Monday 15 August 2011

Call Their Bluff Then, Mr Tucker…

Down in Southampton, the striking council workers are engaged in a bit of a Mexican stand-off:
Unison branch secretary Mike Tucker said afterwards that “real hostility” over the pay cuts wasn’t diminishing.

“There were people who have been on strike as well as those who haven’t. There were manual and professional workers there, but the vote to continue the strike action was by a large majority.
Unfortunately for them, continuing the strike strips them of any legal protection against dismissal:
…Cllr Smith told the Daily Echo any workers striking outside of the legally-protected period could be putting their jobs at risk.
He said: “If city council staff continue to strike beyond the 12 weeks we will make sure that services are not disrupted as much as possible, and we will have to take legal advice on what we can do.”
The union leaders obviously think the council will back down, as they always have before:
Mr Tucker responded: “The council would have to dismiss everyone involved and we don’t think they’ll do that.”
That’s a big bet to place, with other people’s jobs.

And the mood of the country isn’t in favour of capitulation to rioters, so it’s a bit hard to see why you think it should be in favour of capitulation to other sorts of looters...

3 comments:

SBC said...

Sack the lot of them. Bunch of lazy Trotsky-ites. Maybe employ some of those nice Polish chaps who actually WANT to work?

I don't actually need my bin man to be fluent in English. Hell-if needs must- I'll learn enough Polish to write that Xmas Thank You note....and these days the chances are good that he'll speak better English than most of the English 'Yoof'....



...innit?

Farewell my unlovelies said...

Dismiss them? Stop giving it a grand name. All it needs is a small piece of paper in an envelope addressed to each (non) worker saying "Goodbye" and then you take them off the payroll.

In itself, not hard at all.

JuliaM said...

"Sack the lot of them."

My first thought too!

"In itself, not hard at all."

These days, to go down to the wire and do it, is hard. We'll see, though.