by Michael Smith (Veshengro)
If we would compare the salaries of the Union “leaders” supposed to represent the workers who are the members of the various trade unions to the salaries of those same workers then there is a definite “us” and “them” culture and divide.
The bosses of most trade unions in the UK, such as Unison and other civil service unions, earn more than the Prime Minister and many a council chief executive. If that is not disparity I don't know what is. Nice job if you can get it.
The majority of the trade unions have failed and are failing the members and while the members have to make do with pay freezes or very low pay rises, well below the rate of inflation, the bosses have no such problems. They are on a nice little earner, thank you very much.
There was a time when our labor unions were worth their salt and the union dues but from what we see ever since the 1970s and 1980s they no longer are. And, no, it has little to nothing to do with what Mrs. Thatcher and her Tory regime did. It has to do with the way that the unions harmed themselves and now just pretend to do something.
But it cannot really come as a surprise to anyone in the non-blue spectrum of politics when we consider what happened to the Labor Party of Britain and even to the CPGB. A bit like “Marxism Today” magazine in the 1980s when it tried to create Marxism/Communism for the Yuppies. It did not and does not work.
When union bosses and party leaders cavorting with the exploiters of the working class and pay themselves huge salaries and bonuses while workers are forced to take pay cuts, in real terms, it is time to reconsider where the movement of the working class has gotten to.
The British Labor Party has so much wanted to appeal to voters from outside its original base, the working class, and became pink and just a slightly-left wing Tory Party and no longer has the interests of the working class at heart. The same has happened to the trade unions in the UK. They are so lukewarm and ineffective and have become all but useless.
The old Labor men who fought and bled for the party, such as Kier Hardy, Fenner Brockway, Dr. Salter, and others, would turn in their graves if they but knew what the likes of Blair and Brown and others have done to the party. When they sing the “Red Flag” they commit hypocrisy of the highest order.
Still, as far as the unions go, the same faces get reelected – now there is a joke for the process is not very democratic at all, it appears to me – to the top positions time and again to continue making a nice little bundle.
Is it not time for a real change? Methinks it is.
© 2012
