How Strikes Come to an End
The Bottom Line
BBC
4.6 • 606 Ratings
🗓️ 19 January 2023
⏱️ 36 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Current strike action across the UK led to more than a million lost working days in 2022, the worst industrial strife the nation has experienced since the 'Winter of Discontent' in the 1970s. But with the benefit of hindsight, what can we learn from those who have dealt with labour relations in the past, and can their insights help to establish a better way of working out employee grievances?
Evan Davis and guests discuss.
GUESTS Alan Johnson, former MP, Secretary of State and former Head of the Union of Communication Workers. Professor Sian Moore, Professor of Employment Relations and Human Resource Management and Co-Director of the Centre for Research on Employment and Work (CREW), University of Greenwich Susanna Newing, Chief People Officer, Coventry Council
Presenter: Evan Davis Producer: Julie Ball and Marianna Brain Editor: China Collins Sound: Gareth Jones and Neil Churchill Production Co-ordinators: Siobhan Reed and Sophie Hill
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | BBC Sounds, Music, Radio, Podcasts. |
| 0:05.0 | Welcome to our first podcast of our new series in this new year. Now, you may not want to hear more about strikes. There has been ample coverage of them on daily news programs, but we couldn't resist coming to them on the bottom line. We were aware we didn't want |
| 0:22.3 | to just replicate what you're hearing in the daily news. So we wanted to stand back a little bit |
| 0:26.6 | and think about the dynamics of industrial strife. And in particular, I've been wondering if we |
| 0:32.6 | can see any patterns in how strikes end, how they resolve. |
| 0:42.1 | And what's very important about this question is that if at the beginning of the strike, |
| 0:48.0 | everybody knew how it was going to end, could we jump straight to the resolution without the costly strike in between? |
| 0:50.9 | Could we accelerate the process? |
| 0:52.5 | So we decided this edition of the bottom line should look at how strikes come to an end. |
| 0:58.0 | Hello, welcome to the first programme of our new series in this new year, and alas, we carry over some unfinished business from 2022, |
| 1:08.0 | in the form of workplace strife and several notable unresolved strikes. |
| 1:15.0 | Well, all strikes eventually come to an end and we wondered if we could see any patterns in how they |
| 1:21.0 | resolve. This is an important question, obviously, because if everybody knew at the beginning of a |
| 1:26.5 | strike, how it was going to finish, |
| 1:28.8 | we could surely jump straight to the end, whatever form it takes, |
| 1:32.0 | without having the trouble of the strike itself. |
| 1:34.6 | It would all save us a lot of bother. |
| 1:37.0 | Well, I have three guests with experience of unions and strikes in the UK. |
| 1:41.3 | What do they think needs to happen to save us all a lot of bother in the next weeks and |
| 1:46.3 | months? So let us meet them. And first up, Alan Johnson, former MP and cabinet minister, |
| 1:52.5 | Secretary of State, Home Secretary, numerous jobs, author, broadcaster, but also, and pertinent |
| 1:59.5 | to this conversation, he was the leader of the |
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