Nasty business! But, after 10 years as a Union rep and 3 as Branch Chair, I do feel that many strikes are caused as much by the incompetence of union negotiators as they are by the intransigence of management.

When I was first a rep, the Chair turned to me after one succerssful meeting and asked "How do you mange to get so many concessions?"

My reply was that while she'd been reading Marx, Engels and Mao, I'd been reading Machiavelli, Sun Tzu and Musashi. Ideology is all very well, but what's needed is technique!