In article , Dave Plowman (News)
wrote:
In article om,
dennis@home wrote:
It didn't matter what the relationship with your friends was, there
were closed shops, if the union kicked you out you didn't work. And
yes they did kick people out when they voted against the union
instructions.

Citation, please. And lets have loads of examples. To prove they were at
least common rather than so rare as to be pointless.

I happily joined the ABS when I went to work at the BBC. I was even a
member of Branch Committee for a time. However a strike was called in
1973/4 to demand a pay rise. The Governement had introduced a pay freeze
which meant that the BBC was unable to give one, even if they had wanted
to. I was never aware of being asked whether I wanted to go on strike. I
was simply told that would be the case.

If you earn money, you can't opt out of paying tax or NI etc - much as
many would love to. Of course those who like to pay no tax would still
expect the same benefits of being part of society as everyone else.

Much the same as union membership. If the union negotiates better pay and
or conditions, non members still get the benefit.

When I was a victim of the BBC Legionella Outbreak, the relevant union,
BECTU I suspect, offered non-members free access to the Union's solicitors.
This turned out to be a serious problem, since the solicitor advised
accepting the first offer from the insurance company. Some of us wrote
back saying this was not good enough; we received a very rude letter
effectively saying "find your own solicitor". One of the recipients of this
letter was on the Union NEC - it did not go down well. But the sad thing
about this episode was that those who needed the compensation the most took
the union solicitor's advice and accepted the original offer. I eventually
received nearly 3 times the original offer.