Unite and Grangemouth : Thu Oct 24, 2013 12:13 pm  

It appears Unite have made an almighty u-turn now that Ineos has called their bluff?

The company suggests it will invest 300m in a site, explains where it needs to be in terms of its cost structure if it is to make the investment. The union come along and start flexing its muscle which results in 800 people losing their jobs!! On the back of this potentially a further 500+. Did they think the company wasn't serious and would bow down to messers Dean and Rafferty? or have they hopped into a Tardis back to the mid 1970s?

I haven't mentioned the rouge/saintly union official that started all of this, Mr McClusky you have a lot to answer for in the way you run your union.

Re: Unite and Grangemouth : Thu Oct 24, 2013 12:40 pm  

Perhaps if you were in a union, you wouldn't feel the need to occasionally opine that you haven't a pay rise for X years (so why should anyone else).

Re: Unite and Grangemouth : Thu Oct 24, 2013 12:47 pm  

Ineos "Do it my way"
Union "No, you do it MY way"
Ineos "We'll shut the plant"
Union "Don't believe you"

Archetypal situation of Management V Union, both more bothered about willy-waving than trying to see the other's point of view.

Could be wrong but that's how it looks.

Re: Unite and Grangemouth : Thu Oct 24, 2013 1:42 pm  

El Barbudo wrote:

... Archetypal situation of Management V Union, both more bothered about willy-waving than trying to see the other's point of view...

It's also pretty much the only sort of story involving a union that you'll see. So, like stories about social workers, you don't get to read the positive ones.

Re: Unite and Grangemouth : Thu Oct 24, 2013 2:26 pm  

Mind, if you want to see this as a textbook case on industrial relations ... "So imagine an electricity provider is having a spot of bother over pay and pensions. "A perverse workforce are refusing to make themselves worse off and believe the firm is in financial distress. What's the management's next move?" [my emphasis] I do wonder how many would simply accept everything that such a management announces, and agree instantly to making themselves worse off. Or whether any objection to this would be called "willy-waving"? Full article

Mind, if you want to see this as a textbook case on industrial relations ... "So imagine an electricity provider is having a spot of bother over pay and pensions. "A perverse workforce are refusing to make themselves worse off and believe the firm is in financial distress. What's the management's next move?" [my emphasis] I do wonder how many would simply accept everything that such a management announces, and agree instantly to making themselves worse off. Or whether any objection to this would be called "willy-waving"? Full article

Re: Unite and Grangemouth : Thu Oct 24, 2013 4:04 pm  

I've been doing a bit of background reading and I wouldn't want to be negotiating with Jim Ratcliffe, his history suggests he's a "My way or the highway" type who is well used to using brinkmanship to get his way.

Re: Unite and Grangemouth : Thu Oct 24, 2013 4:18 pm  

El Barbudo wrote:

I've been doing a bit of background reading and I wouldn't want to be negotiating with Jim Ratcliffe, his history suggests he's a "My way or the highway" type who is well used to using brinkmanship to get his way.

That seems to be the agreed situation.

But it certainly doesn't make for good industrial relations, and casts the union (and I am no fan of McCluskey, personally) in a rather different light.

But as I said - very few UK news outlets will ever cover a union in a positive manner.

Although I also think that that op-ed is interesting in its analysis of his style of management as being quite prevalent in the UK today.

My personal experience of UK management, based on a working life that goes back to the early 1980s and covers a lot of companies, is that management is either scared of confrontation and avoids it at all cost, no matter how detrimental, or management is essentially confrontational, and sometimes corrupt with it.

I've managed at a day-to-day level in my trade (being responsible for a paper hitting deadline, for instance), but have never considered full-time management as a career move I wanted to make - I prefer the work I do, frankly, and I hate meetings, but also have far too short a fuse. I have massive, massive time for the work that ACAS does, largely because of that latter point (I really don't know how they do it) and that's as having experienced their work first hand.

Re: Unite and Grangemouth : Thu Oct 24, 2013 8:02 pm  

Neither side can come out of this covered with glory, Unite had their bluff called after they were put in a no win situation and Ineos's negotiating style is my way or the highway.

Re: Unite and Grangemouth : Fri Oct 25, 2013 7:35 am  

Big Graeme wrote:

Neither side can come out of this covered with glory, Unite had their bluff called after they were put in a no win situation and Ineos's negotiating style is my way or the highway.

You couldn't be more wrong Graeme. Ineos, at a stroke, has shown the sort of decisive action needed to run a large competitive and viable commercial operation.The bully boys of Unite chose to follow the course of confrontation, puffing themselves up at press conferences, and escalating the situation with the sort of outmoded Socialist rhetoric not heard since Scargill marched the NUM into oblivion. Their very public humiliation was long overdue.

The sad part is, that those feather bedded career Union Officials, will be unlikely to face the redundancy consequences of their actions, unlike the resident workforce, perhaps overly confidant that as Grangemouth is a huge entity, it's very size and longevity would make them bullet proof, choose to believe this bunch of clowns. Seriously, which part of "loosing ten million pounds a month" did the average Joe not understand?

The old adage, "He who pays the piper calls the tune" was never more relevant, than today in the East of Scotland.

Re: Unite and Grangemouth : Fri Oct 25, 2013 7:49 am  

One of Ratcliffe's conditions is a no-strike agreement.
On the face of it, any Union is going to see that as anti-Union, ultimately giving Ratcliffe the power to impose pretty much any conditions he likes, at any time, with the Union only able to oppose his actions through the courts.
I know he's offering a £15k sweetener but, without the worry of the ultimate sanction of a strike, he could get that money back through salary degradation, increased hours, reduced benefits, all sorts of channels.