Boss Radio

Strikes are really annoying, especially if you're the one on strike. They're annoying because suddenly people, even people who don't know you, don't like you, and you're not getting paid for it.

Contrary to what the press may believe, no one wants to go on strike, they do it when they reach the point of no return. When they suddenly want to hurt the boss as much as he's hurting them.

It's an uneven world. You join a company and you sign an agreement which you're expected to stick to. The management on the other hand are not required to stick to it,their sole requirement is to let you know about the change in good time. If you have a union they'll go in and fight your corner for you, but the bottom line is that if they can't come to an agreement the company can simply impose. That's the point where you have to decide, is this worth losing money over?

Britain's unions are amongst the most tightly reigned in the world. France, Germany, the USA, they all have much more powerful Trades Unions than we do, what do they also have in common? They're above us on the rich list is what. The supposedly moderate Vince Cable is now threatening to take anti-union legislation even past that of the Thatcher years. It won't help, it'll just piss people off.

Now let's go back in time (Imaginary tinkling noise and Dr. Who effect...).

When I left school most kids didn't even get to take final exams, let alone go to college, they just left school at 15 and tried to find a job. As one of the lucky ones, by the time I was out and in the job market they'd all had a head start on me, but at least I did have some bits of paper which meant I could leap frog them. If I could find a job that one of them hadn't already been moved up into anyway.

Surveying the job market I became aware of vacancies right at the bottom, as a man from the ministry. It did have some advantages, promotion, back then at least, was by examination, and I was good at passing exams, my problem was remembering the stuff afterwards. The Civil Service had its downsides, like mainly starting salaries were almost exactly half those I could get in the world of business, but on the plus side there was the exam based promotion path, a good pension, and retirement a whole 10 years before my potential time of death, whilst those of my gender in industry only got 5 years.

I really liked that last bit.

It took about a year for the Civil Service and me to come to the conclusion that we couldn't work together, and I went out into the world to find a job that would let me be a rock'n'roll musician in my spare time. As it happened I walked straight into jut such a job and yes, I was on double the money.

Oh well, it almost made up for being chopped back to just 5 years of retirement, and dad said that the pension was actually not too bad.

Time passed, Thatcher happened, and suddenly HM Civil Service were earning comparatively good money, not because their wages had jumped, but because the rest of us were being held back.

So if the Civil Service do, as threatened, go on strike to protect their pensions and retirement dates, I'll support them. When they started they were on crappy wages, now they just want what they signed on for, and they have every right to it. It's not their fault that the rest of us got shafted.