[Dixielandjazz] Pay Scales

[pat ladd]

Re Unions.

Seems to me that unions condemned themselves when in the drive for numbers 
they forgot to remember quality.  All unions were the same. They saw the 
number of members as a stick to beat the employer with to wring out more 
money, or perks. Welders Unions had members who couldn`t weld etc. and 
certainly in he UK the ending of apprenticeship schemes meant that you had 
to be a union member before you signed on for your first days work whereas 
previously you would only be accepted into a Union if you had completed an 
apprenticeship or could demonstrate that you were competent.

Then having collected enough `job holders` the Union was big enough to hold 
a gun to the employers head and demand anything they liked. Of course there 
were things that needed sorting out by the strength of the Union but how 
much more clout they would have had if they were able to say `We are 
negotiationg on behalf of the best people in the trade` instead of `We want 
more pay for everyone who calls himself a musician, welder, butcher, baker 
wether he can do the job or not.

Then the inter Union squabbles. We had a famous one about whether a hole for 
an electric cable to go through should be drilled by an electrician or a 
woodworker. That stopped all our shipyards for months. Then Unions wanted 
more power and extended their right to strike to include all the ancilliary 
trades that were affected. This meant that a small strike in one factory 
suddenly spread across whole industries. With a Labour Government in power 
which backed the Unions because that was where their money came from, the 
whole country ground to a standstill time after time.The general population 
were thoroughly browned off with the situation.
Not until Maggie Thatcher came along and changed the laws on secondary 
picketing and effectively drew the Unions teeth did we get the Country back 
to work. The bastards are creeping back though.

Cheers

Pat