Trade Union Hypocrisy

And so the unions wade in to the 'Cuts' fiasco:

Union fury as city council reveals 300 jobs are to go

Says The Scotsman here.

Edinburgh council have decided to cut upper and middle-management jobs to save money. They are doing this against the background of budget cuts eminating from London but also because Gordon Brown pretty much bankrupted the City with PFI projects and because Scotland's unionist parties imposed that insane tram system upon the capital. They're being told to make cuts and the background is not favourable.

However the unions had this to say about the council administration and its leader Jenny Dawe:

It is her coalition government that is forcing through cuts that the economists who actually predicted the crisis say are not needed and will put the economy into an even bigger mess.

..These cuts have nothing to do with the deficit, they are purely and simply an ideological attack on public services and the people who rely on them.

Couple of points here. Are the unions in Scotland attacking the SNP for cutting council budgets to meet their own reduced grant or attacking London for cutting the grant to Scotland? Who is being ideological?

I do agree that some economists predicted the crisis but they also blame Labour for causing it. The same economists were against 'stimulus' which magnified the problem - were the unions? Don't think so! Are the unions attacking Labour for bankrupting Britain? Eh, no. If they did then we could get on with the business of taking Britain out of the wars Labour got is into and a refund of the bail-outs Labour heaped on their City buddies.

It seems to me that the unions are not going to get involved in defending workers but themselves get involved in 'ideological attacks'. Unions should be about negotiating for their members and not about representing political parties.

If the unions want to back the people they should oppose 'austerity' and point to Labour's 'stimulus' as a debt-inducing failure but more importantly campaign on the idea of returning the 'bail-outs' Labour paid to the bankers and an end to expensive wars and weapons' systems instead of ideological attacks on city councils which have been ladened with a legacy of bankruptcy from their previous Labour administration, Gordon Brown's PFI scams and unionist tub-thumping about trams. They are being dishonest with their members but in Scotland we are long used to that kind of betrayal from them.

Expect more hypocrisy from unions as Britain crumbles.