Most liked posts in thread: The Right to Strike?

The level of ignorance being shown here by some of the comments is Daily Express, Daily Mail brain washing level.

It proves it works for the hard of thinking?

 

One of the first steps for any fascist or totalitarian regime.

 

It’s almost like claps and rainbow signs in your front window drawn by your kids isn’t enough for them militant leftie nurses. Shame on them.

 

They wouldn't last long in Bradford someone would have them opened and be away with the bottle of Vodka.

 

Unions should be outlawed

 

Incredible levels of ignorance on here.

As @Bigrod pointed out, private sector strikes are currently running at many times the usual rate. So it's not just the public sector workers who have had enough of seeing their wages eroded for over a decade while company execs and shareholders get increased rewards and property owners, developers and landlords see their returns consistently outstripping wages. Why is it only wages that are seen as 'unaffordable' and ''inflationary'? And why is capital gains tax on unearned income lower than that paid by workers in income tax?

But, quite apart from the strikes, private sector companies are consistently awarding pay increases to their workers at two or even three times the rates being offered to those in essential public-facing services. Decent settlements have been made to (eg) Liverpool dockers, cardboard packaging industry workers, G4 cash services, transport and refuse companies, etc, etc. BT have recently settled a wage dispute with a 10% pay award. If the nurses, ambulance drivers, posties, rail staff, border guards, firefighters etc, were getting the same wage settlements as the current average private sector settlement' then there would be no strikes in essential services.

The wave of strikes in public services is what happens when an incompetent government mismanages the economy for twelve years and forces ordinary employees to bear the brunt while allowing the already wealthy to get richer.

 

He also owns a big stake in another organisation that doesn't deliver

 

I was a rail worker for 20 years , up to senior manager level for 16 of em, so I know how the industry works BACKWARDS.

Fundamentally I knew of Government plans 7 years ago and it didn’t make pretty reading then.

Ladies and Gents, you really need to be aware of what rail employees , 99% of them superb people , are being asked to vote on the latest proposal.

4% rise this year, 4 % rise next year and the closure of 99% of all English booking offices. Approx 1600 of them. They are being asked to vote for their own redundancy!! We wonder why the RMT say no. It’s impossible, on safety grounds as we stand.
The claim that industry is making alternative plans for trains to become DOO ( Driver Operated Only) is fantasyland. It would cost , £billions and billions of investment to provide station infrastructure to achieve this.

There are quite a number on here who have fallen for the smoke and mirror LIES the Gov are feeding you.

Remember, I know how the railway works, I know who runs it, and who OWNS it.

It’s not UK plc!

 

I’ll give you some examples, both involve staff presence and equipment.

Trains need to be despatched from platforms, Most units are now 4-12 carriages in length. Unless a driver can see every door, usually 2 per carriage , then the train isn’t allowed to depart. This is generally fine on stations with dead straight platforms, trouble is platforms generally are not.
To get around the issue new trains are being fitted with CCTv cameras on every door, so drivers then have to look at up to 24 images before the doors can be closed. That is one way. The other is fitting static CCTV systems to platforms with TV screens at specific points, to the metre , TV screens also on the platform for the driver..

This infrastructure is not in place on Approx 75% of the network, so train guards have to be employed as a second pair of eyes for drivers.

I’ll leave you with this hypothetical thought…. I’m in a wheel chair, yes we have to cater for “me” I get on at Bradford Forster Square with the assistance of staff and ramps. I want to get off at say Saltaire. How do I get off the train and how do I get off the platform.

There may have been £2 m of investment at Saltaire since I left Bradford , but hypothetically follow my example for now.

Railways need staff for valid safety reasons.

I was responsible for Risk Assessments along with Driver teams for managing the safe arrival/ departure of trains on multiple stations and appeared in the Supreme Court in London as a witness to validate my Risk Assessment on a station. The litigant lost a multimillion £ claim because they were at fault for their own actions and subsequent catastrophic injuries.

I close with this thought

Safety on the railways is a serious, expensive business. It should never be compromised, nor used as a bargaining chip in protecting railway Franchise holder profits.

Hope that helps ?

 

Some people are living in cuckoo land if they think investment is forth coming in the railway round these parts, driverless trains lol, we’ve only just waved bye to the pacers.

 

Agreed, the right to strike should be abolished no matter what industry you’re in.
What about people who work for private companies who haven’t had pay rises ? Can they strike? , holding their bosses to ransom.

 

Of course it is. It'll stop when this feckin useless government gives workers in essential public services (whether publicly or privately owned) the decent pay rise that most of them haven't had for the last decade.

 

It's up to governments to find the money from somewhere. That's why we need a more progressive tax system so that those who can afford it contribute more to the maintenance of our essential services - which includes paying those who work in them a decent remuneration for their labour. It's simply unacceptable that those who work in essential services should be treated as second class services and have their wages treated as elements of government economic management, while those who have increasing unearned income pay minimal taxes on it.

Public sector/essential services wages stagnated, and in some cases fell, during the past decade when inflation was at a record low. We were told then that wasn't the time to rebalance the disparity between wages and profits/shareholder returns. Now that inflation is high we're being told that this isn't the right time either. So when is? People are leaving essential services in droves because they can't afford to live on the pittance they're being paid. We can't go on indefinitely with the standard of living of ordinary people being further and further eroded while profits, unearned income and executive salaries keep rising.

 

This sounds like a dystopian view of a world that has lost all sense of society.
A terrible outlook for our railway.

 

Yup

 

Everyone should have a right to strike - the ones organised over the actual Christmas period seem particularly mean spirited against the general public though.

The issue I have with general unionised strikes is that it takes away from the fact that there is no benefit to an individual actually doing a good job. If I want a pay rise I have to go up my chain and show what value I provide for the company and then why they should remunerate me better judged on that.

It seems like people like the train staff can simply accept that the service they give is shambolic, refuse to modernise that to a sleeker way of working and simply use removal of work as a bargaining tool without it bringing about improvement and while rewarding both the good workers and the bad ones. While you can argue that fair for the workers it's not really beneficial generally.