By Lionel Gayle
No group of workers should ever have “the right to strike,” unless the majority of citizens – those who suffer when the production and distribution of goods or services are interrupted – have the recourse to stop a strike in its tracks.
I call that “equal rights and justice.” And since our most common system of government is based on “parliamentary democracy,” every “egalitarian form of government” must strive to ensure fair play for all its citizens. It can be done.
But who will make the first move in banning industrial actions such as disruptive strikes? It certainly won’t be the unions – the main instigators of workers’ disruptions. This should be an easy task for any modern-day government, but I doubt anyone will attempt to bring some comfort and security to the masses of strike victims. Meanwhile, workers’ strikes have become the scourge of communities around the world.
The constant assaults on consumers by workers and their unions – which sometimes appear to include governments and employers as consorts or enablers – can be likened to a series of prolonged civil wars happening simultaneously. The big difference is that while a war uses firepower and ends with countless human casualties, the workers’ action ceases at the signing of a new contract. Then it resumes as the time for contract renewal approaches. And this goes on in perpetuity.
Whether it’s a strike, a work-to-rule, a go-slow, a sit-in or overtime ban – just to get higher wages or better working conditions, or to have a colleague reinstated – everything is in favour of the unions and their members. It’s always zilch for the consumers who, often, have to pay more for goods and services to satisfy the demands of those gullible and unreasonable bastards.
Meanwhile, we have some brilliant minds on earth. Among them are experts who can send rocket ships to outer space and explore the depths of the oceans. They can build bombs to obliterate an entire city and they have the capabilities to provide the necessities of life for every living person on the planet.
Yet, nobody seems willing to institute a workable plan to stop any brewing dispute between workers and employers. In fact, there shouldn’t even have to be any disagreement at the workplace. With no-nonsense guidelines entrenched in contracts, bosses and employees should be able to anticipate each others’ needs and requirements. It can be done.
To me, any 21st Century government who allows a clique of disgruntled employees to hold an entire city to ransom – by disrupting vital goods or services to masses of needy people – is a failure.
We don’t need a third eye to see that the present democratic system – the preferred organization of most enlightened countries on earth – has not been working for a long time. If a democratic government really is, as they often say: a government of the people, by the people, for the people, then we have a major problem.
Perhaps it really means: a government for the people, by some people; a government that allows unionised workers to abuse the majority. It’s like saying: all citizens are equal, but some have more rights than others. Isn’t that a classic reflection of the Orwellian school of thoughts?
It’s time to revamp trade unionism – one of the vestiges of European socialism. Long before Benito Mussolini became Italy’s 40th Prime Minister in 1922, the former socialist leader and newspaper editor had expressed his dislike for socialism. As a doctrine, socialism “had largely been a failure,” he was quoted as saying.
So under his one-party dictatorship, Il Duce crushed Italy’s socialist parties, banned trade unions and strikes and created a series of “fascist labour unions.” It was during that same period he declared his famous slogan: “Everything in the state, nothing outside the state, nothing against the state.”
And over in Germany, his good friend Chancellor Adolph Hitler, in May 1933 banned trade unions and grouped the working class labour force under his Nazi Party’s German Labour Front.
Nearly 50 years later (in August 1981), President Ronald Reagan of the United States dismissed more than 11,000 striking air traffic controllers “who ignored his order to return to work.” Earlier that summer, some 13,000 controllers had walked off the job, thus grounding nearly 7,000 flights across the United States.
Reagan called the strike illegal and “imposed a lifetime ban on rehiring the strikers” who were members of the Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization (PATCO). Later in 1981, the Federal Labour Relations Authority decertified the union.
Now, based on the forms of governments headed by despots Mussolini and Hitler, I’m not advocating the Italian and German styles of union-busting played by those infamous leaders. But let us take note that trade unionism started in Europe in the 18th Century and seemed to have been a destabilising force from the very beginning.
Think carefully and you will understand that we don’t need trade unions anymore.
