I'm afraid they lost any sympathy I may have had by taking strike action.

I think you'll find the heavily unionised factories are the ones companies are looking to close - their inability to live in the real world regarding working practices leaves them vulnerable in times when downsizing is required. Unite is the prevalent union in my industry and their militant stance in the past is really coming home to roost. My own firm have closed two sites and downsized in three others - unsurprisingly the two closed were almost 100% unionised.

What is very sad to see is the impotent union trying to do a deal with management when the threat of job losses is reality - it is a pity they were less willing to work with management with the times were perceived to be better

…and JFK was shot by a man on a grassy knoll.

Conspiracy theorists will always believe what they want to fit their own agenda.

If you honestly believe that, in this current economic climate, your company plan on reducing it’s workforce by 1200 (at some considerable cost) because they feel that they can hide behind the clock or recession and “they just want an excuse to get rid of a few bed eggs and trouble causers” then you are seriously deluded.

Just sit back for a second and think, really think, would my company pay off over a sixth of its employees just to make a point or to of the union?

Your company is making 1200 redundancies because they need to cut their overheads to survive – it aint rocket science.

Seriously, are the bin men actually going to be on £12K a year ?

How much are they getting at the moment, on average ?

Can someone confirm / deny the story I heard the other week that they were actully getting something like £20 - 25K per annum and the current change is merely to bring them in to line with what refuse workers for other local authorities get paid. On top of that there were several perks like full pay for 'job & knock' etc, that have already been mentioned.

I've not specific axe to grind as I don't live in the Leeds Local Authority area and think yourself lucky people of Leeds that you don't get the bi-monthly collection that I have to deal with.

Luxury – we used to dream of bi-monthly collections. There wo 38 of us in shoe box at side ov t’ road…

Even though no business will admit to it, the "recession" has been good news for some of the "Blue Chips", I am currently running one such "Fit For the Future strategy" aimed at trimming the fat, its a very easy line to throw and many are using it.

I expect the said company to save approximately 90-100m in salaries, bonuses and the susequent streamlining of process which will include a recommendation to outsource Sales Activity which is a real lever in the current climate.

Having said that you seem to know what you re talking about so hey
what do I know.

Depends who you are talking about, the workforce consists of several grades, from street cleaners to bin collectors to drivers, I've heard £20-25K mentioned for drivers at Biffa (see Sin Bin thread) but I doubt that your city centre chewing-gum picker-up is going to be on that.

Anyway, my bins out tonight, we've only missed two collections out of four and could probably manage quite well with a fortnightly collection - last week they even emptied the green bins which was a bonus.

They emptied the green bins into the same truck as the normal waste though

as chuntered previously - it drives my up the wall, our green bin (disputes aside) is full for 2 or 3 weeks per month, I am sure we are not exceptional - it just a token green bin effort.

Regardless of the justice or otherwise of their case, I suspect the bin men will have zero sympathy from those who have taken pay cuts, whose jobs are at risk, or who have already lost their jobs. ATEOTD if they feel so badly treated that they feel they have to resign, I'm sure there are loads of people - who face losing THEIR houses and heaven knows what else - who currently would jump at the chance of their jobs even at the new rates.

One suspects the new reality has not yet dawned on some people.

I think you have, inadvertently, reinforced my point.

Companies need to ‘trim the fat’ to make themselves competitive against ever expanding competition.

They don’t make cut-backs to simply to annoy the unions now do they or am I missing something here. Maybe the Blue Chips you work with spend time, money and resources trying to -off it’s staff and there is no fiscal reasoning behind their decision making process at all?

They've not done any of ours!

Last week I saw them doing the green bins down your road and put ours out. That evening I took the still full bins back round the back.

Do you know the company I work for?? Have you seen any of its financial figures??

Our parent company has just paid off several hundred million pounds worth of debt and also raised hundred of millions by selling some shares it had in another company.

My company has paid £300million in cash back to the parent company and we have an order book somwhere in the region of several hundred million and prior to any announcement on redundancies had a forecast profit in excess of £100million.

Does that sound like a company in trouble?

Now perhaps you can stop putting words in my mouth and stop your petty insults.

Ok admittedly I took a leap of assumption (and honestly wasn't trying to insult you) but can you answer me this then?

Why would a financially stable company axe over a sixth of its workforce if it wasn't for fiscal reasons?

Never vote in a tory goverment again.

For what it's worth, our financial analysts see the reduction of salary by percentile as a reasonable way to save enough money to pay redundancies without damaging CAPEX or OPEX figures.

They also believe that the current incremental growth is hiding a real rpoblem insofar as many companies are still trading with massive overstaffing and duplication of roles but have no capital to make redundancies. As soon as the upturn begins to kick in these companies shall use capital so gained to shed the excess weight.

Expect a lot more redundancies before serious economic growth becomes even a pipe dream let alone reality.

I gather then that you believe that shoring up a failing loss making industry using the public purse was the right way to go then?

Any company that loses money eventually fails, why were the mines any different?

i don't think they were but thatcher wanted revenge on the miners for the threat of strike action in 1981, and after she took us into conflict in 1982 to win a general election in 1983 she had her chance to crush them, if the deputy's hadn't have gone back to work and got paid weather they did or not she'd have lost that battle aswell. i lived through the miner's strike 84-85 my dad was a miner, there are things the government of the day did to bribe the lad's back to work that never came to fruition i'm just glad my dad had enough pride not to be bribed and stay put. but it's a long time ago. but i'd never vote tory

I hope this doesn't descend into chaos but here's my twopennorth.

Looking back, I remember the miners strike, and the aforementioned conflict. And whilst my father wasn't a miner, he was a soldier, as was my Uncle, and both served in the Falklands. My other Uncle was a postie and was a member of the Grimey band, and continues to blow with miners bands all over.

The idea of Thatcher using the conflict to win an election (and I certainly don't come across this as a universal truth and or opinion) is a line I do hear from miners and ex miners on a regular basis. I don't hear it from the soldiers who went to the South Atlantic, which seems at odds with this line of thinking. What makes it even more crass is that a lot of miners did very well from the redundancy packages they recieved, some of them from several pits, and have since done quite well from VWF, tinitus, emphesema etc whilst the rest of the population has had to just get on with the ailments caused by their trades.

And yet the miners still hold themselves up as objects of pity. And I get it almost every time I go down the club to sit with a bunch of men who haven't worked a day since they left the pits because they haven't needed to.

Oddly enough at the time of the Argentine invasion the RN was in the process of being disbanded, piffle you may say, but it was. The need for a Navy was massively low on priority in Monetarist circles. The 1982 conflict enabled various chiefs of the defence staff to secure funding to continue with the development of the Navy and various programmes, Rapier, Harrier, MLRS, which proved vital 9 years later.

The monetarist line was I admit, harsh and cold, and Thatchers battles with the Unions are often thrown up as examples of her brutish and calculating approach.

I do however find it a little frustrating that the actions of one government (that in reality halted the counterproductive effects of the unions,see France at the moment) have permanently affected your ability to make balanced,reasoned and evidenced voting decisions on your own. How can anyone say "I shall never vote X". What if the policy if your chosen party was so at odds with market common sense and the opposition policies sat much more in line with what was best for the country in the longer run? Would you just not vote?

No doubt she chose her moment well, coal stocks were at their highest levels ever at the power stations, but I don't really want to get into a "Thatcher is the root of all evil debate"

But if memory serves me right, there was no strike ballot, and I think you'll find that it was the arrogance of Scargill who railroaded the mining industry into the ultimately disastrous strike, which decimated the industry.

I grew up in a midlands mining town My dad wasn't a miner but my grandad was, as was our neighbour. The perception amongst many at the time of the strike was that Arthur was arrogant (as per Billy's point on the ballot) and also that this rubbed salt into the feeling that when local pits had been threatened and closed under a labour government he hadn't supported a call for industrial action - in other words that he was just as political as Thatcher was.

I don't think there is any question that Thatcher welcomed an opportunity for confrontation with the miners and had prepared well for it - remembering her predecessors disasters of 1973.

As regards the Falklands I don't believe the conflict was sought but she certainly seized the opportunity to turn into into a jingoistic festival. Without that she would very likely have lost the next election.

A profit of £100m - some things to consider:

1. How much capital you have employed to generate that profit

2. It also depends how much of that profit is operating profit

3. What does the cashflow position of the company look like - as the saying goes profit is sanity but cash is king

4. What are the long term order books looking like - it could be they don't look so hot so it makes prudent sense to downsize now in order that supply of labour matches matches demand for product two years down the line - that is the job of management - strategy!!!

Maybe you could answer these questions rather than getting on your high horse - then we can have an informed debate or you could just name the company we can get a set of accounts from companies house and continue the debate based on fact rather than annecdotal notions

Whilst you have asked valid questions (even though one of them shows you didn't read my post fully) you still have to end up with the typical sort of dig that is typical of many on here.

Such a shame that many of you cannot have a serious debate.

So if it offends then ignore the last sentence and answer the serious questions, you can't have a serious debate if you are not prepared to contribute.

I have answered the serious questions



Unlike some on here, I can't answer posts at whatever time of day they come in at and I cannot see how you can imply that I haven't contributed.

Well if you just look a couple of posts above this one you'll see one that asked some questions for you to answer, you preferred to complain about a dig at the end rather than answer the questions.

I appreciate you may not be able to but they do provide some insight into the issues that you raised on the previous page, why ignore them ?