A Masterclass in Employee Relations from P&O Ferries

[Bairnardo]

Unions are a waste of fuckin time.

I grudge paying my 12 quid a month to nodding bobble headed yes persons.

When people think like this, then what you are saying is a self fulfilling prophecy.

[IrishBhoy]

18 minutes ago, virginton said:

The RMT are syndicalists who are very successful in securing the best short-term financial deal for its members, but are setting themselves up for disaster by giving a huge incentive to empty their employees from underground and rail services in the years to come. 

The RMT have the rail franchises over a barrel whenever a dispute arises. When I worked with Scotrail the RMT told all its members to refuse any and all additional shifts, notably the Sunday shift that wasn’t part of any rota but had always been covered by guys working overtime. I can’t remember the exact details of the dispute, but after a couple of months of Scotrail stock unable to be maintained or even shunted around the depot every Sunday, the management folded to the unions demand. 
 

The drivers have an even better bargaining position and they aren’t shy in using it to their advantage. Some of their complaints are valid, but many of them are made through sheer pettiness, and an arrogance over other workers in the rail industry. They managed to delay the Scotrail 385s going into service for over a year because they complained about the windscreens being overly curved at the edge, which they claimed was making their view of signals too blurry. Scotrail/Abellio had no choice but to replace every windscreen with the threat of their drivers going on strike being held against them. 

[coprolite]

I think it's difficult for people to see the value in union membership because more often than not they're involved in damage limitation. Things like maintaining sick pay rates and not getting holidays cut aren't easy to demonstrate as a success.  A below inflation payrise might well be better than what employers originally proposed but still looks like a loss for the Union. 

[Zen Archer (Raconteur)]

 

 

[Clown Job]

1 hour ago, Florentine_Pogen said:

Noticed on TV last night that P&O cruises have ads basically saying "WE have nothing to do with P&O Ferries, please give us your custom, we are good guys....

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/mar/25/p-and-o-british-sea-shipping-seafarers?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Other

I think someone should be looking at a rebranding job in the near future 

[IrishBhoy]

14 minutes ago, coprolite said:

I think it's difficult for people to see the value in union membership because more often than not they're involved in damage limitation. Things like maintaining sick pay rates and not getting holidays cut aren't easy to demonstrate as a success.  A below inflation payrise might well be better than what employers originally proposed but still looks like a loss for the Union. 

I’ve worked in places where the company hasn’t officially recognised the union, but have been forced in to ‘statutory recognition’ after 51% or more of the workforce become members. This allowed the union to act on our behalf to negotiate wage rises, working conditions etc., and allowed employees to bring a union representative with them for any disciplinary issues. With the company being so dead against the union from the outset I think it actually worked against us, in that the management didn’t want to be seen giving in to the demands of an argumentative Union official and dug their heels in. 
 

Another thing I noticed with some union representatives, and this may only be my experience, is that they only put themselves forward for the role in order to get their foot in the door of the upper managements office. Once they are sitting in meetings with HR managers and directors, they use it as a vehicle to try and get themselves up the ladder by kicking up enough of a fuss that they get a promotion with the condition that they leave the union. This happened twice during my time with this company, and it became hard to trust someone who would be standing with the guys on the shop floor telling them everything they wanted to hear, when in reality they were engineering a situation to get themselves promoted. 

[coprolite]

5 minutes ago, IrishBhoy said:

I’ve worked in places where the company hasn’t officially recognised the union, but have been forced in to ‘statutory recognition’ after 51% or more of the workforce become members. This allowed the union to act on our behalf to negotiate wage rises, working conditions etc., and allowed employees to bring a union representative with them for any disciplinary issues. With the company being so dead against the union from the outset I think it actually worked against us, in that the management didn’t want to be seen giving in to the demands of an argumentative Union official and dug their heels in. 
 

Another thing I noticed with some union representatives, and this may only be my experience, is that they only put themselves forward for the role in order to get their foot in the door of the upper managements office. Once they are sitting in meetings with HR managers and directors, they use it as a vehicle to try and get themselves up the ladder by kicking up enough of a fuss that they get a promotion with the condition that they leave the union. This happened twice during my time with this company, and it became hard to trust someone who would be standing with the guys on the shop floor telling them everything they wanted to hear, when in reality they were engineering a situation to get themselves promoted. 

Interesting experience. Completely different to my experiences in the civil service where the Union folks were mainly in it for their colleagues. There were a few vainglorious lefty slogany poseurs and a few, like you say, networkers but they were the minority. 

[Jacksgranda]

11 hours ago, 101 said:

Yeh best thing to do is support those that tell the companies to get fucked. I have an ex British Gas guy who services my boiler and he's absolutely brilliant

[Jacksgranda]

11 hours ago, Busta Nut said:

Unions are a waste of fuckin time.

I grudge paying my 12 quid a month to nodding bobble headed yes persons.

I disagree, although I was never in one, never having worked in an industry that was unionised. Had I joined something like the NIHE I would most certainly have joined a union.

[Jacksgranda]

9 hours ago, IrishBhoy said:

To be fair I can sort of understand that. I’m unlikely to ever be in that position so it’s hard to say one way or the other what I would do if faced with the choice. I think the money/lifestyle could be very hard to turn down, and even a couple of years at those wages could set your family up for years to come if you were clever with it. On the other hand you would be turning up to work every day knowing that the people in your charge are living a much harder life, miles away from their families and earning a lot less money for arguably a harder job. It is a moral dilemma, although thinking about it now it’s a situation that is repeated all over the world, and if I was offered something like that I don’t think I would turn it down. It’s a completely different culture for workers from the Middle East, and companies are well aware of what they can offer them. Just because their working practices are alien to us, it doesn’t mean that a British/European person  should feel compelled to knock back a well paying job in the Middle East on the basis that you don’t think it pays it’s foreign workers enough. 
 

It’s all relative, and in a previous employment I was a contractor for Serco, who’s CEO at the time was Winston Churchills grandson, Rupert Soames. His 2020 salary was £7.4 million, and as a contractor to Serco mine was about 1/100th of that. I was on the tools, working under trains doing manual labour, putting in long hours, travelling up and down the country, putting stress on my joints and overall health and working in loud, dirty train depots. I don’t think Rupert would have been losing any sleep over my working conditions as he collected his millions, and absolutely no one would be claiming it was morally wrong to accept a job with Serco in those circumstances. 

I don't think I'd be losing much sleep over somebody earning £74,000 p/a either. Would have taken me 3 years to earn that, putting in long hours and travelling many miles, too.

[IrishBhoy]

4 minutes ago, coprolite said:

Interesting experience. Completely different to my experiences in the civil service where the Union folks were mainly in it for their colleagues. There were a few vainglorious lefty slogany poseurs and a few, like you say, networkers but they were the minority. 

Yep it’s possible I was unlucky enough to encounter a couple fly men. Both of them were similar in that they weren’t the most pleasant of characters.

Ultimately the union was a waste of time in that company, as I say the management were unwilling to concede to anything because they felt the workforce had forced the union upon them. The owners were a couple of American billionaire brothers, who instead of trying to work together with their employees to resolve the reasons why we felt a union was needed in the first place, decided to threaten relocation of the factory and redundancies. 

[IrishBhoy]

3 minutes ago, Jacksgranda said:

I don't think I'd be losing much sleep over somebody earning £74,000 p/a either. Would have taken me 3 years to earn that, putting in long hours and travelling many miles, too.

That was as a contractor and before tax. That isn’t an exact figure either I used it as an example of someone in this country that could be taking home 1/100th of another employee and no one would bat an eyelid. It seemed like it was only the fact that these workers were Indian and Pakistani migrants that caused such outrage.  

[Jacksgranda]

4 minutes ago, IrishBhoy said:

That was as a contractor and before tax. That isn’t an exact figure either I used it as an example of someone in this country that could be taking home 1/100th of another employee and no one would bat an eyelid. It seemed like it was only the fact that these workers were Indian and Pakistani migrants that caused such outrage.  

So were the figures I quoted, yours was still a great wage (for which you no doubt sweated blood, but still a good take home pay, I would think.)

[IrishBhoy]

3 minutes ago, Jacksgranda said:

So were the figures I quoted, yours was still a great wage (for which you no doubt sweated blood, but still a good take home pay, I would think.)

I wasn’t posting that as an example of my exact wage, I don’t want to be ‘that guy’, but I’m sure most people know contractors usually get a higher rate due to the short term nature of most projects and the lack of job security. 

[Jacksgranda]

1 minute ago, IrishBhoy said:

I wasn’t posting that as an example of my exact wage, I don’t want to be ‘that guy’, but I’m sure most people know contractors usually get a higher rate due to the short term nature of most projects and the lack of job security. 

A bit like being self employed (like I mostly was) without the higher rate bit!

[IrishBhoy]

11 minutes ago, Jacksgranda said:

A bit like being self employed (like I mostly was) without the higher rate bit!

Yep. And now that IR35 has been implemented it’s how I am just now. Taxed as a full time employee without any of the benefits, and getting shafted by unregulated, shyster umbrella companies that our agencies force us to use, mainly because they are taking backhanders from them. Tory Britain 2022, you’re welcome to it. 

[Jacksgranda]

4 minutes ago, IrishBhoy said:

Yep. And now that IR35 has been implemented it’s how I am just now. Taxed as a full time employee without any of the benefits, and getting shafted by unregulated, shyster umbrella companies that our agencies force us to use, mainly because they are taking backhanders from them. Tory Britain 2022, you’re welcome to it. 

Do you not get some of that back at the end of the tax year? 

I was on a zero hours contract once and come tallying up time when my tax return was submitted I got a rebate, similarly when I was taxed as a sub contractor under the Construction Industry scheme when I was with another firm, always got a rebate. (It maybe wasn't much but it paid my accountant's fees and a bit left over.)

[IrishBhoy]

5 minutes ago, Jacksgranda said:

Do you not get some of that back at the end of the tax year? 

I was on a zero hours contract once and come tallying up time when my tax return was submitted I got a rebate, similarly when I was taxed as a sub contractor under the Construction Industry scheme when I was with another firm, always got a rebate. (It maybe wasn't much but it paid my accountant's fees and a bit left over.)

I honestly don’t know tbh. I think the umbrella company declare an amount at the start of the tax year that I am expected to earn before tax, and if I earn more than their estimate I get taxed accordingly, and if I earn under that amount I get a rebate. I can see my earnings and tax contributions on the HMRC website and I’m expected to earn almost exactly what they declared when the tax year ends in a couple of weeks.  
 

These umbrella companies are genuinely one of the biggest scams going at the minute, and I’m surprised there hasn’t been more of a fuss kicked up because workers who use them are getting absolutely shafted. The tories promised that there would be a regulatory body set up in time for IR35, but that has never happened. Every week I get £55 taken from my top line between a ‘company fee’ and an ‘administration fee’, all for the pleasure of them receiving money from my agency and then paying it into my account. I understand there is fees to pay when dealing with payroll, but it’s not £55 a week, per person. I would imagine there is at least north of 1000 contractors using the same umbrella company as myself, so it’s easy to see why these scam artists have got involved in this business. 

[Thane of Cawdor]

The thing that puzzles me is why the sackings are being described as redundancies while the jobs continue to exist. My understanding was that only reorganisation where posts were done away with constituted redundancy. This doesn't appear to be  the case in the P&O dispute.

Were it not for unions you would be sitting on your arses staring at the wall or, more likely, working overtime to afford a turnip.

https://youtu.be/HT6JA9f4cmA

 

[vikingTON]

The 19th century labour struggle does not give Larry Flanagan (resigned yesterday - good riddance) and other piss-poor imitations in the 21st century a free pass to make an arse of things and call self-defeating strikes every other year without fail. 

Workers need smart and effective unions, but if that's not on the cards then support should be withdrawn until the union's leaders are emptied. They also need greater government protection of their rights, but the unions' generally lockstep adherence to the Labour Party has completely failed to achieve this. 

Edited March 26, 2022 by vikingTON