http://dublinopinion.com/2009/08/04/thomas-crook/ It's a group blog. What more do you need to know? Wed, 08 Feb 2012 22:20:42 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.2.1 http://dublinopinion.com/2009/08/04/thomas-crook/#comment-70544 Fred Johston Thu, 06 Aug 2009 11:14:29 +0000 http://dublinopinion.com/2009/08/04/thomas-crook/#comment-70544 The Thomas Cook Affair will, of course, have incredible impact upon customer attitude to the company, which used tactics not wholly dissimilar from those of William Martin Murphy, who in 1913 called in the law on horseback to charge strikers during the Lockout in Dublin. No, the comparison is not so stretched; the idea then, as now, was to break trades' union power and send a warning to anyone else who would try to undermine the 'rights' of big business. Perhaps the workers will in the end receive decent redundancy terms, but that is only one element of what has just happened. The Thomas Cook Affair will, of course, have incredible impact upon customer attitude to the company, which used tactics not wholly dissimilar from those of William Martin Murphy, who in 1913 called in the law on horseback to charge strikers during the Lockout in Dublin. No, the comparison is not so stretched; the idea then, as now, was to break trades’ union power and send a warning to anyone else who would try to undermine the ‘rights’ of big business. Perhaps the workers will in the end receive decent redundancy terms, but that is only one element of what has just happened.

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