Rail strike next month?

[jobotic]

Look forward to travelling on a train driven by an agency worker, or having an operation performed by one, or even getting benefits advice.

Boris' Bolshie Busters to the rescue

[druss]

https://www.rmt.org.uk/news/rmt-statement/

It's easy if you try.

No need to be an asshole, but thank you for the information.

[Fambo Number Mive]

Discussions with Network Rail and the Train Operators have continued today. The Train Operators have now made an offer and there is no further offer from Network Rail following the one which was rejected last Friday.

The RMT National Executive Committee has now found both sets of proposals to be unacceptable and it is now confirmed that the strike action scheduled this week will go ahead.

It is clear that the Tory Government after slashing £4bn of funding from National Rail and Transport for London, has now actively prevented a settlement to this dispute.

The rail companies have now proposed pay rates that are massively under the relevant rates of inflation, coming on top of the pay freezes of the past few years.

At the behest of the Government, companies are also seeking to implement thousands of job cuts and have failed to give any guarantee against Compulsory Redundancies.

As a result of this transport austerity, the employing companies have taken decisions to:

Attack the Railway Pension Scheme and the TFL scheme, diluting benefits, making staff work longer and making them poorer in retirement, while paying increased contributions.
Cut thousands of jobs across the rail network while not giving a guarantee of no compulsory redundancies.
Cutting safety inspections on the infrastructure by 50% in order to facilitate mass redundancies.
Attack terms, conditions and working practices in a form of internal fire and re-hire, including lowering existing salaries and increasing the working week.
Re-starting the disputes on the role and responsibility of the guard and massive cuts to catering services.
Closing every ticket office in Britain regardless of the accessibility needs of the diversity of passengers
Cutting real pay for most of our members through lengthy pay freezes and well below RPI inflation pay proposals.

https://www.rmt.org.uk/news/national-rail-and-london-underground-strikes/

I wasn't aware of the ticket office closures. If the train companies wanted to save money they could review their advertising budget. Not sure a GWR ad saying "Five go out in Penzance" makes anyone want to use the train.

[jobotic]

Johnson tried to present closing ticket offices as a way of lowering the cost of living.

Remember the tens of billions they stole to give to their friends under cover of Covid?

[Buelligan]

https://www.rmt.org.uk/news/national-rail-and-london-underground-strikes/

I wasn't aware of the ticket office closures. If the train companies wanted to save money they could review their advertising budget. Not sure a GWR ad saying "Five go out in Penzance" makes anyone want to use the train.

I don't think it's so much that the rail companies want to save money.  More that this lying government has made stringent cuts to rail subsidies and are now busily lying about it. 

Rail compainies want to pay their shareholders fat dividends.  The 2019 link below from the TUC shows they'd divvied out over £1billion in the six years up to then.  As the tories are so fond of repeating, that money has to come from somewhere, there is no magic money tree.

That money came from taxpayers subsidising the industry and from people using the railways, being charged through the nose for, in many cases, an increasingly poor service. It's OK to have socialism, as long as we only have it for shareholders and other wealthy people, like bankers.  That money, could have been used to improve the service, the terms and conditions of railway workers or support other things, like the NHS.

In this case, the shortfall caused by government cuts is being made up by closing all ticket offices - try buying a ticket if you have mobility issues, sight problems, can't read or need help of any sort, etc.  By making staff redundant (rail companies refuse to rule out compulsory redundancies), taking £100million a year out of the railway maintenance budget (yikes) and as Mick Lynch said, making workers (those that do keep their jobs) work longer for less money and wait longer for smaller pensions.

I don't think it's just the rail workers who should strike over this.  Everyone should.

No need to be an asshole, but thank you for the information.

He's not an arsehole, he's a gbol. 

https://www.tuc.org.uk/news/rail-firms-have-paid-over-ps1-billion-shareholders-last-6-years-finds-tuc
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2022/may/04/network-rails-proposed-cuts-put-passengers-at-risk-say-unions
https://www.transport-network.co.uk/DfT-doesnt-recognise-10-rail-cuts-claim/17575
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rail_subsidies

[steveh]

Meanwhile a new crop of foreign investors are buying up UK public transport thanks to the weak pound, post-pandemic low share prices and the government's changes to the rail franchise model meaning owners get a guaranteed income with minimal financial risk.

https://www.ft.com/content/48aa3ec1-ea4b-4346-b200-07f8a0d24519

[Buelligan]

BTW, I'm sure I'm giving the charlatan gangsters running Britain far too much credit but, if I were running things, I'd be thinking about the move away from private cars, towards things like... rail.  And if I were a fucking evil ghoul cunt, I'd want to break the rail unions before they got too strong.  Just saying.

[Norton Canes]

Meanwhile a new crop of foreign investors are buying up UK public transport thanks to the weak pound, post-pandemic low share prices and the government's changes to the rail franchise model meaning owners get a guaranteed income with minimal financial risk.

https://www.ft.com/content/48aa3ec1-ea4b-4346-b200-07f8a0d24519

'Public' transport

(Non-paywall version of that article)

[greencalx]

I see the government, very sweetly, is trying to pin the blame for the strikes on Labour, a party which (checks notes) hasn't been in government for 12 years. Also shows the folly of Keith hiding away from the pickets - is now being attacked by both the government and the unions. Way to go!

I've read a lot of criticism of the strikes elsewhere, mostly around the "why should rail workers get paid more than X" variety. I suspect many people invoking such criticisms tend to be of the "let the markets decide mindset". Seems not to have crossed their mind that trade union activity is one of the mechanisms by which "market decisions" are made.

The other major criticism seems to revolve around "inefficiencies" in the industry. No-one ever seems to be able to come up with detailed analysis of where these inefficiencies lie, usually focussing on marginal issues like time allowances for drivers to walk between trains, rather than anything that would actually waste large sums of money. In my experience, efficiency is one of those codewords that management like to use to describe detrimental changes to working conditions. (See also flexibility, a phrase that is currently scaring me where I work).

For whatever reason, seems like the government is gunning for a big fight. Possibly because their Tories, so acquiescing to union demands is a no-go for them. Maybe because they're worried that if rail workers get a rise, everyone else will want one. Given the high rate of inflation, and the fact that these aren't being driven by wage rises (does anyone really believe that construction cost increases of 25% have anything to do with labourers' wages?), it is inevitable that wages have to rise to rebalance the economy, if not now, certainly soon.

[Sebastian Cobb]

Basically like Kabul isn't it?

[Paul Calf]

If this is a re-run of the 70s/80s/90s and 2017 was 1992, we've got another term-and-a-half left.

Mind you, the Thatcher government at least paid lip service to democracy.

https://news.sky.com/story/laws-will-be-changed-to-protect-passengers-from-militant-union-action-in-future-grant-shapps-says-12637702

Oh.

[Huxleys Babkins]

I'm old enough to remember how angry he was about P&O bringing in cheap agency workers so they could sack all their contracted staff.

[Fambo Number Mive]

Surely most members of public wouldn't feel confident travelling during a strike if agency workers, who most likely would have little experience of working on a railway, were being used to break the strike, regardless of how they felt about the strike.

It would seem an even worse deal for the travelling public as if someone had no choice but to travel by train on a strike day for work reasons, having to wait a much longer time for a much more crowded train would still be safer than having to rely on agency workers for safety, closing the doors etc.

I think during the General Strike a load of aristocrats volunteered to scab by driving taxis etc (its mentioned in PG Wodehouse a couple of times). Wonder if a load of gammons will turn up demanding to be allowed to volunteer to be train guards etc on strike days for free. Imagine that.

[Kankurette]

I see the government, very sweetly, is trying to pin the blame for the strikes on Labour, a party which (checks notes) hasn't been in government for 12 years. Also shows the folly of Keith hiding away from the pickets - is now being attacked by both the government and the unions. Way to go!

Supporting strikes is also, frankly, the kind of thing Labour SHOULD be doing. They are called the Labour Party.

Tories love to go 'but LABOUR' whenever they're blamed for anything. Labour have been out of power for ages now, there's only so long the Tories can blame them for all the country's ills.

[jobotic]

Haven't you heard? They're called Labour because they are the party of WORK AND BUSINESS

Can't remember which nothing in the shadow cabinet came out with that but they did.

[dissolute ocelot]

I think during the General Strike a load of aristocrats volunteered to scab by driving taxis etc (its mentioned in PG Wodehouse a couple of times). Wonder if a load of gammons will turn up demanding to be allowed to volunteer to be train guards etc on strike days for free. Imagine that.

Yup the Organisation for the Maintenance of Supplies, which took much of its member from the first British fascist party, the British Fascists, and was denounced as fascistic even by the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police and the Daily Express. Apparently they proved useless at dockwork (lifting and carrying stuff) and running trains, but they drove a lot of cars and vans and published their own newspaper. What larks!

In the mid 1970s, a similar group called Civil Assistance was set up by retired general Walter Walker in the hope that it could restore order in the wake of the wave of strikes during Heath's premiership; Walker suggested the army could take over the country and wanted Enoch Powell for PM. It's odd that strikebreaking seems so strongly linked with fascists.

[JohnnyCouncil]

Haven't you heard? They're called Labour because they are the party of WORK AND BUSINESS

Can't remember which nothing in the shadow cabinet came out with that but they did.

I'll have you know they are called Labour because they are the party of Fannies!

[Sebastian Cobb]

One for the "Did ye, aye?" pile.

I had to explain the tube strike to the 17-year-old Ukrainian staying with me. Her father, brother and uncle are all fighting. She's just got a job in a bar and smiled for the first time last week. Now she can't go and won't get paid. 'But why do they strike?' she wailed.

https://twitter.com/HarrietSergeant/status/1539156744617791489

[Rizla]

One for the "Did ye, aye?" pile.

I had to explain the tube strike to the 17-year-old Ukrainian staying with me. Her father, brother and uncle are all fighting. She's just got a job in a bar and smiled for the first time last week. Now she can't go and won't get paid. 'But why do they strike?' she wailed./quote]

https://twitter.com/HarrietSergeant/status/1539156744617791489

Harriet Sergeant's three year friendship with a teenage gang, and in particular the gang leader, Tuggy Tug...

"Oh Marjika, as my old friend Tuggy Tug likes say, bo yakasha, it gwan all be good an ting when Ja me fi say bless dem BRRRAP"

[Pink Gregory]

She should join a union.  Sign her up.

[Fambo Number Mive]

Surely Ukraine has trade unions, including unions for transport workers? And surely if she's not getting paid when she's unable to get to work that's the fault of her employer.

It must be traumatic for so many of her family to be fighting in the war against Putin but I don't see what relevant that has to a 17 year old asking why transport workers are on strike.

[Fambo Number Mive]

Actual GMB video headline

RMT General Secretary Mick Lynch Quizzed On Whether He's a Marxist Amid Biggest Rail Strike | GMB

What does it matter whether he is a Marxist or not?

[jobotic]

Why didn't she just answer the question?




Oh yeah...because it was never asked...

[jobotic]

Actual GMB video headline

What does it matter whether he is a Marxist or not?

Helps us decide if he's a person or not.


I always think GMB refers to the union. Funny question from them.

[Sebastian Cobb]

Surely Ukraine has trade unions

Certainly not unheard of...


https://www.ulandssekretariatet.dk/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/LMP-Ukraine-2022-Final.pdf

[Fambo Number Mive]

It infuriates me that none of the mainstream media seem to be interviewing the heads of the train operating companies asking them why they are getting rid of 2,500 safety critical jobs or how the public can feel comfortable with agency workers running trains. It's only the RMT and the government that face questions, and the latter can just shrug and go "but Labour".

I know I shouldn't be surprised but much of the coverage is so one sided, although they do interview some ordinary people who support the strike.

[Buelligan]

For whatever reason, seems like the government is gunning for a big fight. Possibly because their Tories, so acquiescing to union demands is a no-go for them. Maybe because they're worried that if rail workers get a rise, everyone else will want one.

Could it be because they've been running things for the last twelve years.  Are things better at all?  Who can they blame?  How can they win the next election without a division in the country like Brexit?  Why, make one of course. 

Better than actually changing anything real to make peoples' lives better, like giving them houses or some shite.  And happily, this division allows them to keep smashing the working class.

[Ferris]

One for the "Did ye, aye?" pile.
https://twitter.com/HarrietSergeant/status/1539156744617791489

Looked at the profile, thought it was a TBEU character.

[Buelligan]

[jobotic]

Just in case anyone forgot that #FBPE darling Cuddly Ken Clarke was a cunt

He said it was essential for the government to ensure the rail strike ended in the defeat of the RMT. If that did not happen, other unions would make similar, inflationary pay demands, he claimed. "If a pay settlement is 10, 11%, then you're going to have vast amounts of the public sector going in for the same militancy," he said. He said:
I'm afraid that [the strike] cannot be allowed to look successful when it settles ... It must be seen to have been not worth it to have gone on strike for the railwaymen. That's a situation we had reached by the time we got to the 70s and 80s. And I think we've reached that stage now.