I crossed a picket line this morning and I feel really guilty about it.
I had a couple of postal packages to pick up to I went down to the sorting office at 8am to find that it was closed due to industrial action. As I walked back I passed the picket line and one of the posties saw the cards in my hand and suggested that I should go in the back door where management were dealing with the post. Without thinking I followed his instructions and went in. I found a manager who said he couldn’t help me. It was only as I was walking home that I realised what I’d done.
It reminded me of a discussion we had about unions last week on the London Perl mongers mailing list. I wasn’t surprised to find that a large number of people were anti-union. That’s pretty much a given following the media coverage that unions have had in the UK for the last 25 years.
I remember a time when unions were respected in the UK. Leaders like Joe Gormley were on the TV as much as politicians and the TUC conference got as much coverage as any of the political parties’ conferences. That’s all gone now. One of the lasting legacies of Thatcherism is a deep distrust of the unions by “middle England”. And I don’t understand why that’s so. Unions should be as essential today as they have ever been. Maybe even more so.
There seemed to be two major points raised by the anti-union camp in last weeks discussion. Firstly they objected to union leaders who used their power to further their personal political careers. Of course this happens, but I don’t see the same people complaining when people like Michael Heseltine or Iain Duncan Smith doing the same thing from the opposite end.
The other objection was more interesting. There seemed to be a feeling that there was nothing a union could do for them that they couldn’t do better for themselves. The argument is that if you have a problem with something in your company than you have more chance of fixing it by talking to the management individually than by getting the union involved. This is a good example of another of Thatcher’s legacies, the idea that greed is good, you should get everything you can for yourself rather than fighting for the best solution for everyone. Call me an old fashioned socialist (and I’d be forced to agree) but it breaks my heart when I see how divisive a workplace can become when ideas like that take root.
Dave wanders off singing There is Power in a Union
Can you explain to me the significance of picket lines and crossing them, and why that’s something to feel guilty about?I’m afraid the concepts you mention mean nothing to me.
When a group of workers withdraws its labour (i.e. goes on strike) it’s traditional that a group of the strikers waits outside the place where they work. This is known as a picket line and it serves two purposes. Firstly (and most importantly) they will speak to any worker entering the premises, explain the reasons for the strike and ask them not to enter. Secondly the presence of the picket line ensures that the general public know about the action that is taking place.Any worker crossing the picket line is a strike-breaker (or a scab or a blackleg). As someone who doesn’t work there I wouldn’t have been a strike-breaker for crossing the line, but as a good socialist I should have wished them luck in their struggle, offered a donation towards their strike fund and gone home. I shouldn’t have put my desire to pick up my X-Files DVDs above the workers’ struggle with their bosses.
Of course, the picketer was a bit daft to helpfully tell you where you could pick up your parcel!