This is a sensible position for the Herald to take. It makes the point that I have made several times. The POAL strategy increasingly looks to be extremist (hotheaded, provocative, arrogant, high-handed are terms that hit home). It is losing ground in the media and with the public. MUNZ also has to front up to wider issues in the national port sector, and they have been doing so in conjunction with previous POAL CEOs.
The Gibson appointment looks now to have been disastrous, which sheets home to the POAL board and its intentions all along.
Matt is good this week, too.
IDLE THOUGHTS OF AN IDLE FELLOW: The Ruminations of Robert Winter
RW - are you saying the Unions are not extremist?
ReplyDeleteTake your blinkers off and give us all a break.
Trades unions are,in my long experience and contrary to your view, fundamentally conservative bodies (after all your side is complaining about their unwillingness to change, is it not?) and in many ways more to the Right on issues than one would think. Remember they are created of Capitalism, in Capitalism, for Capitalism. Your labelling of them as "extremist' is wrong and suggests, to be honest, that you know very little about them. Militant unions have existed in Nz (the IWW-modelled Red Fed, for example) but they are long gone. Oh, that they were more militant politically.
ReplyDeleteGo back to Keeping Stock, pdm, where the wearing of blinkers is de rigueur.
ReplyDeleteRemember they are created of Capitalism, in Capitalism, for Capitalism.
ReplyDeleteSorry to ask Robert, but I could do with a good explanation of the logic behind your comment, specifically the "for Capitalism" bit. How do you figure that unions were/are created for Capitalism?
Much analysis of unions focuses on the ordering and disciplining of labour by unions for Capital. One effect of collective bargaining is to fix conditions for a period, removing (usually) the right to strike etc. Also once a deal is done, the role of the union qua organisation is in part to make its members stick to the negotiated deal, that is, providd the 'policing' of the deal. Employers come to rely on that disciplining of members by the union.
ReplyDelete