1 min read
ByStephen Pollard, Stephen Pollard
I have a piece in today's Times on the tanker driver's strike. Here's an extract:
There are a number of golden rules in life but perhaps the most important is this: you don't get what you deserve; you get what you negotiate.
Only when one understands this basic truth can one hope to understand the way the world will, should, does and can only ever work.
The response to the Shell tanker drivers' strike is just the latest example of otherwise intelligent people not yet grasping this fundamental point. Usually it's over nurses' pay - they deserve more - or footballers' - they deserve less. Now, somewhat bizarrely, it's tanker drivers. The unions say the drivers who deliver to Shell earn £32,000 a year. The employers say it's £36,000. Lots of people say the drivers earn enough and shouldn't be striking for more. I say: what's it got to do with you?
The contracts between the drivers and their employers are a private affair and it is no business of mine or anyone else how much the drivers earn, any more than it's my business whether you think £6 for an omelette and chips is good value or a rip off. It's between you and the cafe.
The nature of a market is that one party offers a good or service and either agrees a mutually acceptable price with another party or they go their separate ways. And that's all there is to it.
If the tanker drivers are not happy with the price they are paid, they have every right to try to negotiate a pay rise. And if one tactic they choose to use as part of that negotiation is to withdraw their labour, that's up to them, just as it's up to the employers how they react to the strike.