The difference is Barber and his ilk are spouting about how employers should pay their workers - they have no experience of running a commercial business and the financial and commercial pressures involved. Not sure many MD are suggesting how Barber can run the TUC?

No. But your comments imply that unions are never effective etc.



Let's look at what you yourself said:







Not 'some unions' or even 'X % of unions', but "unions". In other words, all of them.







Nobody has, that I can see. But you have suggested that unions never act well or beneficially.



You also said:







So "unions" (general comment again) need to "clean up their act" before management will talk to them.



It's not me, but you that are, in the language that you yourself have used, suggested that unions per se are never in the right.







And see my – and Coddy's – point about media coverage/spin.



Gilchrist hasn't been the general secretary of the FBU for seven years. Do you know who the current general secretary is – and what his political position is?



This is not meant as a silly question. The point is, if you don't know, is that because the media that you have seen in that time hasn't found anything negative to report about him or the union? Matt Wrack defeated Gilchrist in an election for the post in 2005. He stood again at the end of his term in in 2010, facing opposition, and won again. So presumably the people who pay his wages are happy with the service he provides them – or at least did not consider his opponent a better candidate.



You know, Robinson, that I have criticised the likes of Bob Crow on this forum before. But there is a perfectly good argument that Crow remains in the job because his employers are happy with his work.



But the point remains that, while you (and this is certainly not unique to you) can easily name a trade union leader that you dislike, where do you hear the positive stories?

Well indeedy.



Companies automatically pay their employees a proper, decent rate for the job and nobody ever needs to exert pressure on an employer for a pay rise, because employers are ultimately the best-natured, most generous people on planet Earth.



They would never, for instance, not pay a decent wage to an employee even when making big bucks and paying their top managers big bucks – oh no sirree.



And there is absolutely no connection between what wages employees are paid and the health of the nation's economy as a whole, thus meaning that each and every business operate entirely in a vacuum and it is of no interest or business of anyone outside that company how much they can get away with not paying.



And of course, no business ever, ever tells the government of the day how to run the entire country for their benefit alone, do they?



BTW, how's your own wage claim going, Sal: y'know – in "the real world"?

My own experience of unions showed both sides of the argument. I worked in the Border and Immigration Agency for 12 months before starting my grad career with a major corporate 5 years ago.



During the 12 months in the BIA there were a number of strikes, some of which were very petty regarding things like forcing certain frontline staff to wear a uniform. Some of the union reps relished the chance to take issue at everything and anything, and got a real buzz out of striking and threatening to strike. Many of these reps actually caused resentment amongst other staff who just wanted to get on with an honest days work, as they would spend all day preoccupying themselves with often trivial union business at the expense of doing any real work.



Conversely, it is certainly fair to say that the unions did provide a voice to stand up to some of the government's pension reforms which might otherwise have been enacted unchallenged.



My own view at the time was that the BIA staff I worked with had very generous salary, holiday and pension entitlements, particularly in relation to the fact that we didn't work particularly hard, did not work under any arduous conditions and had very little job stress. As a result, I thought the union's were not particularly relevant - nobody could be exploited for minimum wage in dangerous working conditions, and we were all free to move and get another job somewhere if we didnt like what we were being paid.



In my view unions have a place, particularly amongst large, low-skilled, low paid employers, but there are too many examples of unnecessary union involvement causing more problems than they solve.

[url=http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-19806014You mean like Scargill?[/urlOdious little man that still wants to keep leaning left whilst someone else pays his bills.

Hang on, you are not getting away with that. You are changing the goal posts here. You never said anything about the factories being in different industries and nothing about loss making plants. You simply said they wanted to close one of three factories that had with different levels of unionization. If you want to bring loss making factories into it they would close the least profitable and would be mad to do otherwise. It would be very convenient for them though if that happened to be the non-unionized plant.







I am not sure of the point of this statement but most of the people leading the exploitation of the majority of public sector workers are the minority in the pubic sector at the top. Wages aren't the only way employees are exploited. In Cheshire they brought in something called "single status" which meant people from differing boroughs that ended up in the new Chester and Cheshire West council were all working under the same conditions. As you can probably guess the new conditions were always based on the lowest common denominator. I don't think there was one instance where someones terms and conditions were improved. In other local authorities such moves to "single status" have been done much more fairly. Is that because of better union representation in those authorities? I don't know but I doubt it happened because the authorities were feeling altruistic.







What you say there has nothing to do with the point I made. If you think the only reason an employer would sack someone if they had free reign to hire and fire at will is due to the "supply and demand of labour" you are incredibly naive. My point was about unscrupulous employers not ones who wish to respond to changes in the market.







Barber and any other Union lead is quite entitled to do this whether they have industry experience or not. Remember the tanker driver dispute? I have no idea if Len McCluskey of Unite has ever driven a tanker or worked in the Petrochemical industry but I can't see how the fact he probably hasn't should have excluded him and his union from representing the tanker drivers. Unite did a pretty good job of protecting the tanker drivers from increased casualisation of the job. A big reason they managed to do this was in part down to that supply and demand thing you are so fond of too.



In any case the idea union leaders are ignorant of the economics and state of the industries the workers they represent work in isn't a very credible opinion anyway in my opinion. They probably know more about it than some of the management!

I believe a large number who sit in offices at places called names like "county hall" are exactly that. Not saying doctors are nor certain others, but in my opinion many back office people and a huge proportion of social workers are.

Some people "believe" that there's a big man in the sky who sent his own son (also himself) down to Earth to be born to a virgin, be executed and then rise from the dead a few days later and from there, rise to heaven to join his father/himself and create a triumvirate.



That does not mean there is. Single, solitary shred of evidence for that belief.

How much evidence of public sector waste would you like, I've got about 15 years worth.

You have 15 years worth of evidence of public sector employees being lazy, overpaid and underworking?

Go on then.

Where do you want me to start, Repairs operatives managing an average of 2 jobs a day, when I'd finished 4 of them had been moved on and the rest were averageing 8 jobs a day, or maybe rent and arrears staff in a team in Glasgow, running at roughly 17% of the HRA roll on arrears, after 12 months (and 7 sackings) the remaining staff were working at less than 7% with less than 1% of arrears cases owing more than 3 weeks rent.



What experience do you have to the contrary?

8 years working in the NHS with staff that have generally been underpaid, under-rewarded, under-resourced and under valued.



You also appear to be saying that the problems you experienced were fixed and staff became more efficient pretty quickly. Is this really your 15 years worth of evidence that public sector workers are lazy, overpaid and underworked?