A really wise strategy for failing businesses - merge
The TUC is attempting some rather feeble spinning on falling union membership - "Today's relatively small fall in the number of union members is actually a union success story". Not that it deigns to say what the figures are, naturally. Until such time as I can avail myself of the figures, I suppose England's cricketing performance in the World Cup, the current inflation figures and Labour's poll ratings also count as 'success stories'.
In a not wholly unconnected event, Amicus and the T&G reckon that hooking up two spavined donkeys is not enough to keep them busy, and have concocted an, erm, interesting and well thought out scheme to merge with the United Steel Workers of America. Before considering the implications of that, it is richly comic that this news is all over the US news sites, but seems to have scarcely registered here. The Grauniad covers it, care of its Westminster correspondent - whatever happened to moustachioed labour correspondents in shapeless brown jackets, a perennial delight of the 1970s?
Supposedly this is to "create an international trade union that would be able to deal with multi national companies on an equal footing". Given the law on secondary action, I cannot see that the Tribunes of the Proletariat either side of the Pond are going to be much use to each other, and if the prospective organisation is intent on international pay scales, they really have lost it completely. Companies that can look forward to dealing with this diplodocus include Alcoa Inc., Rexam Beverage Can North America Co. and Georgia-Pacific. Source.
Showing his customary grasp of economics, one time Communist Party of Britain member and Trekkie, Derek Simpson of Amicus reckons "Multi national companies are pushing down wages and conditions for workers the world over by playing one national workforce off against another. The only beneficiaries of globalisation are the exploiters of working people and the only way working people can resist this is to band together". Sounds like his bedtime reading is Engels under the influence of spiked cocoa.
In a not wholly unconnected event, Amicus and the T&G reckon that hooking up two spavined donkeys is not enough to keep them busy, and have concocted an, erm, interesting and well thought out scheme to merge with the United Steel Workers of America. Before considering the implications of that, it is richly comic that this news is all over the US news sites, but seems to have scarcely registered here. The Grauniad covers it, care of its Westminster correspondent - whatever happened to moustachioed labour correspondents in shapeless brown jackets, a perennial delight of the 1970s?
Supposedly this is to "create an international trade union that would be able to deal with multi national companies on an equal footing". Given the law on secondary action, I cannot see that the Tribunes of the Proletariat either side of the Pond are going to be much use to each other, and if the prospective organisation is intent on international pay scales, they really have lost it completely. Companies that can look forward to dealing with this diplodocus include Alcoa Inc., Rexam Beverage Can North America Co. and Georgia-Pacific. Source.
Showing his customary grasp of economics, one time Communist Party of Britain member and Trekkie, Derek Simpson of Amicus reckons "Multi national companies are pushing down wages and conditions for workers the world over by playing one national workforce off against another. The only beneficiaries of globalisation are the exploiters of working people and the only way working people can resist this is to band together". Sounds like his bedtime reading is Engels under the influence of spiked cocoa.
Labels: Unions
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on Thursday, April 19, 2007 at 11:21 am.
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Talking of Commos, what is odd about the Morning Star is that it opposes globalisation while loudly supporting unlimited immigration.
# You'll be glad to hear that le camarade Besancenot feels himself "more revolutionary than ever." What an *ssh*l*.
An odd lot, our 'revolutionary' chums, aren't they?
I'm pretty odd meself. When I read L'Etranger, I took it as a case study of a conformist.
Croydon library, Friday 20th.
And what a fine book that is too.
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