dutch white collar trade union says they will never strike again

[Sasha]

you cant make this shit up, the dutch trade union movement is already among the weakest in the world and today the white collar union "de Unie" (a smaller union representing about 96.000 members and 300 collective agreements) has disavowed themselves from the use of strikes as a tool.

http://www.dutchnews.nl/news/archives/2015/01/dutch-union-drops-strike-action-in-favour-of-negotiations.php/

i think this was not what was meant when people advocated the "voluntarily self liquidation of the proletariat"

[bricolage]

fucking hell.

Ton Heerts, chairman of the biggest Dutch union federation FNV told the Financieele Dagblad a union which does not strike is like a ‘tiger without teeth’.
Is this just talk? What's the FNV like?

[Q]

"de Unie" (a smaller union representing about 96.000 members and 300 collective agreements)
Actually, this is a number from 2008 I saw cited on Wikipedia (maybe that's where you too got it from?). This article (http://nos.nl/artikel/2013025-fusie-tussen-cnv-en-de-unie-mislukt.html) mentions however a current membership of only 60 000. That's a steep decline in only a few years.

That article mentions by the way that the merger between De Unie and the christian union federation CNV (300k members) has failed. De Unie seems to dwindle into oblivion...

[Sasha]

fucking hell.

Is this just talk? What's the FNV like?

the FNV is the biggest trade-union in the netherlands, they are the best of the worst. they are quite closely linked to the soc-dems but they at least seem to try and gain more relevance again. Until recently the FNV was a federation of many small unions based on sector but they are in the process of merging almost all separate fnv unions in to one big union.
Also they had a pretty successful organizing drive in the migrant worker dominated cleaning sector which they now seem to use as a model to emulate in other sectors. they certainly became more activist in recently years (though still piss poor from a radical perspective)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federatie_Nederlandse_Vakbeweging

[Sasha]

also relevant to understand the unique dutch situation in regards to politics, trade-unionism and the lack of radicalism; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polder_model

[RedKobra]

So very sad. We don't even wait for the capitalists to defeat us anymore. We get the knockout punch in ourselves. One of our most militant unions in the UK (PCS) has similarly scored a huge own goal by declaring internal democracy suspended. So no more elections. No More votes. Brilliant. Just brilliant.

[piet11111]

useless, expensive and a nuisance to ordinary people.

Well if the unions insist on making strikes as small and short as possible then yes they are useless and a hindrance to others because it certainly wont bother the bosses.

Organizing strikes with a pre-set end date doesn't help either if your signalling your surrender ahead in time.

[chimx]

there are a lot of nuances to striking beyond starving the employer of labor for financial pressure. media campaigns for example.


Well if the unions insist on making strikes as small and short as possible then yes they are useless and a hindrance to others because it certainly wont bother the bosses.

i strongly recommend not taking this attitude with union members. for your average union member, striking means no income, choosing between food and bills, risking all you own for the betterment of you union brothers and sisters. its absolutely a struggle in the most real sense. having an attitude of glorifying those hard times is extremely alienating and just going to turn your average union member off. at least that has always been my experience.

[Sasha]

there are a lot of nuances to striking beyond starving the employer of labor for financial pressure. media campaigns for example.



i strongly recommend not taking this attitude with union members. for your average union member, striking means no income, choosing between food and bills, risking all you own for the betterment of you union brothers and sisters. its absolutely a struggle in the most real sense. having an attitude of glorifying those hard times is extremely alienating and just going to turn your average union member off. at least that has always been my experience.


ehh, your average union member gets paid if there is a strike, thats where the union is for right (if its a union backed strike it is) the rest of the workers are the ones who risk money.
but i guess striking still means something else in the US than it does here, here we hardly ever have prolonged strikes around specific labour disputes, its mostly the highly organized sectors like public transport shutting down for symbolic ritualized day to protest government austerity.

[chimx]

most unions in the US will give picket pay, but it will be a fraction of what their standard pay is and unless it is a very large union, they wont be able to maintain it that long. striking is absolutely a hardship, but at times a necessary hardship. the point is that nobody wants to deal with some brat romanticizing your hardship.

[bricolage]

I mean I think what we are getting at here is that simply blaming union bosses for not calling militant enough strikes (which is definitely not measured by time alone, there's a reason the '84 miners strike in the UK went on for so long and there's a reason why it was the one that lost) is kind of missing the point. While those at the top of unions are certainly not revolutionaries and will almost always sell out their members, we are in most cases not dealing with a rank and file that is desperate for conflict and is simply being held back by bureaucracy. What is missed is that in many cases those sell-out union leaders are pretty representative of rank and file opinion and are in some cases even to the left of them. Secondly, the idea that militancy is something can be gifted downwards from a revolutionary leadership to the passive and malleable masses is both patronising and, well, wrong. In any case what I'm getting at is that I think it's a mistake to look at a lack of militancy within rank and file workers and within the wider working class simply in terms of a problem with 'the unions' or their leadership.

Although none of this should be seen as an excuse for the vast majority of unions and union leaders who are, on the whole, parasites, sell-outs and tools of the state. I just thought I should add that.

Oh, and as a side point I think it's often assumed that a lot more strike pay is given out than actually happens in real life.

[piet11111]

i strongly recommend not taking this attitude with union members. for your average union member, striking means no income, choosing between food and bills, risking all you own for the betterment of you union brothers and sisters. its absolutely a struggle in the most real sense. having an attitude of glorifying those hard times is extremely alienating and just going to turn your average union member off. at least that has always been my experience.

Hard times with the kind of 1 day strikes we tend to have ?

I think you are confusing a real strike with the pro-forma strikes we are familiar with in the netherlands.

[BIXX]

Yeah... With what little experience I've had with a unionized workplace that I happened to enter right when there was some serious bs happening, I'm getting disillusioned pretty damn quick.