I was thinking along those lines. It tends to be in the public sector or maybe in industries that were traditionally public or ones Labour would like to re-nationalise.

Having worked in Engineering and more recently technology its really something I’ve not been exposed to. Last exposure was UKAEA as an apprentice in the early 80’s.

I was recently over in Spain with work and attended a workers council meeting which was interesting.

There was the tory idea of having a workers representative on the board of all the larger companies, which could be a decent idea. However this appears to have been shelved, along with looking after the poor and less well off. Bloody politicians

Members of the workers council in Spain, and I think there is something similar in France have 'guaranteed' jobs whilst on the council for 4 years!! Nice position to be in.

You also have to factor in the nature of the customer base, some customers are held captive by effective monopolies and some are not. I'm constantly inconvenienced by Southern Rail strikes, although I think it's the DfT that is to blame for deliberately engineering the dispute, rather than the Unions and the TOC (although they are ****s too). The thing is I don't have a sensible alternative to using Southern trains. I commute between 2 and 3 hours a day, but if I were to try and replace the train part of that it would be 5 hours plus. Southern have an effective monopoly over part of my commute. But if a supplier I can easily switch was hit by a strike and it affected me, I'd just switch to another supplier, that's the beauty of competition (the caveat being the cost of switching).

Which in effect is what we had. My line is served by Southern, Gatwick Express and Thameslink. It's not that long ago I could travel into London Bridge and it was cheaper than travelling into Victoria. Then up popped the Tories and all three became "owned" by Govia. Prices went up, competition died and we now have a god awful mess.

Initially it was all a bit of an inconvenience. It is now effecting people's lives and the way they live those lives. My tolerance is very low and blood pressure now very high, but I have no alternative so have to suck it up. It's a ******** joke. Except nobody is laughing, apart from the shareholders who are happily subsidised by UK Plc.