I realise that this is not a popular topic – so boring to most people. In his recent book, ‘Despised’, Mr Embery says that (some) unions have been taken over by intellectuals who don’t necessarily have experience working in that particular field. Of course, he excludes himself. I should like to challenge him to answer a question:
During the lockdown many important areas kept going – rubbish collection, supermarkets, etc, without clearly being protected by union membership. The traditional Labour answer is to get everybody into a union so that all will be ‘protected’. But why would you want to encourage mass membership of unions if the top people were just intellectual careerists, without real experience in life? How does this help any one in this country to prosper? In Wales, where I live and have an engineering business, it is well-documented that businesses approached the Welsh Assembly for help and were told that help would be easier to get if everybody in the business was a member of a union. Is this real life? In the Welsh Assembly the main party is Labour.
I am not a person who talks about conspiracy theories but it does look like a conspiracy coming from the extreme left of the Labour movement – to somehow destabilise all we have worked for – recent exploits at Leicester University, Mr Embery’s own loss of his childhood working class community, constant discussion of gender and race issues, culminating in changes in school curricula to eliminate history, the idea that Britain was just evil in the past and now owes something to everybody else, etc.
They want everybody in a union because unions make big donations to the Labour party of course.
7882 fremic
3 years ago
This eulogy of the Union is pure agenda. Take the Teachers union (whose head of one of the biggest ones said in relation to literature ‘We have nothing to learn from Dead White Men’ (meaning the world’s top literature is discarded in one huge insane WhiteMaleist go.)) is completely out to wreck education and at the same time keep the teachers from doing their job with the excuse of covid.
I read the same thing in this article. The Firemen are in society taken as heroes who will lay their life down to serve the public, and that is High Nobility. But it appears not so. They are just Union drones, used for political aims. Firemen have no real threat of death by covid, they are by trade ready to risk all to protect the public, but the cowardly union bosses just score political power/points/money off the firemen willingness to do the right thing. From all I have seen of Unions they are pretty much wreckers and users and anti-national ideologues. Trots.
Can you provide a pointer to the source of that idiot’s quote about “dead white men”?
I am not doubting you; it is entirely plausible – such sentiments are often baked into the remarks of the increasingly dimwitted talking-heads at the BBC.
A few facts are always useful Paul, and in view of the grossly inadequate level of protection afforded to nhs employees the fbu can hardly be blamed for exercising some caution and insisting that the agreed testing takes place
Joe Blow
3 years ago
There are laws that refer to unions, and confer status and privileges upon them. It is therefore legitimate for the government to regulate the internal workings of unions.
The government should require that statutory recognition would only accrue to unions where the higher levels of union management are populated by people who have worked for a minimum of X years in the trade of the union’s members. The duration of X is debatable; I would set it at five to ten years. Once established, this notion can be developed further to apply to political parties, to remove the possibility of someone being a ‘career politician.’
Chris Wheatley
3 years ago
Allow me to leave aside whether the service chiefs were right or not about the Covid tests – I don’t have enough information.
This takes me back to the time when I was a shift manager in a large manufacturing company and the union was very active – so active in fact that a union official sat in on every shift change so that he could give his blessing to every decision – or not. Effectively, the union was part of the management team. IF there is an agreement between the chiefs and the FBU to say that every decision has to be ratified by the union, then Mr Embery is correct. If not, the management team is there for a purpose and must continue as it sees fit.
Ludo Roessen
3 years ago
nn
Chris Wheatley
3 years ago
The danger of a site like UnHerd is that it becomes an argument of one extreme versus another, Everybody knows that he is right (I do include myself here). Perhaps the criticism should be aimed at Mr Embery’s article, which has to be biased because he represents one side of it. Then the best answer is, ‘No comment.’
I realise that this is not a popular topic – so boring to most people. In his recent book, ‘Despised’, Mr Embery says that (some) unions have been taken over by intellectuals who don’t necessarily have experience working in that particular field. Of course, he excludes himself. I should like to challenge him to answer a question:
During the lockdown many important areas kept going – rubbish collection, supermarkets, etc, without clearly being protected by union membership. The traditional Labour answer is to get everybody into a union so that all will be ‘protected’. But why would you want to encourage mass membership of unions if the top people were just intellectual careerists, without real experience in life?
How does this help any one in this country to prosper? In Wales, where I live and have an engineering business, it is well-documented that businesses approached the Welsh Assembly for help and were told that help would be easier to get if everybody in the business was a member of a union. Is this real life? In the Welsh Assembly the main party is Labour.
I am not a person who talks about conspiracy theories but it does look like a conspiracy coming from the extreme left of the Labour movement – to somehow destabilise all we have worked for – recent exploits at Leicester University, Mr Embery’s own loss of his childhood working class community, constant discussion of gender and race issues, culminating in changes in school curricula to eliminate history, the idea that Britain was just evil in the past and now owes something to everybody else, etc.
They want everybody in a union because unions make big donations to the Labour party of course.
This eulogy of the Union is pure agenda. Take the Teachers union (whose head of one of the biggest ones said in relation to literature ‘We have nothing to learn from Dead White Men’ (meaning the world’s top literature is discarded in one huge insane WhiteMaleist go.)) is completely out to wreck education and at the same time keep the teachers from doing their job with the excuse of covid.
I read the same thing in this article. The Firemen are in society taken as heroes who will lay their life down to serve the public, and that is High Nobility. But it appears not so. They are just Union drones, used for political aims. Firemen have no real threat of death by covid, they are by trade ready to risk all to protect the public, but the cowardly union bosses just score political power/points/money off the firemen willingness to do the right thing. From all I have seen of Unions they are pretty much wreckers and users and anti-national ideologues. Trots.
Can you provide a pointer to the source of that idiot’s quote about “dead white men”?
I am not doubting you; it is entirely plausible – such sentiments are often baked into the remarks of the increasingly dimwitted talking-heads at the BBC.
https://independentleader.c…
A few facts are always useful Paul, and in view of the grossly inadequate level of protection afforded to nhs employees the fbu can hardly be blamed for exercising some caution and insisting that the agreed testing takes place
There are laws that refer to unions, and confer status and privileges upon them. It is therefore legitimate for the government to regulate the internal workings of unions.
The government should require that statutory recognition would only accrue to unions where the higher levels of union management are populated by people who have worked for a minimum of X years in the trade of the union’s members. The duration of X is debatable; I would set it at five to ten years. Once established, this notion can be developed further to apply to political parties, to remove the possibility of someone being a ‘career politician.’
Allow me to leave aside whether the service chiefs were right or not about the Covid tests – I don’t have enough information.
This takes me back to the time when I was a shift manager in a large manufacturing company and the union was very active – so active in fact that a union official sat in on every shift change so that he could give his blessing to every decision – or not. Effectively, the union was part of the management team.
IF there is an agreement between the chiefs and the FBU to say that every decision has to be ratified by the union, then Mr Embery is correct. If not, the management team is there for a purpose and must continue as it sees fit.
nn
The danger of a site like UnHerd is that it becomes an argument of one extreme versus another, Everybody knows that he is right (I do include myself here). Perhaps the criticism should be aimed at Mr Embery’s article, which has to be biased because he represents one side of it. Then the best answer is, ‘No comment.’