trade union??

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melon

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just browsing the forum and not sure about anyone else but wouldnt the plasterers forum make a great starting point for a plasterers trade union,especially to give our trade a voice when times are tough afterall it wasnt that long ago that we were in a recession.
i for one wouldnt mind paying in to such a thing to give us a bit of clout if it happened again.
it might even work wonders for site prices,insurances,industry standards etc..
might have been discussed before but just thinking out loud. melon
 
In theory it's a really good idea, in reality it'll never work. You only need 1 person who's not involved to say I'll work for a lower price or somebody who is involved who needs to pay the bills and it all collapses. And getting somebody to go round and get people involved means a wage and a car etc which all cost, even if the big companies would even talk to them. Shame really but that's the reality of it now.
 
Eventually big firms would dictate in a union. Just have a look around now all big firms paying peanuts and that's true for every aspect of life. Firms have to.please shareholders not their employees. Union would be good for keeping up with legislations and training, nothing more.
 
the plasterers union died in the 60s. the union rates were poor, why did we need to pay them to neg. when we could neg better rates with out them and save the union fees. i remember being told that tool money was to rise to 15p a week, what a joke!
there was sites in london that were union sites you could not work there unless you had a union card. then we had the builders strike, well no one took any notice you would have to stop work for 6 months before it affected anything. the organizers got sent to prison, a plasterer ricky tomlinson, now an actor got 6 months. because he stood up to ted heaths tory government, the late ted heath is now being investigated as a kiddie fiddler.
 
melon said:
just browsing the forum and not sure about anyone else but wouldnt the plasterers forum make a great starting point for a plasterers trade union,especially to give our trade a voice when times are tough afterall it wasnt that long ago that we were in a recession.
i for one wouldnt mind paying in to such a thing to give us a bit of clout if it happened again.
it might even work wonders for site prices,insurances,industry standards etc..
might have been discussed before but just thinking out loud. melon
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My Brother is in the Union here in Seattle. When he puts in a full week with them they take about $100.00 (66￡)/week from his pay for "working assessments". I quit the union back in 1989. When I joined the union we used to get money for parking downtown, travel pay when you got sent out over 30 mi. from the union hall. Subsistence pay if you got sent out of town and had to get a motel. Gun pay if you ran the hose & nozzle. Stilt pay if you were crazy enough to walk on those, more if you owned your own stilts. Foreman pay if they put you in charge of a crew. Out of all those benefits they have all been negotiated away over the years, I'm guessing that the business agents might have been the beneficiary of a few "gifts" from the employeers negotiators (the only reason I can think of for losing those benefits.) I think some people still get their foreman pay. My Uncle stayed in the Union for over 40 years paid plenty into their pension fund, he collected a couple of months worth of checks and then died, after which my Aunt hasn't gotten a dime of the 40 years worth of pension money he paid in.
 
Something as simple as plasterers not working for less than £xxx
And being able to do the job in the first place.
 
I agree there Danny , lifetime learning a skill and people work for less than minimum wage, crazy!

Running a business comes after earning a wage , if you are able to support your family etc and work is plentiful then you start thinking about running a business , thats the natural progression.
In some ways thats part problem of the current system, people are barely making a wage.
 
john simpson said:
I agree there Danny , lifetime learning a skill and people work for less than minimum wage, crazy!

Running a business comes after earning a wage , if you are able to support your family etc and work is plentiful then you start thinking about running a business , thats the natural progression.
In some ways thats part problem of the current system, people are barely making a wage.
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Yep and I think that is their problem... no ones forcing you to work for that wage... you need to evolve and adapt :D
 
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john simpson said:
I agree there Danny , lifetime learning a skill and people work for less than minimum wage, crazy!

Running a business comes after earning a wage , if you are able to support your family etc and work is plentiful then you start thinking about running a business , thats the natural progression.
In some ways thats part problem of the current system, people are barely making a wage.
Click to expand...
When you only earning a wage you still running a business, you still have to pay your bills related to the business, so therefore if you only earning a wage you losing a lot of money, and you got less to live on and make ends meet. I'm not saying when you desperate not to take on work for a knocked down price to stay afloat, but it does me nut in when site geezers do domestic job on the side with nicked materials from site and on site prices then they brag about it how cool they're
 
zolco said:
, ……..but it does me nut in when site geezers do domestic job on the side with nicked materials from site and on site prices then they brag about it how cool they're
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In the mid 1980's for a year I worked for the Seattle School District on their maintenance crew, there was around 100 people on the crew, electricians, plumbers, brick masons, painters, window/ glass, carpenters, and more. While I was working there they busted the electrican foreman and a couple of his guys for wiring houses on the side during their typical work day and also using school district materials. That must have been lucrative while it lasted, getting their paychecks and working on the side at the same time, assholes.
 
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