{"id":416,"date":"2004-06-24T11:25:53","date_gmt":"2004-06-24T10:25:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.uncarved.org\/blog\/?p=416"},"modified":"2004-06-24T11:25:53","modified_gmt":"2004-06-24T10:25:53","slug":"crumbling-loaf-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.uncarved.org\/blog\/2004\/06\/crumbling-loaf-2\/","title":{"rendered":"crumbling loaf"},"content":{"rendered":"

Do you belong to a union? I do. Unison they’re called. I pay about 10 quid a month subs. Does anyone know what they do? Because all they ever send me are leaflets about credit cards and insurance.<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Old loaf, he knows the koo. I’m in Amicus myself and have had the same experience. Tho I got my fees down by opting out of the political levy<\/a>. Frankly, the prospect of paying cash out to Tony Blair on some vague off-chance that he will listen to the frankly not as radical as they used to be by a country mile<\/i> TUC is somewhat deadening.<\/p>\n

So good news that some unions are disaffiliating from New Labour<\/a>.<\/p>\n

But really, I’m only in a union in case my work try to shaft me (i.e. over and above the, ah, extraction of surplus thingummy which goes with the territory) – it pays to have some kind of legal protection and to put money into a fund which provides that service for others.<\/p>\n

Most places I’ve worked haven’t been unionised, although I was instrumental in putting the wind up da management in my first job by getting people to sign up and getting the union to look over the new contracts which were being proposed etc. That only worked because it was a charity where people are supposed to be nice – lots of places get really heavy with people who try to get organised.<\/p>\n

On a day to day level, union activity doesn’t seem to count for much unless you are a postal worker, or fireman or whatever. I assume that this is the result of (and intention behind) the fragmentation of workplaces – smaller internationalised units make it harder for mass action.<\/p>\n

So it seems to me that discussions about whether or not trade unions are revolutionary is missing the point for most people. The criticism in the 80s was that unions merely manage workers’ discontent <\/a> to ensure the smooth running of capitalism.<\/p>\n

These days they don’t even do that, really. They just try to flog you insurance.<\/p>\n

But people still give their bosses a hard time and stand up for each other. And its out of that sort of solidarity which the next world will grow, innit.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Do you belong to a union? I do. Unison they’re called. I pay about 10 quid a month subs. Does anyone know what they do? Because all they ever send me are leaflets about credit cards and insurance. Old loaf, he knows the koo. I’m in Amicus myself and have had the same experience. Tho …<\/p>\n

Continue reading ‘crumbling loaf’ »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-416","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politricks"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uncarved.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/416","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uncarved.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uncarved.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uncarved.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uncarved.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=416"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.uncarved.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/416\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uncarved.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=416"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uncarved.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=416"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uncarved.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=416"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}