The headline for the article gave the game away ‘£45m Strike Central: Red Ed's union backers fork out a fortune on futuristic new HQ - as thousands of their members face the sack’.
This is what passes for standard union bashing these days. But let’s hope that the Mail’s blue-toothed cub reporter has a point. Over recent years we have seen a marked lull in official industrial action. Yet in the recent period there are indications in a revival of strike action to resist attacks on services, jobs and conditions.
In places like Nottinghamshire Council and Southampton NHS UNISON members are currently mounting effective industrial action. Whilst in comparison to the 1970’s levels of strike action remain very low, the UK figures edged up in 2010 and co-ordinated national action, say in defence of public sector pensions, will signal a new era of more combative industrial relations:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-11838544
As for the Mail’s intended smear - at a time when the British Government is playing anti-union 'war games' at the highest level of state - Strike Central beats Sleepy Hollow as a name for a union head office any day of the year.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1361040/45m-Strike-Central-Red-Eds-union-backers-fork-fortune-futuristic-new-HQ--thousands-members-face-sack.html
