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I can’t really have any sympathy for people who strike at the moment – where people being made redundant left, right and centre, where others are having to work a 4-day week just to save their jobs, and where many, many people in the private sector haven’t had a payrise for years – these people want a pay RISE? The tube drivers are at it as well, demanding 5 per cent! What planet are they living on? Bob Crow needs his face stamping on.
I’ve always thought there was something very wrong with a union who donate incredibly large sums of money to the Labour party, and then strike against the very government they’re supposed to support. Fuck you, Unite, you bunch of hypocritical cunts.
As Paul Smith’s pointed out, using percentages can be quite distorting.
We’re talking about less than twenty quid a week here. By an any rational measure this is not a huge wage demand.
Particularly when BCC management are taking inflation-busting rises of 20% plus. (Further report on this soon)
Agreed – but it’s the principle of demanding a payrise when it seems everyone else in the country is simply happy that they have a job at all, and going on strike because you’re a public sector worker and you know management can’t ignore the loss of front-line service. Most people don’t even have that as a viable option available to them.
I really don’t see a company’s ability to pay as being in any way relevant to earnings – if SITA saw a huge drop in profits, would the bin men be queuing up to take a pay cut?
At the end of the day, they’re fucking binmen. It’s not a skilled job in the slightest, but at the same time I wouldn’t imagine their pay is THAT low. How do you think their job compares to that of nurses, who only got the 2.75% pay rise the binmen are protesting against?
Of course BCC management are on another level awarding themselves 20% pay rises, but I hate to say it – it doesn’t surprise me.
Bristol Dave
This is the argument of the boss class. “You should be grateful that you have a job” the recession has led to a lot of difficult agreements betwen unions and management in manufacturing. I am not aware of there being a recession in bin collection and it should not be used to force low paid workers into accepting low wages – I wonder how much the Directors of SITA are picking up?
Is there a SITA office in Bristol ?
We could tip our uncollected (brown bin) food waste there !
Anyone up for it ?
Bristol Dave hasnt got a clue about trade unions or what they stand for ..I just want to remind him that if it wasnt for unions his kids would probably still be working in victorian mill conditions and he would be bowing down to some conservative toff of a landowner / landlord begginng for work …oh and if he ever gets ill (god forbid) I hope he doesnt call on the NHS …I Just looked at his pitiful moaning blog site and wondering if he got a free state education to get the skills to write it ?
As for Unite and other unions ..yes they helped to found the labour movement to give normal workers a voice in this democracy ..Today members of unions have a choice if they want to contribute to a political fund or not ….Dave you are an uneducated TWAT …
Lifes circumstances often dictate what job roles each of us take on to support ourselves ,our loved ones and famillies ….A union provides a collective voice against twats like you who are living proof of the need for a union.
I reckon you work for middle management in SITA ..Go check your facts and get a history lesson while your at it .
Tosser
Have I just walked in on an ACAS roleplay?
Union Rob – Oh yeah, I see exactly where you’re coming from, I mean it’s not like Unite in it’s current form is fucking WORLDS away from the individual unions formed by people to escape from Victorian mills or anything.
And I guess I should be personally thanking Unite themselves for my free education and the NHS, should I?
Do you know how much Derek Simpson gets paid? Or that he stays in £400-a-night hotel rooms because he doesn’t see why he should have to travel 35 minutes to an £800,000 “grace and favour” home paid up by the union for his sole use until he dies (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/4903243/Derek-Simpson-Unite-union-boss-stays-in-luxury-hotel-suite.html)? Unite ARE a bunch of hypocritical cunts and if you don’t realise that then you’re far more of an uneducated twat than you think I am.
Whether as a union member you get a choice of whether to donate to a political fund or not is frankly irrelevant – the fact of the matter is that Unite as an organisation have given the Labour Party £13.4m just since Gordon Brown was PM (http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/politics/article5241182.ece) but regularly organises strikes against the government it is supposed to support – both reasons for me are why I could never give them any money or support.
No I don’t work for SITA middle management – I don’t work in middle management at all and am probably the kind of person you think should join a union. I just don’t have any sympathy or frankly any respect for bin men who demand a payrise whilst in the current climate everyone else just fears for their job, if they haven’t already lost it. That, and I’m not a jumped-up hypocritical Trot.
Nurses only got the payrise that bin men are being offered. Do you see them going on strike?
“I really don’t see a company’s ability to pay as being in any way relevant to earnings – if SITA saw a huge drop in profits, would the bin men be queuing up to take a pay cut?”
That’s what happened in the company I work for. We stopped selling so much so they made us take a 20% paycut.
When they make big profits we expect bigger payrises.
Seems reasonable to me.
And Nurses _should_ get a better increase than 2.75% but two wrongs doesn’t make a right.
Bristol Dave
Labour increased nurses pay substanitally so getting 2.75% on nurses pay and getting 2.75% on a bin mans pay are worlds apart – forget the percentages look at the cash!!!
Yes, but nurses save people’s lives, clear up people’s shit, blood and vomit, work in hugely understaffed, horrible (and often dirty), stressful environments, with useless management who have time for little else but the targets foisted on them from central government, working hugely long hours, with very little thanks – I have huge, huge respect for them. Very few people could do it. Good nursing isn’t something you do, it’s something you are.
Remind me….what do bin men do? Ah yes. Empty people’s bins. I don’t see the comparison, but yet they feel they deserve more of a payrise (in percentage terms) than a nurse. Actual pay levels are frankly irrelevant, it’s the principle – and that’s where the percentages matter.
Nurses would have loved more than 2.75% I’m sure, but you don’t see them strolling out of hospitals on strike. They deserve endless respect. Greedy, lazy binmen deserve nothing but contempt and disgust, frankly.
Their job isn’t particularly hard and it sure as hell isn’t fucking skilled – so how do they justify the rise in the current economic situation? How do any of their supporters?
How do you justify witholding £20 a week for the sake of some multinational?
It isn’t the case that more money for binmen = less money for other folks’ payrises. Rising tide floats all boats and that. If people fight for their pay & conditions, it makes it harder for others’ bosses to cut their conditions.
Fuck SITA, ‘mon the scaffies!
If your wanted to dump your rubbush
Weston-super-Mare (Accounts)
Phone Number
01934 524000
Address
SITA UK Ltd, 301-303 Parkway, Worle, Weston-super-Mare BS22 6WA
Location type
Office
Binmen, although they have a job which requires little skill/expert abilities, provide a very basic necessity. They remove your rubbish. They handle contaminated, and sometimes toxic substances. If they didn’t exist, garbage would overflow in the streets. If you had to work with other people’s waste for hours on end, you would damned well want good money for that. It’s disgusting work.
And as for nurses, they deserve an undying (no pun intended) amount of respect. Like Binmen, they too provide a valuable necessity for common day life. They face many hardships, and do, infact, deserve more money for what they do.
And, finally, the subject of the corporate suits who manage it all. They manage said company, and make sure it runs smoothly. This is needed, they give the commands (the Nucleus if you will). With this, comes the responsibility that, if the company does something that they shouldn’t have, then their heads go on the chopping block. They take the fall, unless it is DIRECTLY one of the basic worker’s fault, then they get put on the chopping block anyways. This being said, they don’t need the huge pay increases. They work for their money, and with the risk comes pay, but there are limits, to which they have surpassed. If they didn’t take such a large portion of said monetary pie, then the average worker would have gotten more than a 2.15 raise, and thus negated the strike (assuming that they didn’t strike for even more money, which I seriously doubt).
Please forgive certain spelling errors from the previous post, I did not spell check.
Bristol dave – more profits to SITA doesn’t mean nurses get more money. I don’t understand your comparison at all. The only way nurses and binmen are related is that without binmen hospitals would be fcked and if binmen were sick we all would be fcked – so the more cash they both get compared to the bosses, shareholders, burocrats (and i include union bosses in that too) the better for all of us. Who knows – if you support them this time then when your job is under threat they might return the favour.
stuffit,
you’re making the binmen sound like life saving skilled operatives 😯
they empty wheelie bins ffs, i’m sure there’s not that much training involved!!! 😉
though i agree that the profits sita are making should better reflect the wage rises of it’s workers, but keep things in perspective!!!!!