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Encourage trade unions
The UK’s experience of union power has not been great. Through the latter half of the 20th century, many unions leveraged their collectivised muscle to extort ruinously high wage settlements or impractical working practices from cowed employers. Stories abound of the print unions in the 1970s refusing to adopt new technologies, or enforcing rigid job demarcations. Today, we have London Underground ‘drivers’ earning £61,000 to operate trains that largely drive themselves, and getting a £1,000 bonus just for turning up to work during the Olympics.
But it needn’t be like that.
Germany’s industrial might is the envy of the world, yet it has a highly collectivised approach to industrial relations. Workers have an automatic ...
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