Having witnessed the economic consequences of giving trade unions carteblanche to do as they wish – striking for petty causes – the former British Prime Minister, Tony Blair, has warned the South African government to resist against being manipulated by politicised trade unions.
Blair was addressing delegates at the 2015 Mining Indaba in Cape Town on 10th of February 2015. With the brutal frankness typical of a retired statesman, he said: “My experience of trade unions is that you have two types. One that represents the workforce and recognises that there is a conflict between labour and capital, then the good one. In fact, the better the company does the better their members are.”
As a former British Prime Minister from the Labour Party that draws most of its membership from workers, he knows pretty well about the volatile nature of trade unions.
