Unions and the AEU


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Unions and management have one thing in common - the human element and the greed which sometimes goes with it. I'm afraid that the unions no longer represent the down trodden worker anymore. And management would still work us to death if modern employment laws didn't exist. There is something wrong when union leaders are earning that much money that they are living on a different planet to those they are supposed to represent. I am just happy to still have a job which hasn't been given away to someone from a different country. I am lucky to have good employers who give me good conditions.

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God help us if the "Greens" ever got any clout in government, the working man would never be able or allowed to run a car. This loony labour council hates the ordinary motorist enough, but the Greens

I joined another union in my late 20's and it was one of the best things I did. With a wife due to give birth to our second child I had to go into hospital with a detached retina. The day after admiss

When I started my apprenticeship at the ROF it was mandatory that I joined the AEU. It was a 'closed shop'. I had to go to a Union meeting at the Navigation Inn on canal St and was issued with a blue

I was a TGWU shop steward in the 70s and 80s and agree that a lot of trade union reps were communists. Their loyalty was to the Communist Party first and their members second. However, at times I was able to use their predictable actions for the good of my members, this did not make me too popular with the comrades and I had to watch my back.

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Different views slightly ,but seems common theme.thing I.Don't understand is why we praise people that work stupidly long hours ,most of us have probably done that but it usually catches up with ill health and can destroy home/family life,which is ironic when we are supposed to be living in Alf and safety awareness period.

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From 1999 -2002 I did security work with an average working week of 56 hours it involved two weeks of 84 hours over a three weeks doing night & days 12 hour shifts

But during one week I did three shifts of 15 hours & four of 12 hours = a 93 hour week.

In the end I thankfully got the D.C.M. & found a job with more sociable hours.

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Problem is who do you vote for then?

I may consider voting Green next year if they put a candidate up for Loughborough in next mays general elaction.

One needs to be very careful of voting the Greens into power. The Greens were seen as a viable alternative when the Australian Libs, Labour and Democrats offered nothing new.

So, they got foothold across the country and eventually, in Tasmania, won State Government.

In the short term of their tenure, they decimated business completely and, with their tree hugging and environmental policies; reduced a once thriving State to a basket case.

Naturally, they did not see another term in Office. As a matter of fact, I do not believe that one Green was re-elected to Government; such was the Tasmanian peoples' abhorrence of what had occurred.

Tasmania is slowly coming back from the verge of bankruptcy but it will take some time.

State Governments on the mainland have a smattering of Greens in their parliaments but none are in power, just cross benchers with little thought for the wants of the person in the street; just eager to push their own agendas.

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Would it not make sense to vote for the person not the party? I know of good MPs from both sides of the divide and none of them seem to be professional politicians.

My father voted labour until the day he died, my mother until Tony Blair, in her late 80s she declared she could no longer vote because there was no one to vote for.

I am basically a tory but vote for my labour MP because when I had a problem he was only to willing to help and I know he has helped others to.

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When you vote(& you always should) you have to be pragmatic & vote for the one which is nearest to what you believe in.

BUT remember "IF" you don't vote you have in my mind lost the right to moan when things go pear shaped. ;)

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What if the Tories made it that only 50% of the population could vote & the rest could put up and shut up ?

People would be up in arms so why is it that even in a "General Election" turn out is usually 70% - 75%.

The Tories got about 35% of 75% of votes cast in the last election but are in power(with the Lib/Dems)

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God help us if the "Greens" ever got any clout in government, the working man would never be able or allowed to run a car.

This loony labour council hates the ordinary motorist enough, but the Greens ? FORGET IT.

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Reading history books from a time when their was a clear divide amongst the classes,does not relate to 2014,your fellow workers these days are just as likely to stab you in the back,and as for the Tories rich man's party always have been and always will be ,but they have the sense to learn from ukip the only party that is listening to the British electorate,the difference being ordinary folk

will not vote for corrupt Tories,time will tell if ukip can deliver but I think the British public are ready to give them a go,because the rest are a waste of space.

Sock it to 'em Nigel!!

2s1ab94.jpg

Picture taken round about 1983

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The Conservative version of national unity rests upon the creation of an illusion that the rich are kind and that, if only working people would be restrained, we could all raise our living standards together, in an unending bonanza of capitalist growth fueled by some "necessary" inequalities to provide the profits mainly needed for investment.

That is the master illusion of British politics.

Tony Benn, 1974

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Apologies for not being more clear!! My twisted sense of humour!

I should have made the link.

Quote from #25 "ukip the only party that is listening to the British electorate, the difference being ordinary folk

will not vote for corrupt Tories,time will tell if ukip can deliver but I think the British public are ready to give them a go, because the rest are a waste of space."

Picture is supposed to be of Nigel Farage in 1983.

It amused me.

Since I posted it I have read somewhere else that it is probably a photoshop job to discredit him..........I wouldn't want to do that would I?

More importantly I have found a successful way of posting images!!

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Well given that this thread is really about the Unions/AEU we should acknowledge the power and efficacy of city trader unions as they continue to exploit all aspects of our lives without being held to any account other than that of making a profit. There is no getting away from it many folk have pensions that seem dependant on "clever" city traders.

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If only socialism was exactly what it says on the tin. They are human beings after all. As soon as they gain a bit of power it goes to their heads. As long as there is a choice of parties to vote for and not a one party state, maybe we can see a way forward. But as I see it, Europe is moving towards a one party state. And to make it worse, it is Socialist. And as they have proved, it is all about control.

Perhaps I am affected by the fact that I attend many car boot sales. Both to buy and to sell. Most of the privately run ones are happy places. Turn up with your boot load and pay your rental and you're in. But there is one in Nottingham run by the control freaks. You are made to wait. Then when you get to go in with your wares the questions. Your Address, car details. And the security men watching all the time.

And there are the care homes I work in as an agency employee. The private care homes I have my time sheet signed by a nurse or any manager. Most local authority ones I have to have signed by a high up manager. And it usually has to be faxed in a few days later.

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Wish I could go back 25 years and talk to my late Uncle Eric. He was a 'party' worker on the railway. He was intelligent and had witnessed some bad things as a POW and low paid worker. He worked for a better life for the working classes. He was beaten up by the brown shirts at rallies but that just reinforced his resolve. At his funeral at Wilford Hill there were few mourners. Just family, two friends and the Union leader. In the chapel the union leader took the rostrum and, sticking his chest out, proudly proclaimed "ERIC WAS A COMMUNIST' looking around challengingly. He went on to say how hard Eric worked for his brothers. My thoughts were - well that's OK but were are all of his 'brothers' today?

So much injustice in this bleddy world.

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Communism is a Utopian dream, tried and failed, closest working model to true communism is the Jewish Kibbutz's.

On a practical level, as human beings, we all show greed to some extent, so we all believe our rewards for labour should be higher than the next person and without us the system would collapse.

Mind you, I have worked at companies where the above seemed true, "stop back and do a double shift, will you? So and so has phoned in sick" I refused once and all hell broke loose over the following week, I came pretty close to decking my foreman, I had him by the throat and lifted off the ground and threatened to throw him down the shaft. So I guess I must have been needed, as I was never punished and always seemed to get a pat on the back from Management.

During those years I was a member of the EEPTU, and read an article in our union rag about the setting up of a Lucas plant in the USSR with all UK union labour.

The lads would get very frustrated with the Russians, they were months behind schedule due to communist work practices..ie a labourer would bring one brick in a wheel barrow to the bricklayers. When asked why one brick via an interpretor, he replied, "I get paid the same if I bring one brick or a barrowload of bricks, and as it's easier to shove a barrow with one brick, that's the way I do it".

So lets be right, it's not all the corporations fault, the working man is just about as guilty of things as the CEO of a large conglomerate is, and many of those men and women do put in more than 40 hours a week, some even take work home, plus have the worry of why plants are not operating at full bore.

AND, who owns the huge corporations that HAVE to make huge profits?? Why the shareholders, and who are they?? Most likely you and I via retirement funds and Insurance policies that are invested on the stock markets..

Ironic really, that we are the ones to mostly blame for corporations when we worked for them.

On the whole, most of the larger companies I worked for were good employers, safety was important to them and most paid me a good wage.

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