceremental improvements in the conditions of workers i just can get, so in that sense finland is miles better than UK.
Feb 20 2006 16:53
#12
Hi
Quote:
finland was one of the only countries not receiving a penny from US
No loans to repay under the Marshal Plan, then. That explains it. I understand the Russian war reparations were less than the amounts repaid under the plan…
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marshall_Plan
Oh look. The ones that got the biggest loans (UK, France, West Germany) are the spearhead of neo-liberalism. I tell you, the fiscal policy landmarks that came home to roost in the mid seventies have their root in the Marshall Plan. 22% hike in gas prices, working class job insecurity, Franco-German unemployment and benefits levels, look no further.
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i dont have any idea what you are on about here.
How convenient for you. Do you need an afraser 101?
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finland is miles better than UK.
I’ve heard they have a problem with suicide, alcoholism and unemployment.
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as long as finlands productivity is higher than UK's, no matter how many paid holidays the finnish workers get, capitalists will prefer finnish workers
Finnish capitalists seem to, what big US companies own plants in Finland? (There are only about 150 with Finnish assets). I think you’ll find that the bourgeoisie are happy to forgo productivity for the sake of maintaining social control. Capitalism is an economic system of forced scarcity, not productivity or abundance.
Love
LR
Feb 20 2006 16:57
#13
JDMF wrote:
JDMF wrote:
sorry, had to vent, we may be coming up to another one day strike soon, and it's bollocks! Just means we all do 5 days work in 4 on that week, lol!here we go, just got this message!
Quote:
Dear Member,
Following last week's vote for industrial action, AUT and NATFHE have now agreed to ask their members to take strike action on 7th March, with action short of a strike beginning the following day on 8 March and continuing until further notice. This follows the lack of a positive response on pay by UCEA following the announcement of AUT and NATFHE ballot results.
You fancy doing a report for news?
Feb 20 2006 18:38
#14
Catch wrote:
JDMF wrote:
JDMF wrote:
sorry, had to vent, we may be coming up to another one day strike soon, and it's bollocks! Just means we all do 5 days work in 4 on that week, lol!here we go, just got this message!
Quote:
Dear Member,
Following last week's vote for industrial action, AUT and NATFHE have now agreed to ask their members to take strike action on 7th March, with action short of a strike beginning the following day on 8 March and continuing until further notice. This follows the lack of a positive response on pay by UCEA following the announcement of AUT and NATFHE ballot results.
You fancy doing a report for news?
dont look at me, i only work here!
if things go further i could do something. Watch this space.
Feb 20 2006 18:43
#15
Lazy Riser wrote:
Quote:
finland is miles better than UK.I’ve heard they have a problem with suicide, alcoholism and unemployment.
unemployment is high, but i would rather be unemployed in finland, than work in tesco checkout here. Things such as social benefits, free childcare etc make it better for the low paid workers in finland than here. I mean my mom was a single parent raising two kids and she works in the supermarket in the vegetable section. I've done the maths on how fucked we would have been in UK with similar income...
Anyways, like i said, i am not trying to portray finland as anything it isn't, but the reformist social democratic changes do arguably come with clear benefits to the working class, thats the only reason why working class fought so damn hard to get them.
Quote:
Finnish capitalists seem to, what big US companies own plants in Finland?
you are forgetting the economics of the location and scale. It is only a nation of 5 million people, tucked away behind nordic sea with only russia as a proper neighbour (with sweden and norway as neighbours in the north), so large scale investments will not come.
Though you could really say that Nokia is american company, i believe over 80% of the shares are owned by US holding companies.
Feb 20 2006 20:23
#16
Hi
Quote:
unemployment is high, but i would rather be unemployed in finland, than work in tesco checkout here.
Agreed. But as OECD and Euroland members are they not doomed to financial crisis if they keep benefits up to present levels?
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you are forgetting the economics of the location and scale
A bit presumptuous of you comrade, if you don’t mind me saying. It was you who suggested that capitalists prefer Finnish workers. Regardless, the decisions of the bourgeoisie are not made for the sake of productivity, but to maintain their social status. They’ll cripple their own firms, and regularly do, to further their position in the hierarchy.
Quote:
the miners' strike was engineered by the government
Precisely. As was the shunting of redundant workers onto incapacity benefit.
Love
LR
Feb 20 2006 20:57
#17
Lazy Riser wrote:
Agreed. But as OECD and Euroland members are they not doomed to financial crisis if they keep benefits up to present levels?
depends on who is doing the maths. The OECD guys have said the same from 80's onwards, and the crisis hasn't totally materialised (almost did in the 90's crash).
Quote:
A bit presumptuous of you comrade, if you don’t mind me saying. It was you who suggested that capitalists prefer Finnish workers.
it was a comment on your suggestion that there has been offshoring of jobs, which there of course has been, but the high prodictivity has meant that there hasn't been as many as one would have thought on the superficial look at the "labour costs" and workers situation in comparison to eastern europe.
so: while transnational capital probably doesn't rate finland very high, the local capitalists seem not to have been in a hurry to move the capital out of the country to cheaper locations.
Am i not making any sense here?
Feb 20 2006 21:50
#18
Hi
Quote:
so: while transnational capital probably doesn't rate finland very high, the local capitalists seem not to have been in a hurry to move the capital out of the country to cheaper locations.
Precisely. They maintain their working class’s incomes in order to provide themselves with a domestic market to service. The Americans have also recently discovered that if you offshore production then you offshore the incomes required to buy all this stuff in the first place. Hence the U.S.’s new energy self-sufficiency drive (despite the continuing mystifying leftist position that Iraq represented a war for oil).
Finland’s entry into the Euro is bound to push up prices versus wages and enforced European deregulation of international markets will hit the Finnish working class after softening them up with a consumer boom.
As for Britain, there are signs that the government is resisting some sector’s attempts to ramp up industrial development effort. I’m not sure if the message has finally sunk in, but I think something may come out of the gas price rises to bring reindustrialisation (in some form another) back on the agenda.
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Am i not making any sense here?
You are now.
All over Europe, the more liveable the level of benefit, the higher the unemployment. Industry can’t find the demand to justify releasing money as wages, leaving the public sector to find work for idle hands.
With firms desperate to raise prices, central banks desperate to control them and a bourgeoisie clinging to 80% of the total money, the treadmill of debt slavery is accepted as a prerequisite for making ends meet.
Jobs have become things created to feed money into a market, to be spent servicing the “debt” owed to the elite by the working class. A clockwork engine of grey consumption and useless activity, all for the sake of public school educations, a family retreat in the country, a yuppie flat in Bristol, lifestyles of the rich and famous.
It’s no wonder the traditional strike model, as conventionally constituted and endlessly repeated, plays to the hand of the bourgeoisie.
Raoul Vaneigem wrote:
The old idea of a general strike that would overthrow capitalism and lead to a revolution has never been proposed with either conviction or pertinence……The point is, strikes were never revolutionary at a period where they could have been.
Love
LR
Feb 20 2006 22:40
#19
Lazy Riser wrote:
Hence the U.S.’s new energy self-sufficiency drive (despite the continuing mystifying leftist position that Iraq represented a war for oil).
If it wasn't fought for oil there seems little else to explain it.
The self-sufficiency drive is moe recent and seems to be a response to the utter inability to control oil prices. Don't forget the insane attachment americans have to their cars and their absolute hatred of petrol price rises.
Lazy putting production off-shore and importing energy are not the same thing and you know that. It's the industry that is important, some materials (or energy) will always need to be imported.
Feb 20 2006 23:35
#20
Hi
Quote:
If it wasn't fought for oil there seems little else to explain it.
Why has the price of oil increased then? Where is all this cheap oil? The U.N., let alone the U.S.’s international competitors, aren’t going to let the U.S. sequester the oil. The war was developed for its own sake, it is an inevitable consequence of the actions of rival bourgeois factions.
This war, much like any other, serves to distract the public from crisis at home and to fuel domestic economies by printing dollars, sterling, yen and euro for Iraq to spend on rebuilding via occupying contractors.
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The self-sufficiency drive is moe recent and seems to be a response to the utter inability to control oil prices
No one’s been able to control oil prices since 1973. I expect this move was planned some time around the first gulf war.
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Lazy putting production off-shore and importing energy are not the same thing and you know that.
They are but two prongs on the same fork.
Love
LR
Feb 21 2006 00:01
#21
The oil price has risen because they have failed, hence the need for self-sufficiency. Personally I think Saddam selling oil in Euros was part of it.
Buying in resources is normal, taking control of the site of those resources was pretty standard. Oil is simply too important, most of western production can be held to ransom using oil. Traditionally imperial economies have not been able to offshore production to the extent that they now can.
Feb 21 2006 00:01
#22
Or so that stupid article on Indymedia said.
Feb 21 2006 00:05
#23
Lazy Riser is in thrall to those guys. Maybe he's friends with MI5 too? 
There's been some rumblings about strikes at my new job.
But it is still public sector.