The Gown Student Newspaper at Queen's University Belfast

COMMENT: Bad for you, Bad for Business….Bad for the Country?

When an employer steps out of line, or demands something that their employees feel is unfair, what can the employees do? When their jobs are threatened and there seems to be no reason why they should have to face the nightmare that can befall the unemployed, shouldn’t they be able to challenge this decision in some way? Surely we should not all be at the mercy of employers who are legally permitted to ruthlessly attack workers’ rights and make their staff needlessly redundant, all in the name of profit.

BY CORMAC DAWSON

To my mind, it is along these lines that we justify the existence and the role of Trade Unions and it is for these reasons that we should show solidarity with workers when they do decide to take action against their employers. Once upon a time, the legitimacy of these ideas was taken for granted by workers and politicians everywhere. It seems fairly straightforward that if an employer abuses their power, then the workers can unite and exercise some power of their own.

In these especially difficult times, employment is not something to be flippant about. For those who can find it, it may very well mean the difference between being able to keep a roof over their head and barely scraping a living on state benefits. Whilst the rhetoric of the recession has largely been that we are “living beyond our means” and that we all have to “tighten our belts”, over the last few years we have seen the Government spend unprecedented amounts of money on propping up the broken Banking system and big business and yet we have seen unemployment soar. Instead of spending money to keep people employed, the Labour Government has committed itself to the ideology of those who were once bitter enemies of the Labour Party.

The recently announced budget is very much focused on cuts and one of the issues that’s shaping up to be a key debate in the coming election is the question of who can most creatively carve up the finances of the public sector in order to make savings? The highly respected Institute of Fiscal Studies has notably pointed out that the cuts proposed in Alastair Darling’s budget will actually be more severe than those introduced by none other than Margaret Thatcher. Few will fail to see the irony of a Labour Government making more substantial cuts to the public sector than the Tories under Thatcher.

So it is that we have a Labour Government that on the one hand seeks to push people towards working in the Private Sector, but on the other hand, speaks out against the Unions when they attempt to defend their members from attacks by their employers. It is in times like these that people really need the strength that can be provided by being a part of a Trade Union. In a recession, the key concern for any private company is more than ever, how to continue making a profit. Their concern is not how to keep as many of their staff employed, or how to continue providing them with a decent salary, it is always about making a profit. Consequently, they will try and renege on commitments they have previously made; they will cut redundancy packages and essentially do whatever it takes to preserve their ability to make a profit.

Whether or not such a system is fair at all is for another day. The point that I want to make is that the Trade Unions represent the only opposing force to the will of the economic juggernauts of Industry. We don’t have to like the fact that the BA cabin crew strike is an inconvenience for many, or that the planned Network Rail strike will cause disruption over the Easter holidays, but we do have to remember that we are all potential victims of this recession and that the only power we really have is the power we have when we act together. What British Airways and Network Rail plan to do is all legal, but that does not make it fair.

The decision to strike by both Unite and the RMT was a democratic one. It was not, as some might suggest, a decision motivated by the political ambitions of certain Union leaders or by greed, it was a decision taken because the majority of those involved in both scenarios thought it was the appropriate action. The only real power that workers have is to strike. If it were possible to keep working and get paid and negotiate a reasonable settlement, I have no doubt that most ordinary working people would choose that option, but the fact that they have opted to strike should raise questions about BA and Network Rail rather than about the strikers. The right to strike is as fundamental as the right to vote and I would like to think that despite what the media says and what the politicians say, we should take the side of the workers because like it or not, we are all in the same boat.

Tags: Cormac Dawson, Gown, newspaper, qub, Queen's, queen's university, student, The Gown

This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 30th, 2010 at 1:03 pm and is filed under Features, Opinion. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.