@Izbeckistan 549517 wrote:
If I had a van I would go around collecting the rubbish and dump it at town hall.
I was thinking “why don’t the binmen do just that?” but its more like a idea from a 1970s sitcom – there is CCTV everywhere and probably GPS tracker in the council vehicles. if they nick the bin lorry they will be arrested for TWOC and dismissed and even if a private vehicle were used it would result in being hauled up for a shit ton of offences and also points or suspension of driving license.
Even back then workers who tried such stunts got blacklisted for years in some industries and although unions were (and still are) given “facility time/resources” for their work it was not uncommon for the places they were provided with to be put under various forms of surveillance – which did not even require “007” tactics or “heavy mob” stuff, especially as the unions weren’t as united as folk thought (for instance they were at danger of being infiltrated by the far right as many old school union men were very hostile to the concept of workers from overseas or gender equality in pay, I know that was what put my own parents off the political Left in their youth, and they once used to hang around with hippies and live a communal type lifestyle).
Even if the bosses couldnt’ unearth divisions inside the union they still had control over the resources – for instance it was relatively easy to rig the old style telephone to allow just enough electricity through to activate its microphone whilst it was still on hook, but not seize the line at the distant end, which meant it could be used to monitor what was being said in a “private” meeting room – and many companies had their own internal telephones independent of the public networks so could get away with this (it was once illegal to move public network telephones around buildings, they were hardwired in!)
