Problem at the moment though is that companies do have the upper hand when it comes to who they want to sack or employ with so many Engineers now laid off or made redundant, They can pick and choose.
Most would regard an engineer in a Union as being trouble so would avoid employing them and from what I have seen in the past, when it came to making people redundant, they chose the Union members first then after a 6 month wait, they could start to re employ with none union members.
The government and its departments also, in the current economic enviroment, dont give a toss about the rights of the employees of companies.

So called contracts of employment are there to look after the employer and not worth the paper they are written on So!, If we all got together and started an Engineers Union, What could we do constructively to get the employers to sit down and negotiate a fair and unbiased code of practice that would be beneficial to both parties ?

One thing in the UK that I have noticed is that the Engineer/technician is far underpaid than lets say someone that sits behind a desk doing IT.
If it wasn't for the forklift Engineer/technician, the country would come to a halt so, taking that into consideration, how about a minimum rate of pay for the FLT Engineers that reflects the responsible position that this role has ?