Dominic Sandbrook - the 1970s

[flip_flop]

I have been watching Sandbrook's series on the 70s with interest.

I didn't start my working life until the early 90s, so I don't remember the 70s other than through a child's eyes, and so far as I can tell, the unions in the 70s were a scourge.

Sandbrook told of one strike, which sounds as though it is apocryphal, but presumably isn't, where a strike was called and 600 people walked out with little or no notice just because some stray cats entered the factory and left some of their mess. They then refused to come back to work because where the mess was cleaned up some of the floor was wet.

So, my questions are, what was it like to be a worker in the 70s, and were the unions as unreasonable as they appeared?

[emmie]

might be of some help. I was working then, and for a time we literally worked in the dark in our office, only using candles late in the daytime, this was due to power cuts. I do remember rubbish piled up on the street.

http://news.bbc.co.uk.../magazine/6729683.stm

[New Judge]

Yes. And unburied bodies because workers at the creamtoriums and cemetaries were on strike. It was an absolute nightmare and you did not know from one day to the next which services or induistries would be taking "industrial action" (a misnomer if ever there was one).

And it would have lasted much longer had Mrs T not rolled her sleeves up and sorted it out.

[bibblebub]

'nightmare' and 'Thatcher' are 2 words that readily go together

[flip_flop]

Why's that bibblebub?

[mrs_overall]

I started part time work in the 1970's whilst still at school. What really pi**ed me off was that males were paid more than females for doing identical jobs (in my case shelf stacking in a supermarket).

[andy-hughes]

There were a lot of strikes in the car industry - one reason why we no longer have a car industry in fact. Because tjhe industry was so fragmented, with loads of components and processes, it only needed on section to strike for the whole asembly line to stop, and this happened many many times.

Strikes could be called for apparently trivial reasons, and both unions and employers developed intransigent attitudes to each other.

Having watched DS's series, I found it relentlessly grim and depressing, and it was simply not like that all the time. '76 was glorious, a massive heatwave summer, and i fell in love for the first time, so my '70's was a lot more cheerful than the series of events he likes to show.