Michelin's manufacturing plant in Dundee

[NotoriousREV]

You said you were anti-unions? That's a pro-union stance, isn't it.

Back in the 1980s, The Cosby Show was a big thing. Bill Cosby became America’s Dad with the wholesome show about a middle class black family facing regular problems and working through them, via Bill’s sage advice. The world loved him.

In 2018, Bill Cosby was convicted of drugging and raping people, and now we don’t like him anymore.

[ZedLeg]

I don’t disagree that the unions had their share of the blame for what happened to British industry during the 70s and 80s but I do think that there should be someone arguing for workers rights.

Yeah, it’s easy for us to dismiss unions now that they’ve done all the hard work and won those rights for us.

Aye, you just have to look at what happens to bottom rung workers in the service industry to see what happens to an unskilled workforce that is largely not unionised. They get fucked.

[Gavin]

I grew up anti Union tanks o the BBC coverage of the Miners strike and off the back of the UK car industry struggling. I was anti union. When I worked in the bank I joined the Union and had cause to get them in on my side and they absolutely humped the Bank management who liked everyone to just say Yes and not point out the sociopath nature of what they were asking us to do.

I guess like everything, in pure theory a Union can be and should be brilliant but n reality Unions can be run with agendas and damage all Unions by association but then we have had largely an anti Union stance in the UK press for decades. I would be very interested in how they run and are perceived in other countries not encumbered by the Billionaire tax dodging media moguls.

[JLv3.0]

Communism also works fine in theory.

[Gavin]

Some pigs are more equal.........

[ZedLeg]

TBH a well regulated capitalist economy and socialist government should work but we're all such greedy, self serving arseholes we can't help but fuck it up.

[Swervin_Mervin]

TBH a well regulated capitalist economy and socialist government should work but we're all such greedy, self serving arseholes we can't help but fuck it up.

Which is also a fault of the unions. In fact, human greed is pretty much what fvcks up anything we try to achieve

[ZedLeg]

Absolutely, people start to do alright for themselves and they become more concerned with protecting their position than doing the job that got them there. It's always been the problem with union leadership.

[Mito Man]

I hate unions because I found them quite disruptive during my university years. Don’t have any other experience of them. The undergrads would usually get fucked around just before the exam season with the stupid cunting striking puppets using us as a pawn which I thought was quite insulting.

[Sundayjumper]

TBH a well regulated capitalist economy and socialist government should work but we're all such greedy, self serving arseholes we can't help but fuck it up.

Can we make that a sticky, and refer to it whenever there's a thread about politics or economics ? Because it's smashing the nail very squarely on the head.

[Foz]

Whilst sad, the outpouring is OTT, and this is no way disrespectful, but when the arse fell out of the oil industry, everyone laughed, and that cost some 120,000 jobs across the UK, and no that number is not a joke!

[Foz]

And don't get me started on my recent experience of the unions.

No wonder the UK manufacturing/engineering/construction industry's productivity numbers are on thier arse!