Pusser said:
There are a lot of misconceptions about the "unionization" of the Dutch armed forces. They are not truly unionized in the traditional sense (i.e. the sense in which most of us think of unions). They do have national level negotiating committees, though. Interestingly enough, our Ship's (Fund) Committees are supposed to perform this function (as cited in the Mainguy Report), but for the most part, they deal strictly with spending the Ship's Fund. I tried to explain what the Ship's Committee was actually supposed to be doing to an XO once - the conversation did not end well for me - suggesting he read the Mainguy Report was not a good idea.
Seen Pusser, and to a certain extent, agreed.
But one must remember that you may be dealing with two different things here. The Maingy report comes from a different era, when the RCN was it's own service. The Ship's
Fund Committee, is exactly that nowadays: Something required by the current NPF system in order to spend the funds in the ship's fund.
That financial set up did not exist as such in the RCN of old. What had been required before the Maingy report, largely ignored by the powers that be, and led to the insistence of the Maingy report to use them properly were the "Ship's
Welfare Committee". They were meant to be specifically safe places for what can be termed collective grievances simmering on board ships. They had the dual function of permitting the airing of those grievances so that the command team would know of their existence and extent and second, of being a forum for the command team to either explain what they would do about the grievance - or clearly explain why the command team itself was powerless to deal with the situation. Sure, in the NPF system then in place, the Welfare committee was also a good place for the crew to let the command team, which had sole discretion at that time, know how they would like to see the money from the Ship's fund spent.
To me those two Committees are different and, nowadays, should be kept separate. However, there is nothing in today's regulation to prevent Welfare being discussed in committee as was proposed by the Maingy report. As XO, I myself made sure that both topics were dealt with and were dealt with separately. I believe that good officers, who have read and understood the Maingy report, will acknowledge that the system is still required, even nowadays where the compensation and employment of crew is much more developed system with greater protection against abuse than in the past. IMHO, you can never have too much feedback from the crew on how they see things going, so you can act accordingly (even if so acting is merely explaining why something can't be helped).
