Why are we paying for this?

Seems every time I look at the activities of those involved in the maintaining of public services from management to unions I keep finding stories of corruption and waste. At one time the UK ran an empire that controlled about a quarter of the globe and managed it with about 1500 civil servants, I know times have moved on and life is a tad more complex now but the over-manning, waste and general corruption is truly shameful especially as it comes out of the pockets of the taxpayer. This is one of the little scams that the unions have to get paid for doing their job out of the public purse rather than out of their members subs.

Telegraph.

More than 360 civil servants are working full-time on trade union duties, figures obtained by The Daily Telegraph show.

The cost of the officials to the taxpayer is estimated to be nearly £19 million, an increase of more than £2 million in the past year.

The Ministry of Defence employs 66 full-time civil servants working on trade union duties and 321 working part-time for unions, the figures released under freedom of information laws show.

The figures were obtained by Dominic Raab, the Conservative MP for Esher and Walton in Surrey, amid concern among ministers over the spread of militant trade unions in the public sector.

The civil servants are entitled to work full-time on trade union business, including representing workers’ grievances and negotiating over pay and other perks. Some ministers suspect they are privately building support for strikes.

There is simply no justification for this, if people want to be involved in union activities, then it's not the job of the taxpayer to be paying for them to do so, that should be down to the union members to pay for any full time officials. There is no way such practices would happen anywhere other than the public services with their magic money trees, even if (predictably) the unions have the nerve to blame it on Tory reform laws.
I expect as the public services go on strike over the next few weeks that a lot of these stories will come out of the woodwork as the government lays the ground to gut the public service unions.I also think the unions are going to be quite surprised at the low level of public support they will get too, those of us who work in private industry having little or no sympathy with those who want to keep their perks and gold plated pension at our expense and that at the end of the day is the crux of the matter, the public services do what they do at our expense, no-one expects them to do without necessities, but we do expect them not to take the piss either and using the public purse to pay for your union reps rather than doing the job they are supposed too is seriously taking the piss!

More about → Why are we paying for this?

They lost that one too.

The public service unions after 13 years of cosseting and enlarging by labour are now beginning to feel the pinch of the coagulations slow down in borrowing and the squeeze that is being put on their gold plated retirement funds along with their early retirement age. It's obvious to anyone outside of the public service that things couldn't continue the way they were going and that in order to pay for their pensions they were either going to have to pay more or work longer. It was also fairly obvious that other than direct frontline services where the public come into contact with public services, police, nurses, doctors and firemen along with a healthy respect for the armed services, the rest of them are not held in such high esteem. So when a public union apparatchik boasts of a general strike bigger than the one in 1926, you can imagine the rejoicing.

Telegraph.

Britain is facing the biggest wave of industrial action since the 1926 general strike, Dave Prentis, the leader of the largest public sector union, has warned. 

In issuing his threat, Mr Prentis, the general secretary of Unison, has stoked the row over Government pension reforms. Unions are considering walking out on negotiations over plans to make most public sector employees work longer and pay more for less generous pensions.

Mr Prentis said: “It will be the biggest since the general strike. It won’t be the miners’ strike. We are going to win.”

Danny Alexander, The Chief Secretary to the Treasury, provoked union anger by warning public sector workers it would be a “colossal mistake” to reject a deal that was the best they could hope for.

The reforms include increasing the general retirement age in the public sector from 60 to 66, moving from a final salary system to benefits based on career-average earnings and raising contributions by an average 3.2%.

But Mr Alexander insisted that those on the lowest incomes would not have to pay any more and that low and middle earners would get roughly the same benefits as they do now.

Question is, will those of us in employment even notice the vast majority of those who go on strike? Food will be delivered, taxes paid by employers, fuel delivered papers on sale life will go on as normal. We might notice the strike during abnormal circumstances, needing medical attention, or the police/fire service but the blame for their absence will shift to the unions, not necessarily the members.
Oh I'm sure some of those on the left are licking their chops at the chance of bringing the government down, but I suspect that all they'll do is harden resolve, the public aren't stupid, they know the pot has run dry. What they might end up with is a new government with a Tory majority and one hell bent on revenge. The unions hated what Thatcher did to them, but they forget it was they who tipped her hand, it will be interesting to see who wins this, but I suspect it wont be the public services. Push hard enough and I expect we'll see the echelons of the public sector gutted, some areas privatised and much in the way of background services reduced.
Perhaps this strike will be a good thing after all, return us to the days where public servants were just that, public servants and not a massive bloated bureaucracy dedicated to the upkeep of the bureaucracy. Fact is we don't need so many of them working in the background and they know it, that's why they'll push the case of those who do work in the frontline as a smokescreen.
They'll lose, they may win a battle or two, but they'll lose.

More about → They lost that one too.

Greed

I wonder what my employer would think if I put in a claim for a bonus for simply doing my job during the Olympics? I somehow doubt I'll get very far, nor is it something I would expect any boss to cave into, save except the rail bosses...

Telegraph.

Having secured a one-off £500 payment from Network Rail, the RMT union is expecting at least the same from Transport for London.

Bob Crow, RMT's general secretary, made clear the union's position when he appeared before the Greater London Assembly's transport committee.

A similar demand is being made by ASLEF, the union representing the majority of tube drivers.

Network Rail offered RMT and the white collar Transport and Salaried Staffs Association abocve inflation pay deals for the next two years and a £500 bonus for staff working on the Olympics.

"We are looking for the same if not better," Mr Crow told the GLA.

A spokesman for Transport for London said last night that negotiations were still continuing with the unions including over working arrangements for the 2012 games.

Nice work if you can get it. Not that this is a tilt at the ordinary men and women who man the railways, they very often don't get involved in what their union leaders get up to and I'm sure they'll enjoy the bonus. However the cash has to come from somewhere and that will be from the pockets of the rail commuters, the people that the railway staff are supposed to serve. So next time fares go up, part of the reason will be because greedy union bosses having the management over a barrel demanded a bonus for their members to do the same thing they do every other day of the week when the Olympics aren't on.
I can see why the management caved in, it was blackmail pure and simple, a case of "nice Olympics, shame if something like a rail strike were to cripple it"
Be nice if the unions were to think of the ordinary people their members serve for once, wouldn't it?

More about → Greed

The Harm a President Can Do

By Alan Caruba

The announcement that Barack Hussein Obama will run for reelection was greeted with little fanfare and less surprise. In order to raise money, he needed to make it official and he was quick to join Rev. Al Sharpton, a man with a dubious history of histrionics, at a Harlem event.

Even with the data available, two years into his first term, it is difficult to grasp how much harm he has done to the nation as its elected leader.

Despite the fact that, until November 2010, the Congress was controlled by the Democrats, he was so busy during his second year that he could not find time to present Congress with a budget. The government shutdown is pure political theatre and should be avoided. If it comes, it will be the result of a political calculation that the President can benefit from it.

Obamacare, the hallmark of his political legacy, is opposed by 26 U.S. States and has been declared unconstitutional in a federal court. The House has voted to repeal it. Hardly a week goes by without finding billions in new costs buried within its pages, all of which expand the size of government beyond imagination.

In two years, the nation has accumulated debt at a rate more than 27 times as fast as its entire prior history since the day George Washington took office. In January 2009, when President Obama was sworn into office, the national debt was $10.627 trillion. Today it is $14.052 trillion and rising.

The leadership that the world has long looked to America to provide has dissipated. The nations of the West, in particular the European socialist nations, have also spent themselves into penury. Portugal is the latest to cry out for help. Greece, Ireland, Spain, all once among the great powers, have drained their coffers with cradle-to-grave assurances that the government would always pick up the tab.

After two years in which every regulatory obstacle, including an illegal “moratorium” on deep water drilling for oil was imposed, the price of West Texas crude oil went from $38.74 a barrel to $99.02. Other commodities, soybeans, sugar, and corn have all seen similar increases. The price of corn has more than doubled in just twelve months.

America has enormous reserves of oil, coal, and natural gas. It has long been a giant agricultural economy, but all this potential wealth is being throttled by men and women in the Obama administration who think Americans must be forced to change their driving and eating habits. In a consumer-driven economy, they want Americans to consume less.

When President Obama was sworn in, there were 2,600,000 long-term unemployed. Today there are 9,193,000 Americans in that category. People living in poverty in America have, in just two year’s time, gone from 39,800,000 to 43,600,000. This occurred during a time when massive “bailouts” were undertaken by the government. They are now widely regarded as failures.

The greatest automotive manufacturer in the world, General Motors, is for all intents and purposes owned by the government. Auto union jobs had to be saved even if taxpayers had to have their taxes diverted for that purpose. Having brought the company to ruin with outrageous work, wage, health, and pension demands, they were still to be rewarded by the Obama administration. The heads of public service unions, among the largest in the nations, have enjoyed an open-door policy at the White House.

Having been elected by campaigning against the war in Iraq, President Obama expanded the number of troops in Afghanistan. While U.S. troop presence in Iraq was being reduced, the President suddenly engaged the nation militarily in Libya without any authorization from Congress.

With one glaring exception, no cohesive foreign policy regarding the Middle East exists. Israel, the only true democracy in the Middle East, an ally of the United States, surrounded on all sides by enemies and threatened daily by Iran, has been abandoned.

Egypt’s Mubarack was publicly abandoned, but Iran’s Ahmadinejad’s stolen election evoked no response when people took to the streets in Tehran to protest it. Col. Gadhafi remains in control of Libya. Syria’s dictator was called “a reformer.”

Domestically, the President calls for windmills to produce energy when they remain one of the least practical means, sustained solely by government subsidies and mandates. The factory in which he made the call belongs to a Spanish company. His call for solar energy is equally fatuous. High speed rail is yet another foolish initiative.

The last two years have been testimony to the harm a President can do to a nation and yet, despite the obvious harm being imposed on millions of Americans, the President continues to enjoy the support of people for whom the growth of the government, the increase in spending, and the nation’s loss of leadership in the world is not understood and will not be until it is too late to reverse the damage.

© Alan Caruba, 2011

More about → The Harm a President Can Do

Costs

They're still tallying up the cost of yesterdays march in London, though I doubt it will be cheap, yet already a new set of protests are being planned.

Independent.

Union leaders today vowed to continue campaigning against the Government's spending cuts amid mounting anger at the trouble makers who clashed with police and damaged stores and other buildings during a huge TUC demonstration.

A leading Labour politician described those involved in clashes in the West End as a "tiny minority of violent, parasitic unrepresentative hooligans", while London's Deputy Mayor said they were "fascist agitators".

I of course fully support their right to peaceful protest, what I don't condone is the hypocrisy of the left who have tried to get other marches by the EDL banned or stopped on the grounds of cost and created a minor media frenzy over it.

Sky.

EDL supporters from across the UK and Europe converged on Luton, the Bedfordshire town that spawned the far-right movement.

Over 1,000 police including mounted officers and dog units were deployed to keep the two sides apart at a cost of £800,000.

Note, there was no violence at the EDL demo, nor has there been any violence at the previous 5 demo's Yet there are some local council members who want to stop the EDL from marching and are citing the cost of policing them as a case for doing so.

Birmingham Mail.

Selly Oak Labour MP Steve McCabe said it was time for Theresa May to use her powers to ban the march.

“I’ve not been in favour of a blanket ban on the EDL before but on this occasion I think it should be imposed,” he said.

“You have a group of people with a track record of violence on the same day as a local derby and we know football matches are a prime recruiting ground for the EDL.”

Joining him in his call was MP Khalid Mahmood (Lab, Perry Barr) who said if the Home Secretary did not ban the march, she should provide West Midlands Police with extra officers or cash.

I for one would wonder at the reaction from the TUC, Labour etc. if the government told the TUC you're banned because we can't afford to police you, I can just see that one going down a storm.
Marches might not change things but those who would seek to ban them should give pause and think, because it might be them next, certainly there is now a case for banning a TUC march similar to the one yesterday due to the cost and the violence, but I doubt you'll hear a squeak from the media or the left about doing so, which would of course show them to be major hypocrites if they try to get other marches banned simply on cost.

More about → Costs

The gift that keeps on giving

I'm talking about Bob Crow the union leader of the RMT and his lack of understanding how things actually work.

Telegraph.

The General Secretary of the militant Rail, Maritime and Transport union was booed as he outlined his idea for a 1p tax on each email during an appearance on a late night comedy show.

He said that rather than cutting public services, the Government should tax email traffic and scrap the replacement for the Trident nuclear defence system.

Asked for his strategy for protecting jobs while tackling the deficit, Mr Crow told Channel 4’s 10 O’clock Live Show: “If groups of workers are under attack, we believe we should coordinate and stand firm - propose a tax of 1p per email, and get rid of Trident.”

Now whilst there are a lot of emails sent in this country, (2.8 million per second) a hell of a lot of those are spam and I can't imagine an easy way to tax them other than going by your ISP and getting them to spy on you. Even then that wouldn't work too well against the millions who use an online service such as Hotmail or Gmail and a variety of computers (and mobile phones) to access them, or even providers who are based abroad and aren't subject to UK taxes. I can imagine that he might be able to get at UK companies using outlook, but I also suspect that they'd either pass the costs on or find ways not to use UK based email services as well.
I get the feeling that Bob Crow is somewhat divorced from reality (well any union leader would be) in that he leads a sheltered existence from real life only to emerge every now and again to call on his members to lose money by going on industrial action and then wondering why the public don't particularly like him. Mind you as he arranged himself a 12% pay rise last year from the pockets of his membership whilst they only (generally) got less than 5% which is a damned sight more than a lot of us in the private sector got.
Now in the past, the unions served a useful purpose in moderating the excesses of the private sector and forcing health and safety legislation through parliament by protests, even today they represent their members well when it comes to representing them with management and defending them from abuse. However those at the top of the unions seem to have lost touch with reality, they are now part of the political classes who think that we should do as we're told and ignore what they get up too. Bob Crow is a prime example of a guy who although he started off looking after his members interests, now seems to be doing all right looking after himself. He thinks he's looking after their interests by taxing all of us to keep the system going, all he'll end up doing is delaying the inevitable fall or forcing more people into penury. If it costs money to send emails, people wont send them, if it costs too much to use trains, people wont use them, it's part of the law of diminishing returns and shows up quite well in laffer curve statistics on taxation. Bob Crow doesn't get it, we're sick of paying out for reduced services, we want value for money, something the public services have avoided for years, we don't want to pay out more to keep things the way they are.

More about → The gift that keeps on giving

Unions: Dupes, Thugs, and Politicians

By Alan Caruba

Growing up in New Jersey and having been a journalist here, my memory of news about unions in the Garden and Empire States is that of headlines concerning the indictment and sentencing of various union chiefs and their underlings.

The alignment between unions and the Mafia is so well known it has been the subject of movies such as “On the Waterfront”, “The Godfather”, “Goodfellas” and “Casino.” To this day the rumor persists that Jimmy Hoffa is buried somewhere between the goalposts of Giants stadium in the Meadowlands.

As events unfold in the very progressive capital of Wisconsin, Madison, the public is being treated to the way unions have very nearly always functioned. Intimidation has been their stock in trade with campaign contributions running a close second. We are watching an epic battle between Wisconsin voters and entrenched, self-serving unions.

In his 2006 book, “Solidarity for Sale: How Corruption Destroyed the Labor Movement and Undermined America’s Promise”, Robert Finch, a former labor organizer and later a faculty member at Cornell and New York University, told the story of how and why unions were and are rotten to the core.

Finch’s book reads like a Hollywood movie script, replete with the names of Mafia families like that of New Jersey’s Vito Genevese and a host of others throughout the nation.

“Corruption,” says Finch “had been built into the labor movement from its very inception.” The politicians who benefited from union support have always done their best to ignore “five generations of racketeering, Mafia rule, bribery and extortion, job selling, benefit fund theft, and simple thievery, going back to the days of the early-twentieth-century labor czars.” This dates back as well to the creation of the National Labor Relations Board created by Congress in 1935. It is another legacy of the FDR years that have left the nation on the brink of bankruptcy.

Suffice to say that the National Labor Relations Board is a useless, allegedly “independent” government entity, often looking with favor on the union’s unceasing demands. Among the issues conservatives want to thwart are card check regulations to enhance union power. Reportedly, Republicans have cut $50 million from the NRLB’s budget as a part of the effort to cut the bloated Obama budget.

Finch notes that “In 1986, the President’s Commission on Organized Crime had identified the four most mobbed-up unions; the Teamsters, the Laborers, the Hotel and Restaurant Workers, and the East Coast Longshoremen. The close relationship between labor unions and the Democratic Party is too often obscured by the mainstream media. “According to the Center for Responsible Politics”, Finch noted, “seven of the top ten campaign contributors in the last decade are not Fortune 500 corporations. They’re AFL-CIO unions.”

Little wonder that public service union members are howling for the head of Wisconsin’s Governor Scott Walker or that several Wisconsin Democrat politicians have fled to Illinois to avoid debating his proposals. His demand that unions forego collective bargaining rights is, in fact, not that unusual. Twenty-two States have curbed union power with “right to work” legislation.

Perhaps the greatest error regarding the union movement came in 1962 when President John F. Kennedy issued an executive order to grant all federal government employees the right to unionize and collectively bargain with departments and agencies. This accounts for the rise in power of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) with its 1.8 million members and the deceptively named National Education Association (NEA), a union, the largest in the nation. It has 3.2 million members and employs more than 550 staff.

It is not an exaggeration to say that the NEA is responsible for the horrid test scores of U.S. students throughout the nation despite their incessant demands for higher wages, along with healthcare and pension programs well in excess of the private sector. Since the 1960s, they have been at the heart of the deteriorating condition of education in America. A four-part series on this topic is posted on the website of The National Anxiety Center which I founded in 1990.

Leading the SEIU is Andy Stern whose many visits to the White House since Obama was elected have become legendary. His rise in the union began with organizing hundreds of thousands of home care and day care workers. Despite unionizing, their pay has never really improved. “The SEIU,” Finch noted, “is now the largest AFL-CIO union.”

During his campaign and since, President Obama has never made any secret of how beholden he is to the SEIU and the union movement that contributed millions toward his election. It should come as no surprise that he has spoken up regarding the Wisconsin riots on the side of the union members. This ignores the fact that a majority of Wisconsin voters put the Governor in office, along with giving political power to Republicans there. They campaigned on the very issues the unions are protesting against.

Wisconsin, like other States that are essentially broke, must win the struggle to reduce the taxpayer burden that government worker and public sector unions represent.

© Alan Caruba, 2011

More about → Unions: Dupes, Thugs, and Politicians

Having your cake and eating it

It never ceases to amaze me how some civil servants just don't get it where it comes to a recession and who actually provides the money to pay them. The civil service unions are even worse for this, many are actually paid by the state to be union reps in their places of employment and of course they fiddle the system to get what they want.

Telegraph.

An undercover investigation by Priti Patel, Conservative MP for Witham, found that officials at unions were telling members how to campaign against the Government's cuts programme on the taxpayers’ time.

The news emerged as Brendan Barber, the general secretary of the Trades Union Congress, announced plans for a national demonstration in Hyde Park in London against the cuts on 26 March next year. 

Ms Patel set up a bogus email account and contacted the officials, asking whether it was possible to attend demonstrations on “facility time" to carry out their union duties during office hours.

One official said she could be “economical with the truth about your use of the time you may be able to claim facilities time” while another suggested she could “pop it down as a union meeting and be creative about how you spend your union time”.

Last night, Ms Patel told The Daily Telegraph: “The hard working law abiding majority will be disgusted to see trade union officials suggesting ways that their members can fiddle the system and act dishonestly to get time off.

“Any civil servant using facility time to attend these political demonstrations should be disciplined and there need to be a full investigation into the way trades unions are abusing taxpayers.

"It is unacceptable for taxpayers to be left footing the bill for trade unions' political campaigning and union members abusing the system in this way should be regarded with the same disdain as crooks, fraudsters and benefit cheats."

Ms Patel, 38, a rising star who entered Parliament in May, used an alias “John Wright” to email a number of union officials this week, asking if it was possible to attend a Trades Union Congress-organised rally against the cuts using "facility time", because his holiday entitlement had run out.

Under official guidance, officials are only allowed paid time off as "facility time", typically 25 days a year, for a “tightly defined set of duties” including “negotiating with employers, representing members, performing the duties of an accredited Health & Safety rep and of an accredited Union Learning Rep”.

Laura Cockram, head of campaigns at the Public and Commercial Services Union, said: “It depends which dept [sic] you're in and how vigilant your management is regarding facility time.

“You could pop it down as a union meeting and be creative about how you spend your union time, however I wouldn't advise you to do that.”

Andrew Freemantle, another PCS organiser, replied: “If you are economical with the truth about your use of the time you may be able to claim facilities time. Look forward to seeing you.”

Shirley Mills, regional organiser at Unison, said: “I don't think you can use facility time to attend the rally and lobby as the employer may see it as activities rather than duties.

“Please inform your manager that you will be meeting with the Regional Organiser this should avoid any problems.”

Simon Weller, an official at Aslef, told her that facility time can only be used for “trade union duties’ in relation to your elected post. Demos and the like come under the label “trade union activities” which are not covered by your facility time”.

He added: “Although, if you've found something legitimate to do at the depot/meeting etc in the morning and then you could attend the demo in the afternoon.”

Bernie Pardon, an official at the NASUWT teaching union, replied: “I don't know who you are? Which union? What branch / association? I'm using facility time tomorrow if that helps.”

Last night Mr Weller from Aslef stood by his comments. He said a lot of his members worked in shift patterns and it would have been fine “if he [“John Wright”] was finished his shift, if he was free and in the area”.

A TUC spokesman said: “Union reps are entitled to paid time off for duties such as negotiating with employers and representing members in grievance and disciplinary matters.

“While there is no obligation for employers to pay reps time off for activities such as attending union meetings and events, many do provide paid time off as an acknowledgement of the valuable role played by union reps.”

A PCS spokesman said: “We're proud of all our reps who not only do their day jobs under increasingly difficult conditions, but also work hard to support their colleagues and improve their working lives - more often than not taking union work home with them to do in the evenings and at weekends.

First off, you want to be in a union fine, however it is a voluntary thing and you should not be paid by the state when doing union activities, any union activities.
Second, you aren't cheating your employer, you're cheating the people who are taxed in order to pay you, you're betraying the general public by attempting to be paid to go and protest.
Unions have been abusing taxpayer funds for years now with the Using the Trade Union Reform Act, Mandelson established the Trade Union Learning Fund in 2006 which along with the Union Modernisation fund more or less matches trade union contributions to the Labour party with a cash grant to the unions to help in reform, basically it's a scam.
Civil service unions are perhaps the worst in being militant these days, they've been coddled by the state with decent rises without increases in productivity or efficiency. It's time I think they came down to earth and learned what real life is all about as those of us in the private sector have figured. If they are planning on milking a corrupt system to protest about cuts, then plainly they need to be the first ones out. Lets see them try to pull that one in the private sector.

More about → Having your cake and eating it

Agent Provocateur

Well not really, more like one of Lenin's useful idiots.Veteran socialist John McDonnell believes that the public sector should strike to keep their jobs, egging them on from the safety of his £64,000 parliamentary sinecure.

Express.

A SENIOR Labour MP joined militant union leaders yesterday in calling for strikes and “civil disobedience” to fight spending cuts.

Veteran socialist John McDonnell said it was time to “fight back” against coalition plans to tackle the deficit.

The hard-left backbencher, MP for Hayes and Harlington, was joined by Mark Serwotka, general secretary of the Public and Commercial Services Union, as they addressed a rally of thousands protesting outside the Conservative Party Conference.

Mr McDonnell warned the coalition: “If you come for us, we’re coming for you. We’re coming with our demonstrations, our strikes, our civil disobedience and direct action. This is no time to sit on the sidelines, this is a time to fight back.”

Mr Serwotka said strikes “are inevitable”.

Now whilst John McDonnell has done a few low paid jobs, they were way back in the 60's and 70's, all of his time spent from 1977 has been for unions or local/national government, so much so that he probably thinks public servants are funded from magical fairy dust and not ordinary taxpayers. What he's basically doing is encouraging a mass suicide amongst the public service, because this government is looking for an opportunity to smash an enemy and until the Muslims kick off, the unions will do in their stead. John McDonnell seems to think the unions can win, despite all evidence to the contrary over the past 30 years. The coalition simply don't care, they will do what they will do and no amount of strikes will prevent them, if anything it will make their job easier as it will show them exactly who is and isn't needed.
John McDonnell is an idiot, then again he's a true socialist, what more can you expect.

More about → Agent Provocateur

Hypocrisy thou art a Union Leader...

Apparently Brendan Barber head of the TUC thinks that the public wont stand for large scale spending cuts, this is a guy who has never had a proper job in his life along with other union leaders coining it in from members benefits who are telling those of us who do work for a living and are struggling to manage to fight the spending cuts we all know the country needs to break even.

BBC.

TUC chief Brendan Barber has said the public will not accept large-scale spending cuts, as trade unions gather in Manchester.

Mr Barber said unions would reach out to the wider community to form a "progressive alliance" to make the case for alternatives to spending cuts.

RMT union leader Bob Crow called for a campaign of "civil disobedience" in protest at spending cuts.

Ministers say they must take action to tackle the £155bn budget deficit.

Without "decisive action", Chancellor George Osborne argues that Britain's economic stability and reputation would be put at risk.

Now I don't know what Brendan Barber earns, but I'm suspecting it's way above the national average. Plus his Wiki tells me this...

Early life

He was educated at the independent school, St Mary's College, Sefton (then a direct grant grammar school). Between school and university, he spent a year with VSO teaching in the Volta Region of Ghana. At City University, he earned a BA Hons in Social Sciences in 1974, then spent the next year as the President of the Students' Union..

Career

He spent a year as a researcher for the Ceramics, Glass and Mineral Products Industry Training Board based in HarrowTUC.

In 1975 he got his first job at the TUC as a policy officer. In 1979 he became the head of the TUC's Press and Information Department.

In 1987 he became head of the Organisation and Industrial Relations Department and in 1993 he became Deputy General Secretary.

In other words he hasn't had much experience of life in the private sector and doesn't really know how sick we are of the public sector creaming off our taxes to expand and increase their numbers and wages at our expense.
As for Bob Crow, well I've actually met the man and I know what an utter knob he is, however if you take a look at this little list from here...

Bob Crow (RMT) - £79,564 in salary, £26,115 in pension contributions, £13,013 expenses
John Hannett (USDAW) - £81,742 salary, £16,389 pension contributions
Billy Hayes (CWU) - £83,530 salary, £14,190 pension contributions
Sally Hunt (UCU) - £63,743 salary, £7,612 pension contributions, £2705 car benefit (start of June 2006 to end of May 2007)
Paul Kenny (GMB) - £81,000 salary, £21,000 superannuation (pension contributions), £8,000 car
Dave Prentis (Unison) - £92,187 salary, £23,603 pension contributions, £11,646 expenses and car benefit
Derek Simpson (Unite-Amicus) - £62,673 salary, £16,156 pension contributions, £13,333 car allowance, £26,181 housing benefit (Derek Simpson now receives nearly £200,000 in pay and benefits, with his pay package increasing 17 percent this year. He also has the right to stay in his £800,000 house in Hertfordshire until he dies, after which his partner will be able to remain there at a heavily subsidised rate.

Simpson, according the Times, demanded that the union subsidise his accommodation to "make it affordable" - a perk worth about £40,00, bringing his total remuneration to £194,252.)
Mark Serwotka (PCS) - £82,094 salary, £26,104 pensions contributions, £2,245 additional housing cost allowance and additional housing cost supplement
Steve Sinnott (NUT) - £99,846 salary, £23,963 pension contributions
Tony Woodley (Unite-TGWU) - £59,333 salary, £9,552 pension contributions, car fuel £3,360
Matt Wrack (FBU) - £66,389 salary, £44,281 pension contributions, £5,134 car

You can see the man telling us all to get into civil disobedience to fight public sector cuts whilst not being short of a bob or two himself  along with the other "leaders" of the working men/women who are in a union. You can bet your bottom dollar they wont suffer no pay or perks if we go on strike.
So the people calling for civil disobedience are well off, wont be hit by getting no pay and wont be worse off at all if there is civil disobedience.

Yes, that stinks of hypocrisy to me.

More about → Hypocrisy thou art a Union Leader...

Skimming

Like a lot of people these days I have little or no time for the big public service unions such as Unite or the teaching unions, seeing them more as a barrier to change and reform rather than looking out for the interests of their members. That isn't to say I don't see the use or value of unions, just that they should occupy their correct niche in society and look after their members interests, rather than the interests of the union and its senior organisers and full time staff.

TPA. (Pdf)   

In other words our taxes both local and national are paying the union officials rather than the subs of their members. This is on top of the Labour Party scam of the Union Education Fund which took taxpayers money and more or less matched the contributions the unions made to the Labour Party funding.
More interesting is the fact that the unions themselves are heavily involved in lawmaking in the EU, something our own parliament can do little about as they don't have the ability to veto EU legislation, merely letting it through on the nod without scrutiny.
From my point of view, if the government wants to look to make savings, this is an area where they may find rich pickings, it would also have the bonus of hitting Labour in the pocket too by restricting union influence and money coming to them from the taxpayer rather than the union members themselves. It might also have the added benefit of putting the union leaders under scrutiny for their profligate lifestyles.

Metro.

Bob Crow, head of the transport union the RMT, takes home £105,679 a year.
The average Tube driver earns £40,000 a year and station staff £26,000 but Mr Crow wants his members to launch a ‘class war’ in the wake of a two-year public service pay freeze.
While the average civil servant earns £22,850 a year, Mark Serwotka, head of the PCS union which represents them, earns £111,112. The average teacher takes home £32,630 annually but NUT head NUT Christine Blower takes a salary of £124,483.
Derek Simpson of the Unite union lives in an £800,000 grace-and-favour house with his second wife while taking a salary of £120,328 from his members.

Nothing like seeing how the other half lives and how it's the supposed guardians of the working class who are robbing us blind.

More about → Skimming

Cheating

When you can't win fair and square those on the socialist left usually resort to cheating, although it's something they share with politicians in general. It means that they use their "ends justifying the means" mantra to ignore the wishes of the many or subvert votes (in the case of politicians simply going ahead and doing it anyway) to get their own way, or rather the way of the activist and leadership.

The RMT are a classic example of this, lead by a man who is a committed socialist (read communist) who decided New Labour weren't socialist enough for his union so set up his own political party to a resounding failure to get votes.
He's been spoiling for a fight with the government (any government) for a while now and sees a chance to send New Labour into the dustbin of history by making them unelectable via strike action. Except that it might be that his membership did not agree with him, but that's ok, you can always find extra votes when on the left (or a Lib Dem) simply by making them up.

Times.

Arsonists struck in the dead of night on April 19 last year. By dawn, the East Usk signal box in Newport was a burnt-out shell and police had started an investigation into the “suspicious” fire.

Few could have imagined that, a year on, the charred ruin in South Wales might have a role in preventing the national rail strike planned for next week.

The East Usk signal is one of 11 “ghost” boxes that Network Rail claims were wrongly included in the Rail, Maritime and Transport union’s strike ballot. The three votes listed from the Newport siding should be disqualified along with all 25 from signal boxes that have long disappeared, the company will argue today in the High Court.

While most were closed this century as automation spread along the railway, one of them stopped operating in the 1960s. 

Chalford signal box, near Gloucester, opened on August 2, 1897, at the bottom of a four-mile hill below Saperton Tunnel. It is still revered by some railway enthusiasts for the safe passage afforded to “auto-train” services in the 1930s – shuttle trains with a cab at both ends that plied the line to Gloucester. But it signalled to its last goods train in 1963 and its last passenger service a year later.

Nonetheless, one RMT signaller appears to have been included in this year’s ballot.

Network Rail says it has unearthed scores of inaccuracies in the signallers’ ballot, which show that the union has “manifestly failed to comply with the requirements of the Trade Union and Labour Relations Act of 1992”.

The vote was so close, its lawyers will argue, that just 112 of 4,556 signallers balloted would have been enough to swing the vote against the strike. Network Rail says that the inaccuracies in the ballot account for almost 300 potential votes. 

As well as including signal boxes that do not exist, the union omitted 26 that do, accounting for almost 100 staff, the company said. Network Rail argues that in 67 other locations, the RMT sought votes from more employees than work there. It says, for example, that the union asked 11 members to vote at South Tottenham, where it employs three signallers; and 33 at Crewe, where Network Rail says it employs 24 people. 

It's a tactic obviously learned from New labour and it's predilection to ballot rigging by postal vote, after all why trust the membership to agree with you when you can simply rig the votes to agree with what you want. Cuts out the inconvenient middle man so to speak, the moderate who simply wants the money to keep coming in to pay his mortgage rather than have his year ruined by getting no pay because it's been decided (not by him) to strike about possible redundancies with a view to loss of safety.
Democracy is a foreign concept to many socialists, useful if it goes their way, but why take the chance...

The RMT are a classic example of not taking a chance, if the reports are true, they would not be on strike this coming weekend anyway, so they decided to cheat, fortunately they got caught, wonder how many other dodgy ballots have been won by phantom voters though.

More about → Cheating

Chickens coming home to roost.

To be honest I'm a little amazed by the trade union movement in recent weeks, Labour were clawing their way back into contention over the election, they'd had a propaganda coup with Lord Ashcroft (whatever the real truth of the matter) because some people can't tell the difference between tax avoidance and tax evasion. Cameron was (and is) appearing to be a very weak leader with no real fire in his gut to deal with the issues that are important to the public even going out of his way to drop cast iron promises in his rush to avoid controversy. Nor despite the most hated and reviled government in centuries have the Tories managed to hit the back of the net with an open goal in front of them, appearing to want to be more blue Labour than Conservatives.
Fortunately when it comes to having the odd mad relative that nobody talks about Labour are second to none. They have their union backers (and owners) ready willing and able to drop them right in it just before a general election. And there's nothing Labour can do except grit their teeth and accept it despite the savaging they know they're going to get over it. Might even cost them the election, probably will.

Express.

GORDON Brown was last night dragged into a raging political firestorm over Labour’s links with trade union militants.

The Prime Minister faced embarrassment when it emerged that the salary and pension of one of his key aides is funded entirely by Unite, the union embroiled in the British Airways dispute.

And the row intensified when Unite’s political director Charlie Whelan openly intervened in the run up to the election by declaring: “We want a Labour government.”

 Well done Charlie Whelan, you might just have managed to pluck defeat from the jaws of victory with that little gem. People like me (who actually go out and vote) remember what the 70's were like with little tinpot Stalin's like you and Bob Crowe (RMT) about. We remember the beer and sandwich talks in Downing Street as you held the country to ransom. We also remember the bitter cost of putting the unions back in their place when it went too far and destroyed our manufacturing base because your lot couldn't be trusted not to strike over the quality of the loo paper. We used to have a deep mining coal industry one that today could be producing enough clean coal to power our nation. But no, you got greedy, you has a political agenda and you ended up wrecking the country.

People like me remember this, which is why you may have cost labour the election.

Well done that man.

More about → Chickens coming home to roost.