// Blog
Don’t Lose Our Heads…
Was watching the classic “Carry On Don’t Lose Your Head” last night with an - ahem - gentleman caller, when part of the script caught my attention.
Robespierre: So - it seems the English have struck again!
Camembert: Well, they say that’s what the English are good at: striking!
(Or something along those lines.)
It just struck me that something which was probably quite a solid piece of satire for its time seems to have become rather more apposite again. What with Tube Strikes, Postal Strikes and now BBC staff threatening to do the same there was a certain resonance to those lines I hadn’t felt before.
I’ll nail my colours to the mast here: I don’t like strikes. It’s essentially emotional blackmail and does strike me as being remarkably counter-productive. In the case of BBC staff, there’s a £2billion pound shortfall of revenue - do they really think that forcing the BBC not to make redundancies will help? And in the case of the postal workers it does seem largely to be a “we’ve been getting away with all sorts of dodgy or just extremely lucrative practices for years and you’re trying to clamp down - how dare you” type thing.
In both cases you have companies struggling to adapt to a changing world of work where greater flexibility and leaner processes are the only way to stop them going under. I can’t see how striking and essentially making your employer cripple itself is a victory for anyone, because at some point they’ll just go under sure as night follows day (and vice versa).
Not that I think in either case some savings couldn’t be found elsewhere, but at some point people would have to go and inconveniencing the many for the benefit of the few is something that in this day and age the general public seems to find less sympathy for than it would have done in the sixties.
But there we are. As ever, time will tell. It always does.
Posted on October 19, 2007 | Filed Under The World we Live In
Comments
Response left by Jon Deane on October 19th, 2007
Despite being a union man I tend to agree with you about strikes. It has to be said it’s not emotional blackmail, it is blackmail. That said it’s not unethical. It has been an effective way of demonstrating that employees should not merely be entitled to existence but should receive appropriate recompense for their work and reasonable conditions to work under. The downside is that there are some who would hijack those aims for their own ends. Bob Crowe and his ilk being a case in point.
Unfortunately the Post Office requires reform as the nature of communication changes. The previous terms and conditions most of us can only dream of and many of us would not want as we can see they’re plainly eccessive. However some areas are clearly over managed and have introduced ways in which the new managers are paid disproportionaly more than the people who actually do the work.
We, for example, are having a number of changes imposed upon us by people who believe they should be exempt from such impostions themselves.
MP’s are to get 4 additional days leave next year.
They have protected pensions which allow them to retire earlier than public sector workers with a much better pay level.
They take higher than inflation pay rises.
They are also employed by us. And yet we don’t get to limit their pay increases.
If they really felt so strongly about these issues they would ensure that they set an example rather than ‘we deserve this but you probably don’t so you won’t get it’.
Hence, huge frustration from people and strikes. Unless it’s Bob Crowe and then a sunny day is all the reason you need.
Response left by Pandemonia on October 19th, 2007
Darn - should’ve spell checked it before posting!
Response left by Pandemonia on October 19th, 2007
Got something to say?
Of course, the idea of the French mocking the English propensity for striking is … ironic, to say the least.