YouSaid · the spoken record

Mick Whelan

lines on the record: 56
first: 2024-09-19
most recent: 2024-09-19
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“Well, it had been that easier, I'd done it sooner. But it's not, you know, real politics. Real politic is you're cutting cloth. It is about what is going to be compared to other people's pay rises, the 22 billion black hole that we now have been found additionally in the finances, whatever else. And if anybody thinks it was an easy negotiation, it wasn't, but actually it was a nice negotiation because people wanted to talk to you and wanted to find a resolution.”
2024-09-19 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Mick Whelan One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“On the fifth day appointed Lou Hague Secretary of State, they appointed Lord Hendy on the ninth. I believe the initial meeting with myself and assisted trade unions we met different times of course was on the tenth and we laid out what we believed our belief was. They put a new team in place and contrary to popular belief it was not an easy negotiation. They did not want to be seen as caving in or just rolling over in a two-year dispute. And if you want to ask us, we've got everything we wanted. No, we didn't, but we got an equitable resolution.”
2024-09-19 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Mick Whelan One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Because nobody wanted to resolve it. Nobody really wanted to talk to us. And we found ourselves at one point, I remember talking to you earlier, where they put a deal out to the press that we'd never seen. We've been in talks for six months. We'd broken up for the Christmas period. And they put a deal out. And basically the deal, if I just be really quick or try to be quick for a change, was if you give up every agreement you've ever made nationally, every agreement you've ever made locally and don't negotiate on behalf of your members in future, you can have a 20% pay cut. Well, I didn't even have to put that to my members.”
2024-09-19 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Mick Whelan One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I've been negotiating at various levels this industry and the movement for about forty years, and I found myself in a really odd position whereby we went to the people that we work for under the privatised industry who we have negotiating rights with, and they said, we can no longer talk to you. You've got to talk to the government. And then I'd go to the government to be told by the government, well, we can't talk to you, you've got to talk to your employer. So that left this in a rather difficult position. So there are only two things to do, something or nothing. So we decided as in each of those 14 companies, as the pay awards ran out, we would ballot our members and hope that the leverage and the pressure they gave us would actually make somebody talk to us. And for those two years, I have to say it was the maddest process I've ever been in.”
2024-09-19 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Mick Whelan One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It did a couple of weeks ago, I think we never quite understood why we were in the dispute. We didn't look for the dispute and we came through the COVID process and thought, right, we don't quite need the same approbations every other key worker, but yeah, we did make those decisions. We did get key workers to work. We did move food as medicines around the country to find that the people we work for who were still making millions in profits and paying dividends to their shareholders all of a sudden told us they couldn't give us any pay rise anymore because they'd done a dodgy deal with the government. And if I'm in Crow, to be honest, I didn't think it'd take 24 to 26 months to resolve it.”
2024-09-19 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Mick Whelan One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“talking to the press as soon as it becomes public knowledge you and your colleagues and once you've done that I won't I'll admit I got changed and went down the road out of the way with a couple of colleagues had a couple of guinnesses and then went over to my family”
2024-09-19 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Mick Whelan One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source