Originally Posted by Ignitionnet

I get a pay rise every year and don't need a union to push for it for me so I have no idea what you're referring to there. It's not a requirement, you just need to be valuable enough to the employer that it is worth their while improving your pay to retain your services.

Regarding what they're trained to do, BT aren't the only telco in the world and if they are only capable of working for one company it's their problem they have so few options.

I think unions are a relic of a bygone era that act as a comfort blanket for those who think they are entitled to a job for life with one company and who are too lazy / insecure / indifferent to risk changing their employer so the union tries to change their job.

If they don't have the skills to get another job which is better paid, then bluntly that is the going rate for their skills and they can either upgrade or add additional ones or deal with it.

Perhaps I'm just fortunate that I'm evidently coming from an alternative viewpoint where my employer compensates me in order to retain their services as they don't want to lose me rather than being of the opinion that I'm easy to replace and they don't care.

Unions aren't there to stick up for the workers they are there to keep the fat arse socialists that run them in jobs. They look for disharmony in workforces and need to amplify it in order to justify their existence and give them things to do. When they ballot their members for strikes they are actively campaigning for staff to strike and are all too happy to give them disinformation in order to get their way. In addition their political influence over the Labour party is, in a modern democracy, totally distasteful. Having the second largest political party in the country in the pocket both financially and in terms of voting power in internal decisions of bodies with so little relevance to modern Britain is, again, totally distasteful.

Unions should have been gotten rid of once the actual reason for their existence, getting basic rights for workers, was enshrined in law. There was a time when unions actually gave two hoots about society at large, these days they just seem to look for ways to keep themselves busy by causing society grief. Can I also point out that virtually all the union related grief stems from public sector or formerly public sector employers.

Either way a lot of people are getting zero payrise again this year. Times are hard, BT themselves only made profits through cost cutting. Many are fine with it if it guarantees a job next year, though of course for the unions and their members this isn't good enough.