Is The Miners Strike Still Vivid In Your Mind?

[neepsendlane]

And alot can't or won't move on. There are people poised ready for steel mills with 1970s tech and coal mines to reopen. It won't happen. They need to wake up and retrain. And besides, do we want the filth and soot and pollution we had then ? Check out china for a refresher. Do we want more workers with vibration white finger and knackered lungs?

What can the millions who are now out of work or never been in work train for.

Pehaps the shelf stacking or phone answering comes to mind.

[gnvqsos]

I don't think these changes can be put down to one person. And I certainly don't blame the strike for the lack of discipline and courtesy that is prevalent in some parts of society. IMO that started with the freedoms we all welcomed in the 60s.

 

I was bringing up two children in the 70s and we lived for part of that decade in a Doncaster pit village. By then, the miners were well paid - which was right and fair. However, the NCB didn't just pay the people who did the dangerous jobs well, they paid everyone, especially their management, well above the average rates at the time. Coal House was where every clerical worker in Doncaster aspired to be employed. They, like the miners, were well paid and got the same perks of a coal or heating allowance, as did the management and uncle Tom Cobleigh etc.

 

UK produced coal could probably have been competitive if the costs had been kept reasonable. If the unions had taken things more slowly, the pit closures would have gone ahead, but the profitable ones would have stayed open much longer. There has been plenty published about the strike, not everyone was convinced that Arthur was the knight in shining armour and Maggie the villain. Its not as simple as that.

 

Are you saying the NUM was wrong to insist that all members were to benefit from pay-rises?This is both equitable and prevents divisiveness.It is what a union seeks as its objectives.The NCB wanted to close uneconomic pits and cherry-pick but the NUM wanted the profitable pits to subsidise the less viable collieries.

[gym_rat]

What can the millions who are now out of work or never been in work train for.

Perhaps the shelf stacking or phone answering comes to mind.

 

 

your blaming things today on things that happened over 30 years ago - think about that for a second and maybe wonder if its maybe not their fault anymore after all that time.

 

Did they have a popular majority?NO!Reflect on what point you were attempting to prove,and the relevance it has to the Mineworkers' strike of 1983-4?

 

if I recollect, you brought up the subject of Mrs Thatcher having the majority vote first

 

 

Are you saying the NUM was wrong to insist that all members were to benefit from pay-rises?This is both equitable and prevents divisiveness.It is what a union seeks.

 

 

its a flawed policy, give no-one any incentive.

[maxmaximus]

This is how desperate people have become because of the Tories and Thatcher.

 

Sardinian miners armed with hundreds of pounds of explosives have barricaded themselves over 1300ft (400m) underground in Italy’s only coalmine, presumably threatening to blow themselves up unless the government vows to protect their jobs.

 

Up to 100 desperate workers seized 771lbs (350 kg) of company explosives and locked themselves inside the Carbosulcis di Nuraxi Figus mine overnight on Monday.

 

A load of coal has been dumped at the entrance of the mine, making access possible only by foot, according to Adnkronos International.

 

“We are worried that the mine may close. We are afraid for our jobs,” Sandro Mereu, a miner who has worked at the pit for 28 years, told Reuters.

 

[gnvqsos]

Gym rat,the NUM gave all its members an incentive to remain in the mining industry,to participate in NUM affairs,and value their jobs.What ore do you want?

 

 

I did point out that Mrs Thatcher never achieved universal approval,not even approval from a simple majority of the electorate who chose to vote.The data provided to challenge this point has focused on seats won,a different concept altogether.

[gym_rat]

Gym rat,the NUM gave all its members an incentive to remain in the mining industry,to participate in NUM affairs,and value their jobs.What ore do you want?

.

 

 

pun intended?

 

 

 

no, I believe that pay should reflect work not collective output.

 

Once the cleaners started getting the same as the coal face (or other analogies if you wish) any business will simply become uneconomical and everyone looses.

[tinfoilhat]

What can the millions who are now out of work or never been in work train for.

Pehaps the shelf stacking or phone answering comes to mind.

 

There have never been more people going to university than there are now. If they want to do a degree in media studies they can. If they want to do law or medicine they can. If there really isn't the work here for those degrees - go to a country that has got the jobs.

 

And if you aren't bright enough to go to university, what's wrong with working in a call centre or stacking shelves ? Money aside, why is working down a pit a "better" job than the two you've just looked down on ?

[gnvqsos]

pun intended?

 

 

 

no, I believe that pay should reflect work not collective output.

 

Once the cleaners started getting the same as the coal face (or other analogies if you wish) any business will simply become uneconomical and everyone looses.

 

The NUM always preserved differentials to reflect skill ,risk etc,hence Arthur's fat wedge

[denlin]

There have never been more people going to university than there are now. If they want to do a degree in media studies they can. If they want to do law or medicine they can. If there really isn't the work here for those degrees - go to a country that has got the jobs.

 

And if you aren't bright enough to go to university, what's wrong with working in a call centre or stacking shelves ? Money aside, why is working down a pit a "better" job than the two you've just looked down on ?

 

So you are suggesting that we as a deprived country without the resources to fully staff our hospitals should pay for the training of students and then send them abroad to work where they will not have to pay taxes in the country who paid for their training. That makes economic sense. No wonder we're going down the pan

[AdamSmith]

In a word "NO" time moves on and so does the industry, look to the NUM leader to see where a lot of the blame lays!