Solution to striking P&K council staff

Aug 22 2008 by Alison Lowson, Perthshire Advertiser Friday

Dear Editor, – Over quarter of a century ago, as a trade union shop steward, it was my duty to negotiate wage increases and prosecute industrial action on behalf of my members.

A little later, as a senior manager, it was my job to draw up plans to break a strike and resist unionisation using in every legal means.

That I succeeded only partly in both of the above endeavours is a testament to the futility of group bargaining.

I am now convinced that the only proper way for wages and conditions to be negotiated is on a person-by-person basis, between individual managers and individual employees. I am confident that within my lifetime this will become the law, and the spectacle of union members essentially blackmailing the rest of the population will be ancient history.

In the meantime, as a parent and former school board member, could I ask Perth and Kinross Council's education department either to capitulate at once (the money needed could be found by reducing the number of council staff currently performing meaningless or marginal tasks at vast public expense) or to show a little more guts?

On Tuesday, schools were closed en masse simply because education managers couldn't be bothered to try to keep them open.

If a further strike is called, headteachers should unlock school doors; parents should supply packed lunches; union members and non-union staff who do not wish to strike should be supported and helped past picket lines; highly-paid education bureaucrats should get off their bottoms, leave their desks, and stand in for striking staff; and school life should go on as usual.

I would personally be happy to volunteer to go into my local school after hours and push a broom or wield a mop to prevent innocent children's education being disrupted while the unions and the councils puff up their chests and posture at each other.

TR Bugler,

Dunning.