Police demand right to strike?

[KeyboardJockey]

I support it, only because a striking police force would be fucking murder to deal with byt he authorities.

I hate filth and government - but I hate government more.

Ooooooh look a plastic revolutionary.

 

[poster342002]

I think the police do have a right to strike in one or two EU countries. Add to that that the PCSOs can already join the Public & Commercial Service union (PCS) and I can see the police eventually gaining full TU rights in the medium future.

Ironic, really, that the one group of workers likely to buck the trend and see their employement/union rights increased should be the police.

 

[In Bloom]

I think the police do have a right to strike in one or two EU countries. Add to that that the PCSOs can already join the Public & Commercial Service union (PCS) and I can see the police eventually gaining full TU rights in the medium future.

Ironic, really, that the one group of workers likely to buck the trend and see their employement/union rights increased should be the police.

Wouldn't surprise me one bit.

The state have to keep the police happy, it wouldn't surprise me if they shat one and just gave them everything they want so they won't go on strike.

 

[ViolentPanda]

Perhaps they take the job on despite knowing that they are denied the right to strike. That's like saying that no-one should fight to improve safety in their workplace, because they took the job on knowing that the workplace was unsafe. Or whatever.

What a ridiculous analogy. I'm frankly stunned that you could come out with such a piece of utter dreck.
Police have trade unions, as do prison officers, their terms and conditions are such that even though they take employment knowing they have no recourse to official strike action (though they have recourse both to all the other labour relations tools, and to unofficial action) but are compensated for that lack of the right to strike by the favourable pay compared to other jobs with the same or a higher stress and danger level.
It's nothing like saying "don't struggle", it's saying "struggle using the tools available, the ones you knew you'd have to use when you took the job".

Everyone should have the right to campaign and negotiate for improvements in their workplace, and the right to industrial action is part of that. In actual fact, police are paid reasonably well compared to other public sector employees, and get travel allowances and London allowances (in London, of course!), but I have never felt comfortable that they don't have the right to strike.

It's not about your comfort, it's about standing by your choices. The police have it far better than the military; they aren't allowed any type of union or employment protection except what is "gifted" to them by the MoD.

 

[ViolentPanda]

Yep, violent and anti-social crime would hit poorer areas worse than anywhere else and the police would sit on their fat arses eating kebabs and doing fuck all about it. Could you imagine?

Same old same old, then.

 

[untethered]

The police shouldn't be permitted to strike. They should be defending the state against trade union subversion, not organising it themselves.

 

[ViolentPanda]

Wouldn't surprise me one bit.

The state have to keep the police happy, it wouldn't surprise me if they shat one and just gave them everything they want so they won't go on strike.

Or, it could go the way the POA's situation in the early 90s went, where an element of privatisation was introduced into the system. The state always finds that a good stick to beat uppity workers (even coppers, I suppose) with.

 

[ViolentPanda]

The police shouldn't be permitted to strike. They should be defending the state against trade union subversion, not organising it themselves.

That's not the job of the Police Service (even though it's a job they've doe with gusto), their job is to uphold the law.
As for "trade union subversion", give it a rest, you sad old muppet. Our trades unions are about as subversive as a copy of "Horse and Hound".

 

[untethered]

That's not the job of the Police Service (even though it's a job they've doe with gusto), their job is to uphold the law.

Oh yes, that was it.

Our trades unions are about as subversive as a copy of "Horse and Hound".

But did you see what the Countryside Alliance got up to in Parliament Square? Proper rough stuff, that was.

 

[audiotech]

...........

 

[TAE]

Police demand right to strike?

Who's going to arrest them if they do all go on strike.

 

[nightbreed]

A quick quote from Rob Sewells 'In the Cause of Labour' Published in 2004.

(please Nigel Irritable dont have a go cos Im quoting his book!!)

Chapter 10 page 155

'In June 1919 a successful strike by 300,000 Lancashire cotton operatives won a 48-hour week and a 30 per cent wage rise. The following month the National Union of Police and Prison Officers was provoked into calling a second strike. This time the government was well prepared and the response to the strike was very patchy. Unfortunately, the promised support from other sections did not materialise. ?Many trade union branches, many trade union executives, pledged themselves to support the police in maintaining their position. And yet, with the exception of a sectional strike or so, nowhere has any real backing been given to the police, save from Liverpool?, stated the Daily Herald. (5) The strike was broken and all the strikers were dismissed. The government, which was determined never again to countenance a similar situation, introduced improvements in pay and conditions in an attempt to divide the police from other workers. They also took measures to stamp out trade unionism in the force, which ended in the NUPPO itself being outlawed.'

The Police were in a Union so it is not 'abnormal' for industrial action to be considered by the cops. And for all you anarchists out there, remember sections of the Hungarian police came out on the side of the workers and fought in 1956. See Andy Andersons (solidarity press) book. I think it is refered to in there.

 

[cockneyrebel]

Do people on here really see the police as workers? They might do a job, but they're not part of the working class as far as I'm concerned. Part of their job might be to "uphold the law" but the other part of their job is to be the thugs of the government and smash up any militant working class movement that threatens the establishment. Because working class militancy has been low in the UK for a fair while that side of things hasn't been called on so much in the last 10 years or so, but the miner's strike and such like show that part of the polices job quite clearly. As do numerous examples all around the world on a year on year basis.

Even when they do carry out the job of upholding the law, firstly those laws were made by and stacked in favour of the ruling class. Secondly they do it with a huge dose of sexism, racism, homophobia and anti-working class prejudices thrown into their job. All in all, as an institution, they're absolute scum and all my experiences of them back that up.

I would be totally against the police being part of the TUC and being considered part of the working class movement. If they go on strike, so be it, and in miltiant times you'd try and win sections of them over, but in the final analysis they're not part of the working class.

And before anyone says it, yeah of course you have to use the police, you've got no choice. But I always think it's a bit similar to a prostitute having to use a pimp. Hardly great, but that's all there is.

 

[Guineveretoo]

Do you really think that all workers are part of the "working class" struggle?

I meant workers in that they, as you point out here, are doing a job. They don't decide what job to do, or when. They follow instructions. They are paid to do it. That makes them workers.

 

[cockneyrebel]

Do you really think that all workers are part of the "working class" struggle?

Of course not. But I meant I don't see the police as part of the working class in a political sense i.e. they're not part of working class struggle, they're actually there to crush working class movements and that is their job, or at least a part of it.

 

[In Bloom]

Do you really think that all workers are part of the "working class" struggle?

I meant workers in that they, as you point out here, are doing a job. They don't decide what job to do, or when. They follow instructions. They are paid to do it. That makes them workers.

Yes, but part of their role as police is attacking other workers and undermining their struggles, which precludes them playing a part in any wider workers' movement. It's a bit like scabs unionising because they aren't being paid enough to cross picket lines. Sure they're workers in struggle in the loosest, most semantic sense, but who gives a fuck when their work is fucking over other workers?

Edit: Or alternatively, what CR said in that post above mine I didn't read because I'm a dimwit.

 

[Guineveretoo]

But you could say similar things about some civil servants, surely, but they always seem to get popular political support when they go out on strike.

I have always thought it wrong that police officers aren't able to strike, in the same way as I thought it was wrong that GCHQ workers were not able to strike, and spent years traipsing across to Cheltenham to all the rallies and protests on that one, despite knowing what they do for a living...

I know there is a key difference, which is that the right to strike was taken away from the GCHQ workers against their will, whereas the police gave it up willingly, but I still think there is a similarity.

The right to strike was something which was fought for and for which people died. I don't like it being denied to one group of workers because of the job that they do, regardless of whether or not I agree with them doing that job...

 

[In Bloom]

The right to strike was something which was fought for and for which people died. I don't like it being denied to one group of workers because of the job that they do, regardless of whether or not I agree with them doing that job...

It's not even about whether or not they have the "right to strike". Having the legal right to strike means precisely fuck all unless you have sufficient levels of millitancy and organisation to back it up, actually, it doesn't mean much more in those circumstances, but for different reasons.

The point is that even if they did go on strike, even if they won whatever it is they wanted, they'd be back to fucking other groups of workers on strike at the first opportunity. There's no opportunity for any kind of meaningful solidarity there, no way that they can work within the workers' movement in any real sense.

So basically, fuck 'em. They can strike all they like for all the difference it makes to me, but you won't catch me going along to their pickets to help them out.

 

[Guineveretoo]

I wouldn't go along and help them, either, and I don't think they are particularly badly paid or treated with regard to terms and conditions, but I do think they should have the right to withdraw their labour if they are sufficiently aggrieved collectively.

Innit.

 

[In Bloom]

I wouldn't go along and help them, either, and I don't think they are particularly badly paid or treated with regard to terms and conditions, but I do think they should have the right to withdraw their labour if they are sufficiently aggrieved collectively.

Innit.

What can I say but, who gives a shit?

 

[Johnny Canuck3]

Sounds like it's different there.

For one thing, our police pretty much flat out refuse to get involved in labour disputes. Questions of illegal picketing etc are dealt with by way of court injunction, and the unions and management here usually abide by court orders.

Cops are designated an essential service, and cannot strike. The same goes for ambulance personnel and various others, but it wasn't always that way. We've had police strikes in Canada, back in the Seventies, I believe. Exactly what you might expect would happen, happened. Lawlessness, looting, etc. The only thing that controlled it was that we have the RCMP, a national police force, that stepped in, at least with the New Brunswick strike, and the Surete de Quebec, with the Montreal strike. No army got involved.

I'm of two minds about whether or not they should have the right. I can see the argument that their work is essential, but in a regime that allows unions and collective bargaining, it's hard to countenance removing the only effective tool that a union has.

 

[Das Uberdog]

I don't think the police are workers - in my head, I categorise different types of work as follows;

If your job is simply to do something, then you're a worker.

If your job is to tell someone how to do something, then you're a manager.

If you own the things the workers and managers are doing stuff with, and paying them, then you're bourgeois.

In my mind, therefore, police fall into a management/boss category.

 

[glenquagmire]

Where does, say, my manager fall into that?

He's on about £25k and manages me and one other colleague but has several tiers of management above him.

Is he a class enemy?

 

[subversplat]

Oh dear, are we defining "class" again?

 

[glenquagmire]

By all means ignore my tangent if you want to keep the thread on topic...

 

[Guineveretoo]

Sounds like it's different there.

For one thing, our police pretty much flat out refuse to get involved in labour disputes. Questions of illegal picketing etc are dealt with by way of court injunction, and the unions and management here usually abide by court orders.

Cops are designated an essential service, and cannot strike. The same goes for ambulance personnel and various others, but it wasn't always that way. We've had police strikes in Canada, back in the Seventies, I believe. Exactly what you might expect would happen, happened. Lawlessness, looting, etc. The only thing that controlled it was that we have the RCMP, a national police force, that stepped in, at least with the New Brunswick strike, and the Surete de Quebec, with the Montreal strike. No army got involved.

I'm of two minds about whether or not they should have the right. I can see the argument that their work is essential, but in a regime that allows unions and collective bargaining, it's hard to countenance removing the only effective tool that a union has.

So who polices demonstrations and marches then?

 

[butchersapron]

We've had police strikes in Canada, back in the Seventies, I believe. Exactly what you might expect would happen, happened. Lawlessness, looting, etc.

Really? I mean really really or just one strike turning violent?

 

[In Bloom]

Where does, say, my manager fall into that?

He's on about £25k and manages me and one other colleague but has several tiers of management above him.

Is he a class enemy?

My mum sold pork pies but my dad was the Marquis de Sade, what class am I?

Yawn.

 

[glenquagmire]

Eh? Righto.

 

[ATOMIC SUPLEX]

They take the job, as the military and prison officers do, knowing they are taking a job where the right to strike is specifically excluded from their terms and conditions of employment. If they don't like it then they shouldn't take the job.

I'm with this one. There may be various work to rule actions they they could take but it's not the kind of job you start without knowing what you are getting yourself in for is it?