Inflation and Strikes

[nickr]

Dec 23, 2022 10:18:30 GMT mick said:

Thanks for your response. Food for thought.

I intend this to be my last post in this thread!

1. It's very tough to have this discussion and keep it apolitical. It's also very tough to avoid answers being swayed by very deserving cases.

2. Sorry for using the term 'God Given' - I really wasn't trying to bring religion into it!!

3. I don't know enough history to argue with your point about the longevity of societies. However my (extremely sketchy) knowledge of the Roman Empire seems to contradict your statement. Am I wrong?

4. I understand, but don't fully agree with, your point about Sunak and his riches. After all we don't expect a doctor to have suffered from all the diseases that he/she has to treat.  There's a separate point too. Is it possible, in this country, for a truly poor person to become PM - it isn't in the USA.

5. A topic such as this is complex and, for me at least, it's just not possible to write every nuance, exception and possibility. Therefore, it's possible, and it seems to have happened in this thread that folk make invalid assumptions about statements.

6. As many have pointed out here, we get fed 'news' by organisations that have a vested interest in promoting a particular point of view. Thus (and DON'T misunderstand this) we get fed stories of nurses using food banks. As I've said my son and D-in-Law are nurses and between them work about 1.5 -1.7 full time equivalents. They live reasonably, bring up their kids and don't need food banks. It's true that they don't live high on the hog but they are OK. To head off the obvious remark - yes they have lived on a single income but they had to cut their cloth differently. My point is that I really don't know and probably, neither does anyone here, what the position of the 'average' nurse really is. Even when we get fed salary numbers from either the union or the government, I'm intensely suspicious because they both have their own axe to grind.   Having said that I agree absolutely that the nursing profession is a special case and should be getting special treatment. I do not believe that the rail workers are in the same category, but I'm mindful of what I just wrote - my 'information' may not be entirely reliable.

7. Finally I still don't see that it's possible to expect living standards to constantly improve year after uninterrupted year. There are times in the economic cycle of every country when living standards must fall in order for the country to survive. In any civilized society, when that happens, the truly needy should be protected.

I know that there are folk on here who won't agree and that's inevitable. I didn't want to come over as someone who thinks that the devil should take the hindmost

Over and out (for this thread)

Mick. 

I'll answer a couple of those points:

2. No, understood, and I wasn't being serious either.
3. Yes, I think you are wrong on this one. I'm not talking about anything approaching absolute equality, but a situation where nobody is destitute. This was well understood throughout Rome's history - the poor were kept happy by bread and circuses, as Juvenal said. There was a grain dole from the state to ensure people didn't starve. Much of the expansion of the Roman Empire was actually driven by the need to feed the populace - Egypt was prized as a major producer of wheat, for example.
When we have an increasing reliance on food banks, provided by charity rather than the state, even for many working people, we're in a rather dangerous place. As Lenin said, every society is only three meals away from chaos. I'm not going to claim that's the scenario for the average nurse - I don't believe for a second that it is - but frankly in a civilised society, it shouldn't be the case for any of them IMHO, and I don't think you disagree with that.



Sure, we're at a very difficult point economically, for good (necessary) reasons and bad (unnecessary), but I think the above remains critical. And that brings me to...

4. I think the Mone case is more to the point, but the thing about Sunak is that he hasn't shown any signs of understanding "normal" people. He couldn't even put fuel in a car. He's not a good constituency MP, according to my sister, one of his constituents - he apparently comes across as simply not interested in listening to people's issues. I don't think he's in any way a bad man, and he's certainly better than his two immediate predecessors, but I don't believe he's the right man for the current situation. Less not right than some others, though...

In fact I don't strongly disagree with anything else you said, although I don't necessarily agree with it all either - neither of us probably have enough information to be sure, and there's nothing wrong with that.

[zou]

On Sunak, remember he boasted about taking money from poorer areas to give to richer (more Tory) ones.

[geoffr]

Many years ago there was a dispute involving two unions, the company was short of engineers and decided that avionics spent too much time sitting doing nothing. The solution was that they wanted refuelling to be done by avionics technicians. The union went in and negotiated a deal. So far so good you might think. Not so, avionics didn't want what the union had negotiated some of us got the impression that our representatives weren't listening to what they were being told. I can't remember the outcome but I very rarely refuelled an aircraft and then only because I wanted to resolve an issue (I was a supervisor and didn't have to do it). Ultimately automated fuel systems were introduced in the late 1980s and the fuel tanker/dispenser drivers got the job.

My point is this, what the people on the shop floor want may not be what the union is asking for and what the union wants is equally not what the shop floor wants. I don't suggest that this is always the case but it is worthy of consideration that what people think they are striking to achieve may not be what is being negotiated. I have never been a union official, and never will be, so I can't be certain but I get the impression that senior union officials have a political agenda which may, or may not, accord with the aspirations of their members.

Without wishing to accuse anyone of anything, it is possible that the union management wants to bring down the government, forgetting that many of their members may have voted for the majority party, and can manipulate an issue in an attempt to achieve that. Since my experience in the 70s I have always been wary of union power. When they work well unions can, and do, have a positive impact on the workplace and in peoples lives. Unfortunately there are times when the opposite happens. I repeat I have no evidence that this is what is happening now.

I don't know what a nurse earns, neither do I know what an aircraft maintenance technician earns but I do know that both need to be paid a wage that affords them the opportunity to live within a reasonable distance of where they work. The former however are expected to pay for work place parking, the latter aren't. In fact many people have free workplace parking.

The technician has his licence renewal paid by his employer, the nurse has to pay it them self. I suggest that a change of policy to allow the nurse the same facilities as the technician would make a considerable difference. Decent working conditions should not be a perk, they should be a requirement.

The "living wage" would be more acceptable if the income tax threshold were raised such that anyone on the "living wage" paid no income tax and only started to pay tax on earnings above that. The rate of tax for those between the threshold and the higher rate threshold would need to rise such that anyone in that bracket was no worse off. The rates above the higher rate would need to be adjusted to ensure that the overall effect was neutral. Unfortunately, both major parties seem to think that the current income tax threshold is appropriate.