Wednesday, April 10, 2013

Common sense rather than 'union bashing'

 One of the oft repeated phrases during the life of Margaret Thatcher was that she was a 'union basher', it's one of those throw away lines that has become almost urban myth.

If you visit the  Adam Smith site the principals behind the bills that were passed during the years 1979-1992 are set out and it's quite clear, to me at least, that points 1-3 that are mentioned were what our Americans would call a 'given' in any democracy and the 4th point seems plain common sense.

That's not to say that unions aren't worthwhile and despite decreasing numbers over the last thirty odd years membership of trade unions in the UK ranks third in Europe behind only Italy and Germany. According to the most recent figures available union membership is once more on the increase and despite our French cousins having a reputation for organised stroppiness we actually have nearly three times the number of union members then they do over the Channel.

People have claimed that one of the reasons that multi-nationals move abroad is because it is easier to sack people in the U.K and then relocate, this seems a strange argument, surely you would want to stay where the labour laws were at their most lax? The other point of course is that the main reason for relocation (or outward investment as economists like to call it) is that we have had higher rates of Corporation Tax than many countries in the EU, something that the coalition is trying to remedy.

4 comments:

Span Ows said...

Indeed, what the dickheads fail to realise is that Maggie was all about giving power back to the workers themselves!

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