student scabs

[butchersapron]

Only in the same way as those tales of isolated groups of Japanese soldiers who still thought they were fighting WW2 years after it had been lost.

A national strike folowed up by widespread wildcats simply isn't isolated individuals lost in the jungle and discovered yesrs later - it's something with a real ongoing contemporary social weight.

 

[free spirit]

erm - I'm not sure the students involved can be fully held to blame, they're working for a temp agency, which presumably means that if they turn down work they'd either get struck off their lists (ie. sacked) or at best dropped to the bottom of any lists, meaning they're asked to work last.

So effectively in order to support the posties in their illegal strike to maintain their working hours, pay and conditions (and jobs) you're asking the students to lose their jobs themselves.

OK so they're only agency jobs, but for many they'll mean the difference between being able to make it through uni without ending up 5 figures in debt.

The Liverpool posties maybe need to look at the fact that had this been a legal strike the agencies wouldn't have been allowed to put their workers in this position, so whose fualt it is that students are being used as scabs is a bit of a moot point IMO.

I do think it'd be worth the posties or sympathisers going to picket the agency / run an info campaign at the universities etc. No point crying coz students don't support you if you don't put the leg work in to explain the issues to them.

 

[butchersapron]

erm - I'm not sure the students involved can be fully held to blame, they're working for a temp agency, which presumably means that if they turn down work they'd either get struck off their lists (ie. sacked) or at best dropped to the bottom of any lists, meaning they're asked to work last.

That's not too hard a burden to bear surely?

 

[KeyboardJockey]

That's not too hard a burden to bear surely?

Its one of the main reasons why no fucker strikes in our place. People don't want to be tagged as a trouble maker or not 'playing the game'.

Lets face it in a competition between survival and solidarity then survival will win every time.

 

[butchersapron]

Percieved survival - but with the amount of unskilled work around at the minute...

Yes, there needs to be some info going out about this though, i know it sounds daft having to educate people who are 18-21 about life but...

 

[free spirit]

That's not too hard a burden to bear surely?

so students should be prepared to get sacked in order to support posties undertaking unofficial strike action that's not even supported by their union?

bear in mind the students are entirely un unionised casual labour who can be hired and fired at will with no come back?

personally I probably wouldn't have crossed the picket line, but I'd have been fucking pissed off with the posties for putting me in the position of choosing between being sacked and being a scab on an illegal strike, when if they'd done it properly I'd not have been allowed to have been put in that position.

Fact is that as soon as they went on unnoficial strike they needed to have been leafleting all the temp agencies and students to build support anyway, as it should have been obvious what the management would do. If they're not done that then they shouldn't be surprised at not getting automatic support from people who'll lose their jobs if they give that support.

 

[butchersapron]

so students should be prepared to get sacked in order to support posties undertaking unofficial strike action that's not even supported by their union?

bear in mind the students are entirely un unionised casual labour who can be hired and fired at will with no come back?

personally I probably wouldn't have crossed the picket line, but I'd have been fucking pissed off with the posties for putting me in the position of choosing between being sacked and being a scab on an illegal strike, when if they'd done it properly I'd not have been allowed to have been put in that position.

Fact is that as soon as they went on unnoficial strike they needed to have been leafleting all the temp agencies and students to build support anyway, as it should have been obvious what the management would do. If they're not done that then they shouldn't be surprised at not getting automatic support from people who'll lose their jobs if they give that support.

Yes they should. That's a moral position i'm prepared to defend. The posties didn't put them in that situation - if you're going to chase blame back it's the PO managers for trying to sneak in a new work schedule and take a chunk out of the workers wages for strikes that did not take place.

Your practial advice is 100% spot on, but undermined by your main argument.

 

[glenquagmire]

free spirit - while you might be right that they could have done more to publicise the strike, it's pure fantasy to bemoan it not being "supported by their union".

To be officially supported, you need to go through a process of several weeks balloting and giving notice of action.

These posties were being told AS OF TODAY you don't start work at 5, you start at 6 and finish later.

What good would an official dispute (under Thatcher's anti-union laws) do them?

They could learn a lesson from those (probably equally poorly-off) Polish temp workers who refused to cross CWU lines in the last dispute when they found out what they were being asked to do.

 

[free spirit]

Yes they should. That's a moral position i'm prepared to defend. The posties didn't put them in that situation - if you're going to chase blame back it's the PO managers for trying to sneak in a new work schedule and take a chunk out of the workers wages for strikes that did not take place.

Your practial advice is 100% spot on, but undermined by your main argument.

did the liverpool strikers make any effort to go and engage with students / temp agency workers when they went on unnoficial strike?

if not then they've no right to expect them to lose their jobs to support the posties. It's a big ask, and as far as I'm concerned if the posties can't be arsed / aren't tactically aware enough to go an canvass for support from the people who're very obviously going to be brought in by the management then they've fuck all right to expect automatic support IMO.

Obviously if there've been hundreds of posties going out the last few days leafleting students in liverpool then it'd be a slightly different story, but I've not seen anything to suggest that's happened.

btw what support would the posties have offered to any students who'd been sacked as a result of refusing to cross their picket line?

 

[glenquagmire]

How would you have contacted all the students in Liverpool? Especially given that most of them aren't on campus at any given time.

In answer to your last question, "speak to the union and get them to take up an unfair dismissal case".

 

[butchersapron]

did the liverpool strikers make any effort to go and engage with students / temp agency workers when they went on unnoficial strike?

if not then they've no right to expect them to lose their jobs to support the posties. It's a big ask, and as far as I'm concerned if the posties can't be arsed / aren't tactically aware enough to go an canvass for support from the people who're very obviously going to be brought in by the management then they've fuck all right to expect automatic support IMO.

Obviously if there've been hundreds of posties going out the last few days leafleting students in liverpool then it'd be a slightly different story, but I've not seen anything to suggest that's happened.

btw what support would the posties have offered to any students who'd been sacked as a result of refusing to cross their picket line?

I don't know if they have. I hope so. As i said, the practical advice to do that is 100% spot on. I just don't think the (possible) lack of it justifies being bundled in a van and crossing picket lines, and the economic argument is undermined by the amount of unskilled temp work around at the minute. And the story has been given a fair amount of media time as well. It's not something that it's really hard to find out about.

Nor do i know what support posties would be prepared to give students 'sacked' (not actually sacked in reality) for refusing to cross picket lines. I do expect there would be some esp given the heightened awareness of the current dispute. But again, i don't believe that any possible or potential lack of support would justify being part of a planned scabbing operation.

 

[butchersapron]

free spirit - while you might be right that they could have done more to publicise the strike, it's pure fantasy to bemoan it not being "supported by their union".

To be officially supported, you need to go through a process of several weeks balloting and giving notice of action.

These posties were being told AS OF TODAY you don't start work at 5, you start at 6 and finish later.

What good would an official dispute (under Thatcher's anti-union laws) do them?

They could learn a lesson from those (probably equally poorly-off) Polish temp workers who refused to cross CWU lines in the last dispute when they found out what they were being asked to do.

Spot on, the last bit esp.

 

[free spirit]

They could learn a lesson from those (probably equally poorly-off) Polish temp workers who refused to cross CWU lines in the last dispute when they found out what they were being asked to do.

probably, but then the polish workers are presumably mostly working class, and more used to the concept of solidarity / not crossing picket lines.

students on the other hand mostly aren't, so if you want their support you need to put the effort in.

It's not like the liverpool posties don't have the manpower is it, they could have sent a hundred posties down to the uni's to swamp the place dishing out leaflets, plus with a tiny bit of effort and undercover work (ie walking into a few of the big temp agencies posing as a student) sussed out which agency's were going to be used, the meeting place and time, then gone and leafleted the students at the pick up point.

or they could just picket the gates and expect their message to magically get across to the rest of us.

 

[butchersapron]

What if they had done all these things? And still these people scabbed? Would the economic argument still have primacy then?

 

[audiotech]

That, sadly, is now true of almost the entire workforce as a whole in my experience.

From the link posted, it appears other experiences shed a different light.

Meanwhile 800 CWU members voted unanimously in a mass meeting at Aintree Racecourse yesterday afternoon against returning to work.

Liverpool branch secretary Mark Walsh said: “I have never seen anything like this in 20 years - there was not one hand supporting a return to work.

 

[poster342002]

In answer to your last question, "speak to the union and get them to take up an unfair dismissal case".

Although I'd point out that getting a union to do that is not always easy.

 

[poster342002]

From the link posted, it appears other experiences shed a different light.

Those are still very much the exception rather than the norm.

I'l believe in mass strikes when I take part in one that doesn't just comprise of the local branch officials plus one or two die-hard stalwarts.

 

[glenquagmire]

Although I'd point out that getting a union to do that is not always easy.

Isn't it? 1 out of 1 cases in my (admittedly not very broad) experience, though I don't think the lawyer did a very good job.

 

[free spirit]

How would you have contacted all the students in Liverpool? Especially given that most of them aren't on campus at any given time.

In answer to your last question, "speak to the union and get them to take up an unfair dismissal case".

as someone who promotes club nights and co-ordinates flyer teams to target students across newcastle, I have a fair idea how you could do it. It's not like the posties haven't got the manpower if they chose to use it, 10-20 people a day would easily cover it, we do it with 3-4 strategically placed plus posters.

it ain't rocket science

In answer to your last question, "speak to the union and get them to take up an unfair dismissal case".

so how does that work with a temp agency? they're st up to allow them to hire and fire at will, and they'd not even need to fire you, just never ring you up with any work. Plus I doubt you'd have any case for unfair dismissal being as the strike is unnoficial, so the agency would be within their rights to expect you to work I'd have thought.

bottom line is the only way this could have worked without anyone refusing to cross picket lines being sacked would have been if the entire / pretty much the entire agency workforce had refused to do it. This would only happen if some work had been put in to making it happen. IF this work hadn't been put in, then any individual refusing to cross the picket lines would really have just been resigning on principle.

To be clear I would have resigned on principle, and taken as many people with me as possible, but I'd have been pretty fucked off if I'd felt I'd been forced to do this because the posties hadn't got their shit together to organise wider support from the temp workers.

 

[Prince Rhyus]

Hmm...

http://www.liverpoolecho.co.uk/live...-sort-post-as-strike-goes-on-100252-19944762/

Not pleasant from a union perspective.

 

[butchersapron]

To be clear I would have resigned on principle, and taken as many people with me as possible, but I'd have been pretty fucked off if I'd felt I'd been forced to do this because the posties hadn't got their shit together to organise wider support from the temp workers.

That's a fair enough point. But remember, they clocked in at 5am to work - they thought it was over for now, and had other direct things to do. The dates when these people were taken on might be very revealing. If it was before the undiscussed change in the work hours....

 

[The Black Hand]

Meanwhile 800 CWU members voted unanimously in a mass meeting at Aintree Racecourse yesterday afternoon against returning to work.

Liverpool branch secretary Mark Walsh said: “I have never seen anything like this in 20 years - there was not one hand supporting a return to work."


The above is encouraging.

 

[Prince Rhyus]

Meanwhile 800 CWU members voted unanimously in a mass meeting at Aintree Racecourse yesterday afternoon against returning to work.

Liverpool branch secretary Mark Walsh said: “I have never seen anything like this in 20 years - there was not one hand supporting a return to work."


The above is encouraging.

Thing is, if the employers are able to bus huge numbers of temps in to cover the workload, it's only a matter of time before the strike is broken.

I remember watching a documentary about a photo-processing firm whose workers went on strike in the 1970s and some people on the tory right decided to help the employer break the strike by effectively carrying out the work of the business by smuggling the stuff into and out of the workplace underneath the noses of the pickets.

 

[free spirit]

What if they had done all these things? And still these people scabbed? Would the economic argument still have primacy then?

see my point above, IMO the only way for this to have worked without any non-scabs basically resigning by not crossing the picket line would have been if it had happened on mass. The only way that's going to happen would be if the leg work had been put in to make sure the support was there.

If they'd put the effort in, then hopefully the risk of being fired would have been reduced, and had I been one of those students I'd have been much more inclined to go out of my way to support them even if it did mean risking my job.

 

[butchersapron]

But even then, if the econimic imperative justifes anything, it still exists whether the workers had done this or that.

 

[butchersapron]

Thing is, if the employers are able to bus huge numbers of temps in to cover the workload, it's only a matter of time before the strike is broken.

I remember watching a documentary about a photo-processing firm whose workers went on strike in the 1970s and some people on the tory right decided to help the employer break the strike by effectively carrying out the work of the business by smuggling the stuff into and out of the workplace underneath the noses of the pickets.

That was Grunwick. And it doesn't actually mean that. It *can* mean that in localised disputes on one site, but not in a national industry like the post service.

 

[glenquagmire]

Grunwick.

free spirit - maybe you should offer your promotional skills to the Liverpool CWU? I certainly would have no idea how to contact the thousands of students in the city effectively, especially if I didn't realise until then that RM were going to take them on to blackleg. They might have used a different agency with mainly Eastern European workers for all they knew.

 

[free spirit]

But even then, if the econimic imperative justifes anything, it still exists whether the workers had done this or that.

the econimic imperitive would still exist, though there'd be more chance that enough people would join you in refusing to work that the agency might be forced to overlook this coz they need the people to cover other contracts.

The difference would be that the students would at least feel like they'd had the issues explained to them, and that the strikers had actually gone out of their way to ask for their support.

 

[treelover]

Go on Free Spirit, get in touch with the CWU and suggest some strategies.

 

[butchersapron]

the econimic imperitive would still exist, though there'd be more chance that enough people would join you in refusing to work that the agency might be forced to overlook this coz they need the people to cover other contracts.

The difference would be that the students would at least feel like they'd had the issues explained to them, and that the strikers had actually gone out of their way to ask for their support.

But how would that change your attitude to them is what i'm asking.