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The Forum > Article Comments > We need more, not fewer, strikes > Comments

We need more, not fewer, strikes : Comments

By Chris White, published 1/11/2011

'Reviving the Strike: How Working People Can Regain Power and Transform America': book review

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The right to strike is a right to withdraw one's labour. It is not a right to use violence or threats of violence against anyone else, a right to stop other people working if they want to. There is no need for any policy on it whatsoever, apart from enforcing property rights. Union action cannot raise the wages of all workers; all it does is benefit some workers at the expense of others. Society is not a class war. Government action favouring strikes and unions over and above the law of property, merely creates the kind of chaos that we are now witnessing with Qantas. When it is driven broke, the unions will complain about jobs going offshore!
Posted by Matt L., Tuesday, 1 November 2011 8:29:22 AM
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If this is typical of the union hacks who want to enter politics, then all I can say is "God help us". If you want to drive jobs overseas, then this is the quickest way to do it. When are you people going to get some brains?

David
Posted by VK3AUU, Tuesday, 1 November 2011 8:34:36 AM
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While the faithful are all practicing their craft and beating up he investors who dare to risk their funds .. quietly, the business all moves to places where you can get things done without constant bullying and threats of violence.

It might not be the patriotic thing to do, but hey patriotism comes after family after all. The unions can strike all they want to, in fact, shut everything down .. and show us your awesome power, push all businesses to bankruptcy .. wow, you're so powerful.

In the end that's what today's unionism is all about, self obsessive power of the union movement .. always referring back to the days when unions represented the workers, because now let's face it, they represent the few who lead the unions.

Ask credit card Craig, there's a man who understand the worker's lot.

Our government is now full of former union leaders, who all understand the biffo, the undermining of enemies, the cut and thrust of managing the media to their ends.

So we have a government who is really just an opposition in government, as they only understand how to attack the other mob, no idea what to do in government, or how to govern, it's all about keeping the other one down, beaten.

We never hear our government or it's MPs quite so confidant as when they are attacking the other mob.

So regardless of real goals, the Union movement, it's political wing the ALP, are just cultured attackers and fighters with no other goal in life except to win .. whatever it takes.

We, the Australian public, are the losers as ultimately any of us who disagree, are attacked mercilessly as well.

It's not about country or society, it's all greed and selfish obsessive contests between the powerful union officials.
Posted by rpg, Tuesday, 1 November 2011 11:15:01 AM
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Jobs go off shore for greed, jobs are lost because people do not buy Australian. But someone leaves and another starts up. You want a livable wage, but how much is enough. No matter what someone earns, it is never enough. Joice can-not live on 2 m $. It seems that everybody spends to the limit. So why is everything got political connotations. Maybe there's a little self blame to be absorbed here.
Posted by 579, Tuesday, 1 November 2011 11:37:52 AM
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"someone leaves and another starts up"

Really, that's why America is the powerhouse it always was, NOT!

If you live in this kind of dream world and ignore reality, fine .. good luck to you.

Clearly there are no problems in manufacturing or any other industry, why on earth are the Qantas workers going on strike .. one leaves, another starts up, it's so eeeeasy .. like all those greeeeen jobs that are everywhere.

So when the next international/domestic airline starts up 579, then they can employ all those poorly done by Qantas workers, easy is n't it!

Wow, I had no idea the industrial workplace was so simple .. and I'm an employer and company director .. gosh, if only we had more people like 579 in the boardrooms of industry .. it's so eeeeasy!

No, the reality is that companies move away and that's it, it is over .. replacement companies do not start up .. the parasites who depend on government subsidies, are never around once the subsidies stop.

Not everyone has or wants political connections, you only do it if you have to, the political class are the most abhorrent people to deal with .. it is not attractive to deal with them, they are self absorbed prima donnas.
Posted by rpg, Tuesday, 1 November 2011 12:57:48 PM
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...Unionism was killed-off by contract labour. Job insecurity becomes the primary focus. Traditional conditions of employment once considered an essential element; sick leave, penalty rates for working unsocial hours, holiday pay, hours worked per shift, industrial allowances paid for dangerous conditions, represent a major reason for past strike action. Wages are a separate element and centred more on relativities between types and social importance, of work performed.

...Education is a topic this article does not address.The workforce is structured around qualifications more than in the past, which are a result of the educational phenomena of recent decades. Interesting it is to note, during the current Qantas strike, baggage handlers were profiled by most posters as not deserving of a decent liveable wage, as a comparison to the tertiary educated, when actually, the dispute was primarily between the Aircraft engineers union and the pilots union and Qantas management: The group amongst us jealously guarding their inalienable right to acceptable salaries, while snobbishly decrying labourers a right to strike for wage increases commensurate to inflation and cpi . (A baggage handler is on an hourly wage of approximately $22 to $24 ph + penalty rates,(overtime payments are rare), an average wage for a worker in Australia).

...Workers are too-willing to “pick each other off” as evidenced above, rather than to take a view of solidarity. An exception to low union involvement is the public service. The PS is a highly unionized by comparison, but is flawed in its conservatism towards protest, thus dis-enabled to achieve any outstanding success.

...And finally, Governments use the channel of immigration to assist in the maintenance of low wages; used in tandem with propaganda, and supporting the influx of cheap overseas labour with special application visas, and other social manipulation of immigrants with a propensity to “scab” in the Australian workforce, (Wide comb shearers strike-breaking by NZ shearers)
Posted by diver dan, Tuesday, 1 November 2011 4:01:20 PM
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Will someone please send this bloke a potted history of the British ship building industry. Perhaps the history of the British motor industry would be better.

The unions decided to show them too, remember?

Remember all those great cars we used to drive?

Well there still is a British motor industry, it's the Morgan Motor Company, & it builds 14 cars a week. Just as well the unions got in there & helped, or the rest night still be building 25,000 cars a week, & we wouldn't want that, now would we?
Posted by Hasbeen, Tuesday, 1 November 2011 4:10:27 PM
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What a crude and inefficient method strikes are - if you want results, just kidnap the boss's child from kindy and all your demands will be met in no time and without hurting the innocent customers.
Posted by Yuyutsu, Tuesday, 1 November 2011 5:48:53 PM
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And when the boss is gay, what happens then Yuyutsu?
Posted by Bugsy, Tuesday, 1 November 2011 5:54:05 PM
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"And when the boss is gay, what happens then Yuyutsu?"

- Well, there are still nephews and nieces!

OK, that's enough for now, I will not divulge any more trade secrets for free...
Posted by Yuyutsu, Tuesday, 1 November 2011 5:57:34 PM
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Bugsy, your incorrigible.
Posted by Hasbeen, Tuesday, 1 November 2011 7:58:05 PM
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…Australians have lost the will to protest. A lazy tendency to step aside from legitimate confrontation in the workplace, exhibits as a symptom of a social malaise, further played-out with our inability to protest political railroading of our rights as citizens, a control we should have in our day to day lives, as individuals in the greater society in which we live.

… With the decommissioning of the will to protest, offered as reward for subservience in the non-unionised workforce, the power surrendered becomes the property of Government. The achievement of Government capture, is further reinforced by such initiatives as disarming society,(Howards Gun Buy-back scheme) under the disguise of the lie that decrease in gun ownership will lead to an increased in the personal safety of its citizens. (The ever increasing incidence of drive-by shootings in Sydney and Melbourne attest to the lie).

…When the common voice of reason posits an agreement that jobs should be the property of cheap labour enclaves in Asia, and the fault lies with guilty and greedy factory workers demanding higher wages as the cause, then the cry is “down with the workers” by the workers! All appears to be lost in the industrial front! So…Goodbye Qantas
Posted by diver dan, Tuesday, 1 November 2011 8:51:50 PM
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And what happens when we print household goods on our 3D printers (designed anywhere in the world and downloaded), and when machines replace most unskilled labour?
Can we *really* provide a living wage by creating "financial services" jobs and giving each other haircuts?
Selling labour to live may not be too viable if our technology continues on it's current trajectory.
Sound unlikely? Have a look at how many labourers it currently takes to feed, clothe and educate 100 humans now compared to 50 years ago. We are facing a crisis where distribution of wealth from Capital to Labour is getting more and more tenuous and less easily justified. How can we tell the worker bludgers from the boss bludgers? The current approach is to pick a side then pummel away at the enemy...not sure if this will lead to a solution!
Posted by Ozandy, Thursday, 3 November 2011 9:14:48 AM
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These arguments always come up when consumer confidence is down, everyone is watching expenditure, and business is lost at what to do about it. There has got to be a particular case going on with qantas. It is The whole body of qantas that is not happy. Let it go to an umpire to sort it out, Joice has elected to sit on his hands, and hope it all goes away. All at a time when there is no confidence in consumerism.
Posted by 579, Thursday, 3 November 2011 10:13:43 AM
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If I had any money in Qantas I'd be getting it out real quick like.

Can anyone help? I'm looking for a Qantas sign to hang on the wall beside the Ansett Airlines one another company killed by it's wage structure. Please when Qantas go, don't flood the airwaves with images of unemployed air hostesses crying over the thing they killed, its sickening.

Always did like lost causes, that's perhaps one reason I drive a Triumph TR7. Many of you won't remember Triumph motorcars. Triumph was just another of those companies killed off by the unions, 30 years ago.
Posted by Hasbeen, Thursday, 3 November 2011 10:58:15 AM
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