Ben Taylor @VoxDei@qoto.org

With my Trade Union hat on I supported someone a little while back who was accused of something particularly unpleasant. He strenuously and emotionally denied everything. I chose to believe him, because it felt like someone had to and my job as his TU rep was to support him, which was much easier if I decided he was telling the truth. And he was at a similar or slightly earlier stage to me in life with similar problems to what I'd gone through (otherwise similar, anyway), I saw some of myself in him.

For different reasons both he and I left the company before his case came to trial, I didn't find out what the outcome was until just now. He wasn't telling the truth. That will be his victim re-traumatised, his wife betrayed, his family presumably broken, his child growing up with that stigma on his father, and that's leaving aside the toll on him, personally.

I feel incredibly sad. There are no winners here. There were never going to be as soon as he did what he did.

#tradeunion #Casework

Just finished Hardspace: Shipbreaker. It's really nice to see such an unapologetically pro-Trade-Union piece of work in a computer game. And a good computer game as well! I thoroughly recommend it both to those who like good games and those who could use an illustration of what collective action is for and what it can accomplish.

#pcgames #games #HardspaceShipbreaker #tradeunion

“When I’ve asked how many years do you intend to not even give us an inflation pay rise, we haven’t had an answer,” Mick Whelan of ASLEF in the Guardian

I was involved (in a small way) with civil service pay on the trade union side from about 2010 up to last year, and this is the thing. The UK government patently does not believe that pay should keep pace with inflation. Or to put it another way, they believe it is right to make their own staff poorer over time by stealth. Eventually there is no option but to strike or leave the job, because it is obvious that otherwise your living standards will fall and fall until you cannot make ends meet.

@tradeunion #tradeunion #UKstrike #civilservice #aslef #traindrivers #pay

I guess I should do #introduction? For all the people who aren't following me. ;-)

Ahem. I'm a #software engineer and a (mostly) PC #gamer, although I can't play FPS games because motion sickness. I''ve got an undergrad degree in #computerscience and a masters in #oceanography (yes, I know that's an unusual combination). I worked in airborne and #satellite #remotesensing (mostly) of the oceans for twelve years (a few publications but nothing first-author, I was doing tech rather than science) before gradually drifting back to software engineering via weather radar. Also spent most of that time as a #tradeunion rep - strong believer in the necessity of collective bargaining and collective action as a counterbalance to over-emphasised executive/management power.

Mostly coding in #python these days and trying to get my head around #aws.