Back in the dim and distant, when I was a young industrial correspondent, my old sparring partner Ron Todd, then leader of the Transport and General Workers’ Union, used to tell a story about what he was up against.
Addressing a mass meeting of striking workers at Ford’s Dagenham car plant, he was proud to inform them that the works committee had secured a bumper 30 per cent pay rise, three months paid holiday and in future they’d only have to work Wednesdays.
Yet instead of wild cheers and rapturous applause, there was a few seconds silence followed by a voice from the back shouting: ‘What, every bloody Wednesday?’
Ron was joking, but it illustrated the extent of the unrealistic demands made by some of the more militant union leaders and their members in the late 1970s and early 80s.
Today, with Britain’s manufacturing base shrivelled and about to be finished off by a combination of Labour’s high taxes, Angry Ginge Rayner’s workers’ ‘rights’ act, and crippling energy costs caused by Miliband’s suicidal Net Zero obsession, the old industrial unions are no longer a force in the land.
They have been replaced by far-Left white-collar unions in the public sector – doctors, teachers, civil servants, council jobsworths, etc. Their exaggerated sense of entitlement far surpasses those of the traditional blue-collar ‘I’m All Right, Jack’ brigade. And there’s one fundamental difference.
Barmy Arthur Scargill’s miners went on strike for a year demanding the right to work. These days the civil servants, in particular, demand the right not to work.
Ever since the end of the overlong Covid lockdowns, where staff were instructed to Work From Home, they’re still refusing to return to the office full-time – if at all.
An investigation by the Daily Telegraph has exposed the WFH scandal infesting the public sector. Civil servants are using a selection of elaborate ruses to avoid doing the jobs they are paid for.
Departments worst affected are HMRC and the Land Registry, where some staff haven’t been anywhere near the office for between six months and two years. House buyers and sellers who depend on the Land Registry for official documentation are experiencing delays of up to 18 months.
Striking workers outside Ford’s Dagenham car plant… people used to go on strike demanding the right to work, writes Richard Littlejohn. These days the civil servants, in particular, demand the right not to work
Whitehall, the heart of British government, is half-empty on Mondays and a ghost town on Fridays
WFH workers give the impression they are beavering away at the workface, while slobbing around in his jim-jams, eating Hobnobs and watching Bargain Hunt, writes Littlejohn (picture posed by model)
It’s the same story at HMRC. No wonder a report at the end of last year found that 44,000 taxpayers were cut off after being put on hold for over an hour.
Even those staff who can be bothered to turn up don’t stick around for long. One whistleblower said it was commonplace for employees to clock in for a couple of hours and then disappear for the rest of the day.
A variety of scams are employed to fake attendance, including leaving laptops open and falsifying ‘flexible working’ logs.
My favourite was a report that some staff at HMRC are pretending to be working in person by driving to a nearby car park and logging in to the office wi-fi remotely before driving home again.
They’ve even got a name for it – ‘drive-by login’. You have to admire their ingenuity.
I’ve heard of drive-by shootings but this is ridiculous.
If they actually put that much effort into doing their job, productivity would be through the roof and the backlogs would quickly vanish.
I’d like to say I’m shocked by all this. But it comes as no surprise. I warned you years ago that the ‘temporary’ WFH arrangements during Covid would become institutionalised entitlements.
Shortly after lockdown ended and everyone was supposed to be working normally again, I heard from a Mail reader who hired a contractor who’d just come from a job where a council official was still ‘working from home’.
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The council employee in question had rigged up his home computer mouse to a slow-turning fan so that it moved every so often and gave the impression he was beavering away at the workface, while slobbing around in his jim-jams, eating Hobnobs and watching Bargain Hunt.
Far from getting back to normal, it’s getting worse. Staff at the Office for National Statistics in Edinburgh have just rejected an instruction to return to work just two days a week.
Whitehall, the heart of British government, is half-empty on Mondays and a ghost town on Fridays. Yet civil servants are continuing to claim their £3,000 to £6,000 a year ‘London weighting’ allowance, to compensate them for commuting costs and the higher cost of everything in London – even if they’re sitting at home 50 miles away.
But still they’re not satisfied. As I reported a few weeks ago, the main civil service union is demanding that its members be allowed to WFH full-time because of the higher fuel prices caused by the Iran war.
Admittedly, skiving has always been one of the attributes of the Great British Trades Unionist. When I worked on the Birmingham Evening Mail, we smuggled a photographer on to the night shift at British Leyland’s Longbridge plant. He snapped dozens of workers tucked up in sleeping bags and the production line at a standstill.
But at least they’d actually turned up for work in the first place, which is more than can be said for most of today’s so-called civil servants. I hate to think what my old mate, the late Ron Todd would have made of it.
These days, they won’t even work bloody Wednesdays.
Who knows what’s going on in the US/Iran peace talks. But at least the current ‘pause’ is good news for dolphins.
It has been reported that the IRGC was preparing to deploy a special squadron of kamikaze dolphins, with mines strapped to them, against American ships in the Straits of Hormuz.
This development may appal the animal rights brigade, but it could be viewed with interest by our own Ministry of Defence. The Royal Navy has been run down dangerously – another ship was taken out of service this week – and there’s no money for new frigates or destroyers.
But we might just be able to run to a squadron of dolphins. Perhaps we could divert one or two of them to intercept migrant dinghies in the Channel.
A fleet of Flippers could be just what we need to Stop The Boats.
The animal rights headbangers Peta, are objecting to a street in Melton Mowbray being called ‘Pork Pie Way’. Melton has been the home of the pork pie since the 1700s. But Peta complains that the name is ‘pig-demeaning’ and the street should be called ‘Vegan Pie Way’ instead.
How do they know it’s demeaning? Have they asked the pigs? Peta should stop telling porkies.
By the time you read this, the extent of Labour’s slaughter will be apparent. Not that it was ever in doubt. As I predicted, talk now turns to Starmer’s future.
But this isn’t just a rejection of Never Here Keir, it’s a repudiation of this entire, rotten Labour government, which needs to be swept away before it can do any more damage.
Yet tone-deaf, anti-democratic Surkeir somehow draws the conclusion that the answer to being hammered in local council elections is to rejoin the EU in everything but name, for which he has no democratic mandate.
More than 17.4 million people voted for Brexit. Yesterday, three men and a rabid dog voted Labour. And where does anyone get the idea that all those who voted Green, or Reform, or SNP, or Plaid Cymru actually meant: ‘What we want is Andy Burnham’?
I repeat, as I wrote earlier this week, what we really want is an immediate general election.
