Tis the season to be striking, Fa la la la la, la la la la!
As if it wasn’t enough for CWU Post Office workers to go on Strike for 5 days from the 19th and ASLEF and RMT Southern Rail employees to be in the middle of a three day walkout, now Unite Argos delivery drivers are to withdraw their labour for three days starting on the 19th December.
Edited to add: On the 14th December Wincanton and Unite reached a confidential deal (for which read both parties gave ground but don’t want to admit it). All proposed strike action has been suspended pending a ballot of their members.
The drivers don’t actually work for Argos but for haulage company Wincanton and are based at Argos’ national distribution centre in Staffordshire. This warehouse distributes goods to seven regional Argos distribution centres which in a hub and spoke arrangement replenish each individual Argos store.
It is absolutely no accident that the drivers are aiming to cause as much disruption as possible to consumer’s Christmases or “havoc and chaos” as Unite term it. What better time of year to wage war and hold a company to ransom? Unite point out that there will be a lot of very unhappy Argos customers if they don’t receive goods ordered as presents for relatives this Christmas and said “We can assure Argos customers that strike dates are only being announced as a last resort and that Unite’s door is open 24/7 to try and settle this long-standing dispute“.
Seeing as the dispute has been running for two years, I can’t help wondering why Unite didn’t call the strike back in November or wait until January and the answer is of course Unite want to cause as much misery to consumers as possible and the more children in tears on Christmas morning the better as far as they’re concerned, although of course they insist it’s all Wincanton’s fault.
Argos do say that they have contingency plans in place and are working hard to ensure deliveries aren’t affected. The good news is that the strike should not affect eBay Click and Collect orders in any way as these are delivered direct into the store located nearest to the end customer.
Whilst in the past there was a healthy amount of public sympathy for striking workers, the CWU found dwindling support in their last Royal Mail Christmas strikes a few years back. The public appeared to get fed up with being held to ransom by the posties every couple of years and if Argos can’t deliver this Christmas then customers will probably just switch their custom to arch rival Amazon instead.
33 Responses
another bunch of dozy buggers showing how much they can be done without
Sack them all.
Short-sighted fools. Like Royal Mail workers who went on strike a few years ago, consumers just went to other couriers such as Hermes and never came back.
People like this don’t deserve a job IMO.
Dozy buggers…. sack them all…really????
It is these dozy buggers that probably help deliver all of YOUR mail at very cheap rates – and for pretty awful wages and working conditions.
The usual hateful spite from the great British public at people trying to earn a decent living.
If none of them deserve their jobs who is going to deliver your orders – morons.
“Seeing as the dispute has been running for two years, I can’t help wondering why Unite didn’t call the strike back in November or wait until January and the answer is of course Unite want to cause as much misery to consumers as possible and the more children in tears on Christmas morning the better as far as they’re concerned..”
The above is possibly the worst piece of Daily Mail led drivel I’ve seen in print for a long while.
I don’t know the ins/outs of this dispute I haven’t taken the time to dig / find out. I doubt you have either.
I do know that if I had a long running dispute/whatever I’d be looking for an edge to bring it to a conclusion.
The same as we ALL do to improve our lot in life.
How one sided is this article, I have to say Tamely you haven’t done a very good job on this one, poor show, poor show indeed.
Dem Man Have Feeling Too You Know!
unite is now attempting to bugger up christmas air travel
with a christmas strike of baggage handlers
Unfortunately, this takes us back to the 1970s again.
A p*ss poor B-team conservative government faced by a rudderless opposition.
Recipe for disaster when you consider the big negotiations coming up. To be led by the court jester Johnson, the maverick Dr Fox (who couldn’t hold down his previous ministerial job) and the whacky David Davis who resigned his own seat, only to find nobody gave a toss.
Is it any surprise the lunatics are taking over the asylum?