Forums Forums Local News Closure of Kingsway and Queensway Tunnels

Negotiate until you run out of room for a start off. Sewotka, who was my old union boss, has even refused to go to meetings but then again he was always trying to get us out on strike for no good reason. Bad ass.

Negotiation is fine as far as it goes. Sometimes a show of strength is a necessary last resort. As an ex-military man I thought you'd understand this. I certainly don't want to lose a days pay but needs must.

On a side not, Unilever workers, including those a Port Sunlight, are going on strike over changs to their pension scheme. So it's far from just public sector workers going out. Good luck to them too. I hope they can force Unilever into backing down.

Also Bandy, I'm glad you're a enjoying a relatively comfortable retirement. No doubt you've worked hard and deserve a comfortable life as a pensioner.
This is the ideal for everyone to be able to retire and not worry about their future. It makes for a more stable and civilised society. I just don't believe our current neo-liberal post-1979 economic model can deliver this anymore. I think we need to go back to the best parts of the 1945-1979 post-war settlement.

oooo now this debate is hotting up, i can see a bit of william beveridge's findings coming to mention!

From someone who, in another thread, was impugning other contributors' standards of education, that sentence makes no sense at all and still wouldn't with the use of a few capital letters.

Agreed on the punctuation and grammar part, but you have no idea what me and touchstone are on about, so this is why it makes no sense to you!!!

No, the reason the sentence I quoted makes no sense is that the verb "to mention" is transitive and therefore requires an object.

Fair enough, point taken.

In my previous rather long post I indicated why big companies, including Unilever, HAVE to adjust their pension system. To remain competitive the companies have HAD to indroduce technologies that employ fewer people, and fewer emplyees mean less funds going into the pot from which pensions can be paid. The only way out is larger contributions, longer working, an end to final salary pensions and more top-up by the company (most really big companies already top-up at least the same or more that will be required by future legislation).

In the vast majority of cases the companies simply do not have the means to "back down".

Snod

Well this just shows what's wrong with our global economic system. What we have is essentially a race to the bottom. I'd also be interested to know what they pay packages and pension pots of the Unilever directors are.

Maybe they should scrap company pensions and make people pay into their own schemes instead, that way there would be no bickering about who's got the bigger pension or who pays more

Good idea wench but can not see the collective going for that, there will always be an us and them, we want what they have so we will strike, they are getting too cheeky so lets sack them!

Some of you sound very bitter and jealous of others who may have more than you.Some can't even afford to pay into a pension fund and that is very sad, but there are so many issues which come into play at times like these. I must say the Union did absolutely nothing for us when many of our jobs were finishing and departments closing between 2007 and April 2010. We take the rough with the smooth. There are winners and loosers in this life and I prefare to focus on the loosers some of whom, tomorrow, will be all those patients who need to attend Clatterbridge Oncology Department for their vital daily treatment of radiotherapy. Someones mother, sister, father, child. The staff there are so dedicated ,they treat each patient with exquisite dignity and work from 7.30am to 6pm sometimes 7pm. On average they attend to one patient every 10 to 15 mins and there are about 8 radiotherapy treatment rooms. So you can see the volume of patients on a daily basis is exhausting. I wonder how they will manage to catch up with their workload. I wonder if the patients will be able to get there, they travel from far and wide as you must know.
Tomorrow there are 15,000 supporters expected t attend the rally on St. Georges Plateau, which doesn't seem very many to me. I hope you will all be there supporting your cause,if you can get there, or maybe Birkenhead Town Centre will have a hey day for Christmas shopping.
For the person who mentioned the dockers strikes. They did, constantly in the 1960's in Liverpool, to the cost of Liverpool docks collapsing. The shipping companies found it cheaper to dock elsewhere and transport by road instead of loosing, then thousands of pounds a day, at anchor, waiting to get into port.
The Greeks have strikes on a weekly basis and have done for a very long time, it's part of their culture now. It hasn't got them very far has it?
Good luck to you all, but quite often it can turn into failure rather than success like fewer jobs for fewer people, no longer will organisations be held to ransome!

For anyone interested in taking part in the marches tomorrow here's a link showing the routes in Birkenhead and Liverpool.

TUC marches in Liverpool and Birkenhead

are you taking a pitch fork, a banner, a megaphone, a billboard, or just yourself?

remember take a camera aswell for wiki viewing!