UKC

Three months ago we started planning a very special series of events to celebrate Mrs. Bojo's big birthday this year. Two of the events went ahead ok but a third one - a three day visit to London including a social event (in House of Commons as it happens)and a theatre visit are scheduled for 21st to 22nd June. I'm a little worried, to say the least, that the threatened strikes by the RMT will jeopardise our plans. I'm aware that the threatened disruption is likely also to have serious consequences on regular commuters and business travellers and that any inconvenience that we might experience will pale against that of commuters. But, again, people risk having their lives disrupted through no fault of their own and over which they have no influence. As I said, our arrangements have been on the cards for some time and, because they cannot be changed I would feel particilarly aggreived if the are thrown into disarray.

How dare workers organise and stand up for their rights, they should know their place. 

Sounds like a weather forecast.

“Democracy index 8.10 falling to 7.90 by 2024 with a threat of rail strikes”.

Sometimes you just have to stop whinging, man up and figure out a backup plan.  The world is full of options, for example the megabus, or driving to an outlying tube station etc.  I always have backup plans for important travel as all sorts of things can disrupt my best laid primary plan.

I trust my disliker(s) will happily give back their weekends, bank Holidays, sick pay etc, all achieved through collective action. 

In response to your obvious sarcasm, do you not think that the travelling public also have rights?

Sue Grey tell us that they throw a wicked party down there but really?

Strike action is a last resort, used when negotiations break down, show a little understanding. You never know, you could be next.

As I said above, if you really object to collective action, how about returning its fruits. 

Your union friends invariably take strike action which disrupts the lives of those who are usually worst affected by such action and least able to exert any influence in the matter.

This "megabus" from what I have just seen is not an option as it would still involve an initial journey of sixty miles by rail

An "outlying tube station" at the end of a 250 mile journey?

Neither are viable options.

We aren't going to agree here.

Despite many attempts to remove it, unionised workers have a legal right to withdraw their labour. It is not used lightly. The laws regarding ballots are really quite tight. The disruption caused draws attention to the issue. It certainly has yours. 

Collective action has proved beneficial to all.

 Book a flight, coach or drive to London. Enjoy the party. Spare a thought for others. 

As I said before, these are not viable options.

Maybe unions should do so.

It was not an exhaustive list, by any means.

Where there’s a will, there’s a way.  That was my point.

Consider making more resilient plans in future, our rail network is not famed for its reliability. 

They do. As I mentioned above, ballots are governed by very strict laws. Iirc, for a strike to be legal>50% of the membership must have voted in favour, not of the ballots returned. Each voting member will have considered the impact. Compare that with a GE which is of much greater import.

I won't change your mind, your beliefs are too deep set. I hope you never need to call upon the support of your union/professional association. 

The situation will never arise

Given the extended notice, if you can't figure out another way of getting there, it can't be that important to you.

One of the benefits of many union memberships is the benevolent fund, it applies to all current and former members in times of need. You never know...

Perhaps you could ask for a helicopter charter in your time of need. 

Striking is basically blackmail - give me loads of money or I will fu*ck up your life.

Suck it up and get a taxi. Or rent a car. I was recently looking to book a car rental in the UK for a week and while the prices for cars are really expensive right now for some reason vans are way cheaper. Not sure the reason for this but something to consider.

If striking wasn't disruptive it wouldn't be effective.

It only bothers you because you have specific plans that you have plenty of notice to change. You don't care about the inconvenienced public or the rights of the strikers. I think you're getting a lot of stick here because it's all framed around how it affects your Jolly.

You have time to make alternative arrangements and seem to have the means to do so.

And what do you propose?

I think you'll find that RMT members are striking as a last resort. If you want a country with ever worst employment rights then jog on........

I agree that striking should remain a right, within certain reasonable constraints. Yet one thing that often frustrates me about any strike negotiations, is that seldom do we hear about absolutes. In other words it is often in the media about what percentage increase in wages, the workers are seeking, and how long since they have had a rise, etc: Yet the amounts are nebulous when only percentages are used. We should hear from various quarters, how many hours are typical worked, and what actual amount is earned. That way we can make some judgement of whether the claim for a wage increase is as reasonable one.

I think what everyone is seeing with your responses, is that you seem to choose to wallow in your perceived misery, as everything is not sorted out for you to arrive at the desired venue. You do not seem to have an ability to think laterally and work at getting there by applying some perspicacity and logic. 

Sitting back and expecting a magic wand to be waived for you is not going to solve your potential problem. You'll have to work at it.

Chuck out pessimism, and just be objective, whilst seeking out every possibility to get round your possible problem.

Well, overnight ScotRail seem to have doubled the wage rise offer to drivers.

But how much do they actually get paid in the first place?

How much is being offered in actual monetary amounts?

I'm sure it's in the public domain.

Yes and an impending global recession is the perfect time to screw everything  further isn’t it??

Yet that suggests that it is, unlike the idea of the offer doubling, not in the public headlines. It's not in the public eye, which would be for the public good.

While I sympathise with your circumstances, as said, striking is last resort. 

For context, the railway staff have 3 recognised unions, ASLEF, RMT & TSSA. The beef that all 3 have is as follows:

A pay rise. Not had one for 3 years. We are here working through the entirety of the pandemic as key workers, we got other key workers to work. There was no furlough for us.

A guarantee of no compulsory redundancies.

A guarantee of no changes to current T&Cs

Not asking for lifelong guarantees, just a couple of years commitment to from the TOCs (like we have for them.

’Great British Railways’ starts next year and the process of change from private to public ownership has begun. Huge staff cuts expected, not knowing if we’ll have a job (or the same job) in a years time. I’m expecting a year or two of disruption and change. Hopefully in five years, the public will be able to say it was worth it.

I wouldn't worry too much about commuters, we're used to this by now.

On my route into work we had regular industrial action for a couple of years, and that's on top of regular engineering works and sheer incompetence and greed from the private rail companies. I just check the live train feed each day and see if there's anything running.

The economy is a zero sum game. If everyone is losing a few people are winning immensely. Frustrating that anyone thinks that regular people earning more is an issue. It's the system that supports the immense wealth of some off the backs of other's labour that's the problem.

These train drivers are already on 50K.  It has to be massively easier to get a computer to drive a train than to drive a car.  Give them their money now and start working with quietly with suppliers to automate the job enough you can fire them in a few years.

Spoken like a thoroughbred Tory!

He's got a point though.

50k for driving a train and demanding more is taking the p*ss out of the taxpayer and the traveller. They're not getting that money based on their skills but because of lack of competition.  

We can't afford to shut the country down for a couple of months to fight them but if we don't need to let the situation where train drivers can blackmail the country persist indefinitely.

You are shooting at the wrong target. Try aiming higher.

Some real Daily Mail stuff from you there. Think about how many lives a driver is responsible for each day.

Instead of playing beggar my neighbour, learn from how drivers achieved this level of salary and apply it to your own job.

Since I know you're a stickler for accurate spelling I feel I should point out that he wants the wand waved so the drivers waive their right to strike.

Well said. I admit my mistake. 

My only excuse is my vision was getting blurred at that time, and only just avoided getting a migraine (partly due to dehydration) soon after that, but even in those circumstances I usually do, and should check on possible mistakes.

Thank you for pointing it out.

I was trying to get Deleated bagger to state this, and possibly more accurately, but obviously he did not want to say.

The whole thing needs to be looked at in terms of how onerous, and responsible the task of being a driver is. 

A second option for you, I believe there to be a shortage of drivers currently. Take your green eyed monster for a walk to the recruitment office. 

Tom is no Daily Mail reader... He makes a good point. Drivers get paid very well considering the skills required. They achieved this by using their powerful union, which is not an option for most of us. They are shooting themselves in the foot though, as the technology to replace them already exists. The more they are paid, the greater the incentive to invest in it. Drivers are a tiny minority of rail staff though. Most rail staff are poorly paid and poorly treated, by their employer and the public. I have a lot of sympathy for them.

You could have fooled me.

Vilifying drivers for having an effective union and race to the bottom arguments. This thread has exposed some real thatcherite tendencies amongst what is usually regarded as a lefty forum.

Take a lead from what the drivers have. Analyse what the job actually involves and the responsibilities it entails. It is not the trumpton boyhood dream of "time flies by".

And, of course, the profession is open to anyone and I believe there to be vacancies.

It is better to aspire than to drag down.

I doubt automation is on the cards any time soon, someone has to take responsibility for the train. Aircraft are flown on auto pilot but always have a responsible pilot.

From my time working for the railway, a harsh reality of driving is the number of suicides witnessed. The driver I knew reckoned it was every 2-3 years. Would you do that for minimum wage? 

That is ghastly, and I am sorry if you had to witness any.

Going back to the discussion about strike action. I've never understood why binding arbitration isn't given greater credence? Life is full of disputes, and arbitration by an impartial person or panel has always struck me as being the fairest solution. Ok it may not go your way (for either side), but if your case is genuinely strong and equitable why shouldn't you agree to it? If either party are reluctant to go down that route, doesn't that suggest that their case may not be as strong as they think (or hope?) It is certainly a lot less financially damaging to those in dispute,  to non involved parties eg the public, and the county's economy. 

They have power. Sadly most negotiations come down to power, usually the consumer has the power, as they can just decide to shop elsewhere, in this instance they cannot. To suggest that other people can take a lead from the drivers, is not really fair, as many people do not have that power. 
I am sure that the RMT will at some point try and frame the dispute from a social justice perspective, however the RMTs duty is to get the best deal for their members, just as the Rail Companies duty is to make the most profit for their shareholders. I do not believe either have any actual duty to society.
Should they have, possibly/probably/maybe not.
All my experiences with the Rail Companies and Staff recently have been excellent, but my Jubilee Tour to the Lake District has had to be replanned due to uncertainty of getting the Train back on Sunday, which is frustrating.

Thanks for your work, and here’s wishing you a rapid success in your strike action. Solidarity! 

Yup, member funded organisation works in member's interest, no surprises there.

There is time to prepare alternatives for your lakes trip, this is far from show if hands in the car park and walk out stuff. 

We already have driverless trains. The Docklands light railway for one.

All the more reason to automate and not have a driver.

Automatic trains have been touted for decades but don't seen to have progressed beyond limited networks like DLR, Frankfurt Airport or Copenhagen metro. Are there any driverless trains on national or regional rail networks?

Not really a national network, but there have been driverless trains on one line of the Paris métro since 1998 with more planned.

Not all strikes are about money

Striking rarely f*cks up anyone’s life, the first people to lose out are the strikers themselves who’d don’t get paid (strike pay doesn’t cover the whole amount)

If the unions didn't care about other people we would have had the strike action earlier. Unfortunately neither Network Rail, nor the majority of rail operators have pulled their weight in the negotiations, or we wouldn't be here.

Automated systems have fewer than a hundredth of the number of stations that the UK has.

Self driving cars require the hardware to be installed in each vehicle while trains would need to use lineside infrastructure with higher integrity control systems due to the number of lives at stake if something goes wrong. This pretty much involves resignalling the entire network AND refitting signalling hardware to the entire UK rail fleet, that is going to require a lot of engineers to work very hard for quite a long time, if you have looked around lately you may have noticed that addressing global warming and its impact has a slightly higher priority than trying to automate some jobs because the TOCs want to save a few bob.

50k is not a lot of money. 

If this was a well paid job anyone could do a strike wouldn't have much effect, they'd have found new drivers already.

Nobody gets money based on their skills it's based on their skills and the availability of people with those skills. 

Why shouldn't working people demand better pay and conditions? 

.

Plenty of train drivers in India responsible for far more lives, with a far harder job and getting paid a lot less.

The fact is you don't need to steer a train. Speed up, slow down, don't hit sh*t on the line, obey speed limits and signals and don't fall asleep. Tell me why that can't be done by a computer with a bunch of cameras and the kind of Lidar they put on self driving cars.  Seems to me that with a bit of design effort it could probably be made safer than a person. 

Never going to happen, I work in a highly internationalised industry. I have customers all over the world and compete with engineers in India.

The train drivers only get away with this because of the legacy politics of their industry and the fact that it is a natural monopoly. 

It's more than I make. It's a lot more than my wife makes. We both have PhDs.

The difference is I work in a globalised industry and I need to compete on price with engineers in India who also have PhDs. They work in a monopoly industry with archaic working practices and immigration rules and regulations mean they don't need to compete with train drivers from India.

The train companies have the problem that the service needs to be continuously available and any attempt to radically reform it will lead to months of disruption.  Every time there's a confrontation they country decides it would rather overpay a small group of people than face the disruption of doing without trains for a few months.

The job is going to get automated anyway, the only question is how soon.

No reason at all, but the other side of that is why shouldn't management automate their job or redefine it so as to access lower cost labour. In the train industry the union is preventing the competitive downward pressures on wages which apply to most people in the economy taking place. This means everybody else is forced to pay too much of their available money for train tickets.

I love it when Tories complain and moan about supply and demand....a central aspect of the free market!

Ok for business to rip people off......but when it's turned the other direction....outrage! Hypocrisy at its most obvious...

Yes and most scientists are criminally underpaid, my wife is also PhD and earns way less than she deserves. That doesn't mean others should earn less. Everyone knows you don't get a PhD to make money other than in a few specific fields. By that I mean if your only goal was making as much money as possible doing a PhD probably isn't the best thing. People do it because they want to do something specific.

I'm a software engineer I know about competing with cheaper offshore labor. 

This is not coming anytime soon it would require massive infrastructure investment. The DLR wouldn't be allowed under current standards.

Do you think downward pressure on wages is a good thing?

Trains are a natural monopoly and if they were run as a public service so they weren't required to make a profit prices wouldn't be so high. How is this the worker's fault?

You're coming across as a bit jealous of their wages here.

Rail companies do -Section 172 of the Companies Act.

Most rail companies make little if any profit (hence effective nationalisation in many instances). Prices are high because the level of subsidiary. If drivers are paid more, either taxpayers or passengers pay more.

NR senior management told staff considering industrial action that they should have tried harder in school. They also said that the execs get paid very well but unfortunately noone can have a pay rise.

And if taxation was progressive the burden would be spread fairly and not on the people who need to use the trains more. It might even encourage more use of public transport vs cars.

Maybe there's a better way to strike. I'm not sure if it's true or not but I heard that when rail staff in France go on strike they work as normal but don't charge any customers for using the service.

Personally tho' I think the best way to strike is to find a better job. Everyone wins in the long run this way.

.

That's a completely different argument to what you had above.

Not sure if that number is believable and certainly not the average for every driver:

250 suicides on the railways a year.  If every driver was experiencing a suicide every 3 years, then that would mean there must be in theory only 750 drivers in the UK which is obviously not the case.
Looking at it in another way, there are in fact 18000 drivers in the UK.  If they were experiencing a suicide every 3 years, then that would equate to 6000 suicides a year on the railways... 

Some drivers have had 2 or 3 due to being unlucky and on the wrong job at the wrong time, but most drivers have never had one and never will. 
I deal with the aftermath of rail suicides and it isn’t fun but part of the job.

Here in the north with have suicide hotspots, Layton near Blackpool and Leyland near Preston are hotspots. They are walk on stations (no ticket barriers and unmanned platforms) and have fast express trains going through. 

Staff are now being trained to spot unusual behaviour and Samaritans posters being displayed prominently on unmanned platforms, If this tactic stops just one person then it would have worked. 

F me, never knew Norman Tebbit was a climber, let alone a scotsman.

Real race to the bottom stuff there. We should all work for 3rd World wages because you earn less than a train driver, don't make me laugh.

Honestly, send in your CV, there is a shortage of drivers. You would get in as you are prepared to undercut the rest. Don't join the union though, they might stop you earning even less!

I thought you were a bit of an SNP blowhard but I now see there is a place in Johnson's cabinet for you. 

May have happened occassionally but normally when the cheminots go on strike it means many trains cancelled or no trains at all. And, from personal experience of 20 years of commuting into/out of Paris, it happens often.

Maybe the issue isn’t that train drivers are over paid but that you are underpaid. Maybe the issue isn’t that train drivers are exploiting the system by being unionised but that everyone else is being exploited.

it’s also a pretty slippy slope to look at some people and think some jobs deserve more than others, they certainly do but that’s not how life works (unionism is a way to make things fairer) but just because you decided to toss it off as a student for 3 years after everyone else graduated is not, of itself, a reason for you to be paid more than a nurse, or an undertaker or a sewage worker etc. 

What people are paid and why is a total mystery to me but I can think of much more egregious examples than you and train drivers. 

I've had a bit to do over the years with some Mental Health Nurses who work for the train...or rail line companies... chasing up on people found and looked after when on the tracks in desperate states and thinking about taking their lives....it's a very good service and something most people won't be aware of...

I wouldn’t worry about the shortage. Train drivers today are about where hand loom weavers were in the early 19th century.

Victory to the workers!

I suppose the obvious question is a PhD in what.
I would suggest a Train Driver* is of more worth than many PhD holders ( is holders a thing) to society, I am thinking of doing a Masters, but if I do, will not think that society will owe me anything.

*Is it possible that a lot of people doing menial undervalued jobs, I am thinking care worker, refuse collectors, hospital porters, road labourers, retail workers etc etc, are worth more to Society than many with PhDs.

Fair point, I have a single data point, one driver who I knew well enough to discuss these things. He came into our cabin one day;pale shaken and chain smoking. Not a pretty sight. 

Im a signaller on the railway, the drivers job is not a simple job which "anybody" could do.

During a normal working day they require a high degree of concentration(SPAD a signal and it may cause a catastrophe or cost you your job)

But when the driver really earns there money is during degraded working or during an incident.

Please do not assume you even slightly understand someone's job role when you have no understanding on the rules knowledge required to do it.

Like I said im a signaller I do not feel that I'm overpaid for my work. If I make a mistake I could be responsible for peoples loved ones not coming home. 

The main reason for the strikes is not a pay issue, its because network rail want to remove 2500 maintenance roles and we all as a union feel this would be unsafe.

Most workers on the railway take pride in the fact the UK has the safest railway in Europe and wish it to stay that way.

C

a. I am not a Tory

b. this wouldn't happen in a free market. It is happening because the union has a monopoly of supplying labour to the train company and the train company has a monopoly on supplying train services.

c. it isn't OK for business to rip people off. 

d. If A rips me off it isn't a reason for letting B rip me off as well.

Don’t disagree with that, but like you say, kind of depends on the PhD on what the holder does with it.

The curious thing is those “menial” jobs you mention tend to be done by those who don’t strike. Indeed, a quick ONS search reveals very quickly the sectors that strike most are education, followed by transport, neither of which are famous for menial work.

If you were driving a car or a bus or an HGV and you went through a red light you'd be f*cked too. Lots of people need that level of concentration in their job. 

More to the point computers are really good at doing that kind of thing. If the goal is to be 100% sure a train will never go through a red signal then automate it.

Safety is getting used as a lever to justify restrictions whose main purpose is to prevent competition and enrich the people in the industry. 

The issue is that some people need to deal with international competition in their profession and some people are shielded from it.  Either everybody should be shielded - which is never going to happen because it would cut us off from the global economy - or nobody should.

When some professions are protected and others aren't you create unfair differentials and perverse economic motivations to work in unskilled rather than skilled jobs. The whole thing is political: the professions and industries that get special treatment have political sponsors either Labour or Tory which gives their monopoly cover. Train drivers or bankers it's the same sh*t on a different scale.

This is the point.

Technically a self driving train would be a piece of p*ss compared with a self driving car.

Some legacy standard says you're not allowed to do it, a politically connected union can block the standard getting flushed down the toilet and giving the engineers a clean sheet of paper to start from scratch based on modern technology and automate it.

So f*ck all happens and these guys get a ton of money for driving a vehicle they don't even need to steer just because they are in a union.

Driving a train or being a community midwife. The midwife has massively more training, massively more skill, yet she gets about half the pay. She's even got a harder driving job with a car to get between her appointments.

It's just as necessary as upward pressure. 

In Scotland Scotrail was nationalised a few weeks ago and the union, egged on by the Labour party, are still trying to get more money. The monopoly situation of the rail industry should be for the benefit of the public, which means the managers need to keep downward pressure on pay.

Yes. These guys are taking the p*ss just as much as private companies who exploit monopolies to overcharge customers.

Also are you aware its the RMT striking.

This is not the drivers union, so the drivers salary is kind of irrelevant to this thread.

Again I'll repeat myself, it is regarding the maintenance workers.

Plus not all drivers get paid what the daily mail claims they earn.

Productivity can be calculated. I know that in my sector, each workers productivity is valued at over £104k from a recent union communication. This sits well into the 90th percentile (95k). 

I have done a rudimentary search but have not found values for other sectors yet. A comparison table would make an interesting read. 

Exactly.

People aren't striking out of greed, people are striking just in an attempt to maintain reasonable terms and conditions. As inflation rises, corporations are turning in record profits while, in one of the wealthiest countries in the world, working people are not paid enough to live. An unprecedented attack on our living standards is underway.

Rail workers are part of the wider economy. If their terms and conditions are maintained it is harder for employers in other sectors to reduce terms and conditions in those sectors because people can change employment. More good jobs available leads to better terms and conditions for every job in the economy, and the reverse is equally true.

RMT is fighting £2bn worth of cuts to Britains railways. Do people think £2bn cuts are going to improve services for rail travellers or isn't it more likely to lead to corner cutting further boosting corporate profit at the expense of the customers and workers of Britain's railways?

Every person in Britain who relies on a paid income, and every person in Britain who relies on decent services, would do well to join a union and support the striking rail workers.

I would argue that the train drivers are indeed acting out of greed as they're already in the upper echelons when it comes to how much they earn.
As for the unprecedented attack on living standards, do you really think that a train driver on £50000 falls in to that category? 

It is Aslef causing services to be cut in Scotland and RMT maybe joining them.

https://www.pressandjournal.co.uk/fp/news/highlands-islands/4338441/scotrai...

It's the drivers causing the disruption in Scotland.

No, it is the drivers wanting more money. 5% instead of 2.2%.

90% of what the Daily Mail says is sh*t.  I don't read it unless somebody else links to it.

Evidence suggests otherwise, your view above that we should reduce working standards and safety regulations to those of India.

I am sorry your PhD is undervalued but these things are about love not money.

A friend of mine with a PhD worked in a low intellectual demand chemical factory operator's role. I won't share his salary, it will only upset you further. Again, the job involved long unsociable hours, limited leave, high personal risk and a huge level of personal responsibility.

Much like the OP, your arguments are very self centred however bringing others down helps no one. The small amount saved in your rail fare will soon disappear when similar efficiencies are applied to you.

You are clearly talented but unhappy about aspects of your career. As Steve mentioned above, salaries are determined by both skill and demand. So upskill and become more in demand or simply change. 

The attitude you have shown here is simply vandalism. I am jealous of your posh car (your salary) so I will kick your headlights in (Insist your salary is reduced). 

Your Press and Journal link points out something which seems to have been missed in this thread. I apologise if I am wrong. The train drivers are not on strike just now. Any disruption in Scotland is caused by them refusing to work rest days or overtime. I would have thought this is a fundamental human right, not to work more than your contract. Anyway, I am sure that the Scottish Government will sort it all out as well as they have sorted out the problems with the ferries being built at the Ferguson shipyard.

I didn't say either of those things.

I said the system was set up to prevent change so the employees could demand more money than they would be worth in a free market.

There's no reason why automating trains should make them less safe. They run on tracks. When there are accidents it is usually human error. A fault tolerant computer system could very likely increase safety. Computers don't get drunk or fall asleep or have heart attacks.

I already work in a globalised industry. I'm already getting the global free market price for my services. The efficiencies are already priced in. The problem is that because I live in the UK I am forced to pay well above the global free market price for services which are provided by politically protected monopolies. 

What I should have done is f*cked off out of the UK when I had the chance 30 years ago and moved to a country which values the electronics industry.

Oh here come the unionist talking points.

Do you know how much Crossrail cost? 19 billion. Years late. Scotland's share 1.9 billion You could buy 19 ferries at 100 million quid a go for 1.9 billion.  You could buy three ferries for Scotland's share of the cost overrun on Crossrail.  A railway that does absolutely nothing for Scotland, in fact it incentivises business to move their headquarters to London and is directly against Scotland's interests.

Then we have a windfall tax on oil.  90% of the oil is in Scotland. Our industry will pay the tax.  90% of the people are in England. Almost all the tax will be spent in England.

There's two ferries there. They are late. They are also innovative dual fuel ferries which is exactly what is needed when you are building a ship with a 30 year lifespan and you expect the diesel fuel to get phased out during that time. Innovative projects are often late and over budget. If they work they payout usually more than makes up for it. If people had taken this short sighted attitude to the 747 or the A380 or the Channel Tunnel they wouldn't exist. The actual problem with the ferries is they don't have enough money to chuck at something so promising to do it in a world class way because Scotland is controlled from London. So rather than chuck it in they're pissing about, muddling along in the typical underfunded British way while other people catch up.

Is LNG that innovative? (I don't know). I'd be more curious about what work has been done towards electric ferries. Some countries already have them for relatively short hops, where turnover time is long enough to allow sufficient charging or they only run a few times a day. 

Tidal and wind generation, feeding straight into local use. It's probably decades away, an electric ferry, full of EVs plugged in being charged up whilst you cross, that's what I'd call innovative.

My view is you are correct here. I suspect building an AI enabled Robot that can be retrofitted to a Train is much nearer than some people think. I would suggest that the major hurdles will be peoples illogical reluctance to accept that a machine is safer, and the RMT wish to save jobs. 

I always thought you are late 20s, but that posting suggests 50s, funny how we have perceptions of posters, which are incorrect.

I'd visualise a driverless train, with two or three staff providing a better onboard service. Currently it seems to be heading towards a driver and no staff onboard in many instances. 

Edit, the more drivers are paid, the sooner they'll be replaced with a computer! A computer will work 24/7 etc... 

As said, all my recent Rail experiences have been very positive. I do think though that the RMT could be over playing their hand, public perception is that Rail Workers are reasonably paid, and buggering up peoples travel plans will not win them many friends.
I am surprised at the lack of empathy for the OP, who does try to appreciate other perspectives, but is clearly upset that long planned celebrations for his wifes birthday, including the chance to throw eggs at MPs, are now in doubt. Its pretty natural for a Husband or Wife to be upset when their other halves, celebrations are being disturbed, and suggestions of Big Bus and the like, though maybe well meaning, not really helpful.

What did I say which was wrong? - Apart from referring to the Scottish Government as "they" instead of "it". Where did I say it was not doing a good job with the ferries? 

As for the windfall tax, most of the profits made by oil and gas companies come from imported gas. Your attitude harks back to the old "It's Scotland's oil" slogan, as morally bereft attitude as I can remember. Even if you were correct and Scottish oil was paying to help people suffering in the rest of the UK I would be all for it.

That's a poor view to have of higher level education

It's high risk for Tom being nationalist of natural resources, as Scotland imports gas, but exports oil. The same with food, no shortage of fish to eat, but there's plenty produce just not grown in Scotland. Tariff free open trade is critical in Scotland. 

There’s a couple of great posts from railway staff.

Then there’re several other posters suggesting we automate railways, with the perception this will be easy.

There is the DLR, but crucially (a) it was built from scratch to be automated and (b) it doesn’t share tracks with other services.

I don’t even want to estimate how many zeros would come on the end of the price tag for automating the UK’s railways.  I think there was still a lamplighter employed on a normal (not heritage) line at the turn of the millennium and there are still lever frame signal boxes in use.

If we can afford to pay a bus driver to move 40 people, paying the same order of magnitude to a train driver to move 600 people means the cost of the driver per passenger is almost vanishingly small - which tells me there are more productive areas to look at for cost savings.

I think you've misunderstood Tom's point. I don't think he's arguing that he must be paid more, he's using himself as an example of free market to explain how this phenomenon is being broken by the unions.

But more importantly,. modernising the network has a heap of benefits. Safer, more efficient, more reliable and in the long run more cost effective. But these changes will require a lot of innovation and unfortunately a direct impact on jobs.

With better and more affordable transport links other businesses are more likely to thrive. But these are indirect benefits on jobs and hard to evaluate, however, are often much greater in magnitude than the direct jobs so overall a net gain.

With zero expertise on this i would imagine we're decades away driverless and the underground would be first long before main lines.

Given its completely new and is already jaw droppingly expensive, does anyone have any idea if HS2 is going to be automated? It seems like an ideal candidate for it...

Exactly what journey has no possible alternative options at all?  Do you drive?

Umm, the DLR?  And indeed the Victoria and Central lines - there's a person sat at the front but they just do the doors and press "go".  And Thameslink through the core is ATO (automatic train operation) now too.  And while I haven't checked I would be surprised if the Elizabeth Line wasn't.

Because of the misbehaving British, you will pretty much need a member of staff of some sort on there, but I do see DLR style "guard only operation" as something we will see in the not too distant future.  The tech already exists and has for 20+ years.

The main challenge with the Tube is the lack of evacuation options if a train gets stuck - the DLR has a "platform" all the way along on the underground section.

Yes, it's still a member of staff, but guards are a lot cheaper than drivers.

It will certainly be ETCS* level 2 at least (maybe 3) on the dedicated sections of line, which isn't much a step to Automatic Train Operation.  Curiously the other notable place this system operates is the rather rural Cambrian line to Pwllheli and Aberystwyth - it was installed there as a trial!

* European Train Control System, a system of cab signalling - no actual signals by the side of the track.

I guess i was thinking driverless in the contact less sense, maybe it'll always have someone to say it is safe to go. I wasn't doubting that the tech is there, just the lack of investment to put it in place. 4g and fibre has been around a wee while, but places are still waiting (less than there was, but some).

If I was looking to create a fairer society where people are paid what they are worth I wouldn’t begin by attacking unions. 

The main challenge is level crossings and other places where the "Mk1 eyeball" may see something wrong and be able to stop in time to avoid it but an automated system might not.  People have been hit by DLR trains in circumstances when a Tube driver would have been able to avoid it, and that's on a fully segregated system.  It'll come, though, and it's definitely a much easier problem to solve than self-driving cars.

I'd expect it in the form of "guard only operation", where a human would remain to close the doors (the computer could open them) and check things are safe as well as deal with bad behaviour.  That's basically the DLR model which has worked reasonably well for years.

The problem with the RMT (specifically*) is a lack of realism.  Most people will get a derisory pay rise this year (or none at all) because businesses and the country are in a poor financial state.  There is no reason traincrew should be different, particularly given that train driving is pretty high-paid compared with e.g. bus driving.

The time to push is the "good times" (which will return, everything goes in cycles), I think they would be seen in a different light if they were more accepting of the situation now.

* There are other Unions on the railway, mainly ASLEF (drivers) and TSSA (various, but commonly guards etc who don't like the militancy of the RMT).  They are generally more pragmatic and less militant but still supportive of members.  Personally I'd join one of those two if I worked on the railway and not the RMT.

There is something about the human brain that can sense that a driver, cyclist or pedestrian hasn't seen me. It's clearly not a sixth sense and we must pick up on posture, head position, movement etc.. hard to programme for something intuitive. 

"Eye contact" is very difficult to codify, but yes, that.  Otherwise known as "driver's intuition".  When you just know, from a set of tiny, barely significant inputs, that something is about to go badly wrong.

It was tongue in cheek based Tom’s haughty “don’t you know who I am?” comment. I’m sure (hope) the many friends I have with PhDs would recognise that. Like any degree it’s only a route to the door of a particular career what matters after that is what you do (and obviously what school you went to and who your parents are!). I agree that it is inequitable that the few careers that actually require a PhD are not as well valued as some others.  

Thanks for that, but surely you mean British Imperial Train Control System*, as we are so forward looking?

* with apologies to all if this now gets shunted to the politics thread........

Like many European things it's not a lot to do with the EU.  I believe it's pushed by the UIC - Union Internationale du Chemin de Fer - a railway standards organisation which predates the EU by many, many years.

Is this relevant to trains tho'

I would have thought by the time a train driver is close enough to see that something at a level crossing (or similar) looks odd, all they would have time to do is blow the horn and pray.

I suspect levels crossings would need to be re-designed for automated trains. They currently leave plenty space to allow you to escape, but this has the issue it can also let you in, when you shouldn't be there.

I think they would need fully closed off and isolated crossings that you can't break into easily, and rely on LiDAR at the crossing to identify if something is trapped there that shouldn't be an automatically stop the trains in good time.

Overall this would be a lot safer than what we have now. 

You have a PhD and worked in electronics for 30 years, and you earn less than 50k. 

Either you have made some very poor career choices or your not very good. 

I've made more messing about with plc's, as a mechanical tech with no electrical quals at all. 

No wonder your upset about the train drivers earnings

Well said.

 Almost all the strikes nowadays are by rather well paid persons who can afford to take time off, rather than those on or below the breadline. The end result is that the less well off become even poorer due to increased costs. And who benefits - those people whose only worry is deciding where to take their foreign holidays or which new car to buy.

I disagree with T in E about most things but that's a bit harsh.

I think the mistake artif has made is assuming salaries in the London commuter belt are anything like Edinburgh. My sister in law is an actuary. She can demand something around £100k+ in London. I doubt she would get £50k in Scotland.

Some things are evened about a bit more, I think engineering is one of them, but it really depends on the exact job.

TSSA - transport & salaried staff association. I’m in TSSA, it’s mostly management, supervisory and ticket office membership. We haven’t been balloted for any industrial action yet but there are rumblings. Don’t know how I’d vote either, depends on what we are offered. In todays world, I’d be happy with job guarantee and 3% on a 2 year deal. Most folks who effectively pay our wages are getting f**k all.

just to upset a few - drivers are on a 4 day week on a 3 week shift cycle that gives them a 5 day weekend every 3 weeks. Shift length is variable but a 10 hour shift maximum. 

To be fair to the RMT members, they deserve a realistic but fair pay rise. Remember they kept this country running when it was most needed. ticket office, station staff and conductors (the bulk of a TOCs total staff) are the lowest paid yet face the most shit. It’s always been dodgy, especially on sat night when everyone is leathered, but since lockdown it’s definitely got worse, everyone is just so confrontational and entitled. 

Why be happy with a jobs guarantee?

There is there is a shortage of employees and far more jobs available than people looking for a job. If ever there is a time to move and get more money...it is now and will be like this for the foreseeable future.

If you need more money especially with the cost of living issues..........go job hunting.There are so many unfilled positions at the moemnt, its crazy.

I speak as an employer looking for staff( and I pay well)

No mistake, I come from Cornwall (if you want to talk piss poor wages) and travel the country/World for my current job. I can work locally for lower pay or move and earn more. Its a choice I make, but I don't begrudge others making more than I do even for the same job, many do.

T inE just comes across as bitter peed off middle aged person who missed their chance, and has just realised it. 

The world is harsh, and getting worse quickly

Classical lefty stuff. Someone disagrees with you so you jump in with the personal attacks. You should be ashamed.

Tom’s income is nothing to do with the discussion. The fact that railway workers incomes are massively out of kilter with their skills, especially when they rely on taxpayer funding, is.

The RMT know that the last 2 years, and the changes in behaviour it’s created, has fundamentally weakened any negotiating position it once had. 

If they were a bit less militant maybe a deal could be done, but sadly P&O have shown the only way to deal with unions like this.

It’s time to call their bluff. They’ll starve before I need to take a train.

Lefty, OK probably a little, ashamed no

T in E bought his and his partners income in to the conversation. 

If you like slave labour, maybe

The risk with booking offices is that there's increasingly very little case for them as most sales move online, onto phones etc.  And a strike wouldn't disrupt the railway because most tickets aren't now sold in booking offices.  It's going to be a very difficult one...

The only thing PandO have shown that exploitative, tax dodging, supranational capitalists and their enablers should be made to walk the plank and keelhauled.

Edit: Also, nice not to have to meet characters like you on a train, please do stay away.

More personal attacks. Are you by any chance a lefty who can’t use reason, so chooses to use insults instead? Anyway you’re missing the point. If the RMT goes on strike neither of us are getting on a train.

The original poster made the point that the strikes are a bit of pain in the backside. TIE pointed out that they’re already on outrageous amounts for their skills.

To me, in a post Covid world, where ever greater subsidiaries are need to keep the rail network going, pay of c.25k feels about right for the drivers. 

Before the pandemic I would have argued that workers of critical infrastructure shouldn’t be allowed to strike. Now I don’t care - just don’t spend my tax money on them.

Seriously-- in London for example? "Feels about right" is a real rubbish argument, can you not come up with a better statistical one than that.

The only thing that the P and O situation has shown is that if your employer pays above the going rate and cannot make a profit, then sooner or later it will catch up with them.

I am sick of people denying workers their bargaining power to achieve salary increases because "times are hard".  I have yet to see the times when in a boom the state and employers increase wages generously and voluntarily, the thing that is always asked for is "prudence", i.e. wage restraint while board remuneration and dividends explode.

Also, this is not the response to farmers or industry, their price increases are seen as a necessary response to fuel and raw material inflation. What is wrong if workers and employees force an increase in the price they sell their labor for?

I am rather jealous of those groups who still have strikes in their arsenal to back up their negotiations, my union (German public service) does fck all for me, and striking is not an option for those working in research and university education: No one would notice, unfortunately, at least not in the short term.

Also, if you want to avoid personal attacks you only need to refrain from peddling excuses for criminal labor practises such as the mass sackings by P&O, and the tacit enablement by the government.

Snowflake.

CB

To be fair to artif, Tom has been quite clear that his salary is the global going rate and not affected by where he lives. His whole point was that his job would pay basically the same regardless of whether he lived in London, Mumbai or Edinburgh.

And I am all for letting such employers go tits up. Even as a lefty I find subsidizing wages with any form of top up social security payments wrong. If a business model cannot be run without paying employees less than a living wage society is better off without it.

Being able to buy a channel crossing at prices that make slave labor necessary is not a human right.

CB

I have no problem with people getting paid more.

I have a problem with two things in this case (or really just one now).

1. Taxpayers money being spent on the salaries.

It’s ultimately a zero sum game without productivity increases. A pound more in the pocket of someone paid by the government is a pound less in mine.

2. Using monopoly status to demand supernormal salaries.

Imagine if all the doctors in the UK downed tools until they got paid a million each. Or the Army refused to fight without a payrise. What could we do? Ultimately we’d either have to ban them from striking (we have with the army) or pay them the money they want. As I’ve alluded to before,  I don’t think this applies to RMT member anymore as fewer and fewer people “need” to use the rail network.

You’re falling into the lefty trap of worshipping the ideology (in this case unions and strikes are good and labour should be paid more) without analysing the situation I.e. who’s paying the salaries, who does a strike affect, is the union being reasonable ect.

How on earth have you come to that conclusion?

A train driver on £50k has decent living standards but yes their living standards are under attack as are those of their lesser paid colleagues who they are supporting by joining the industrial action. Workers have no bargaining power individually but have every right to organise collectively in a functioning democracy.

Train drivers salaries aren't the key reason for this industrial action. The union is trying to defend 2500 safety critical maintenance jobs in the face of £2bn proposed cuts.

We've all seen the record of this government and the effect of cuts. They don't slash £2bn off services to deliver improvements for the users.

There will always be some people who need wage tops even if working full time. For example, I doubt that there is a society in existence, or that is credible to redesign society such that a hypothetical single parent is able to support 3 kids in an unskilled* manual job.

*Some people object to this term so feel free to replace with the more cumbersome 'low barrier to entry job'.

I could be wrong but I don't believe that safety concerns are a legal reason to strike. This does make sense, the unions are not responsible for passenger safety and could not be held liable for corporate manslaughter, the management however could. Safety concerns are normally used as a fig leaf to cover up the unions' primary interest which is job security, safety looks selfless, job security doesn't.

This is slightly wrong, 40% of the membership must have voted in favour and at least 50% must have voted in total

A low paid retail worker for instance is not competing with a railway worker for salary. In fact if terms and conditions are better for railway workers then terms and conditions for retail workers will be slightly better because, in the aggregate, retail workers can retrain and take up employment in the railway industry.

In the aggregate, more well paid positions available in the economy drives an upward trend in terms and conditions across the economy, ultimates meaning that the lower grade roles also have to offer reasonable terms and conditions if they want to fill the vacancies.

Everybody who relies on a paid income should support people who are defending terms and conditions and should join a union.

A strong economy with a skilled and educated  work force will do that just as well.Higher productivity also drives up salaries.

The productivity gap in the UK s a measure against other similar countries is a huge issue which drives salaries etc down.

What a thoroughly depressing thread.

Are you not aware that the train operating companies are privately owned, so the drivers wages aren't paid by the taxpayer? But if they were paid, oooh, lets say £25k pa, they would be in many cases entitled to universal credit, so would be being "paid" by the taxpayer. Which I suspect wouldn't sit well with you (it wouldn't with me either), especially for those drivers employed by companies owned by foreign governments.....

As above, they arent paid by the government.

£50k is hardly supernormal.......especially in a position with high levels of vacancies.

And you appear to have fallen into the righty trap of not knowing what you are talking about before taking random potshots at "lefties".

You appear to have lost the plot, the vast majority of farmers do not get any price increases in response to inflation of input costs.

Railways workers are partly paid by the taxpayer[1]. I'm not presently arguing that they shouldn't get a pay rise but if they do it will either have to come from higher fare prices, i.e. the general public, or higher subsidies, i.e the general public. Source [2] reckons that profits (and this is pre covid which has destroyed the railway's finances) averaged 2% of your ticket price and staff pay was 25%. Therefore, even if all the profit back when it was 2% was split between the staff as a pay rise that would equal 8% and would still not be keeping pace with today's inflation. Removing all the profit would of course necessitate a totally different rail operating model, presumably nationalisation.

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Financing_of_the_rail_industry_in_Great_Brita...

[2]https://bigplanbigchanges.co.uk/straight-answers/2-uncategorised/465-straig....

When did the truth stop McTory Boy from spinning a thread to his own prejuidice..........

They’re heavily subsidised by the tax payer. Indirect government spending I suppose.

I don’t want to be poorer so they can be richer.

If I didn’t have skin in the game I wouldn’t give a monkey’s what they’re paid.

You might want to look up how much subsidy rail companies get.  Also how many are no longer private.

As above, they are in part

Hmm.

I wonder what you think about HGV drivers salaries...or are they only worth £25k in your view.

There you have a free market ( there is no real monoploy) in effect and an experienced HGV driver will command a salary of about the same as a train driver....,.,.

I have no issue with a state supported employment sector where people work on tax payers' money if they are genuinely unable to hold down another job. Such a job should pay significantly higher than receiving benefits without work.

Also, I have no issue with top up benefits for the children of the low paid worker in your example, whereas I would not necessarily support his childless colleague to the same extent.

What I do object to is entire industries that are profitable as such (as in, paying well at owner and board level) only because they are allowed to suppress wage levels to the extent that their employees need top up payments from the rest of society. Why should my taxes pay for the profit of e.g. a McDonalds franchise owner paying shit money to his kitchen staff?

Similarly, if you cannot get a cheap ferry ride, prices should be adjusted upwards until the company can be run profitably, probably removing some companies from the market as demand will drop *. Business models like the gig economy in food delivery, or cleaning jobs that can only be offered at such a low price because the companies saddle their cleaners with impossible work loads driving their income well below the minimum wage should be banned outright.

CB

* whether ferries are infrastructure that should not be run for profit in general, similar to water works, is a separate issue

Well the counter point to that is that you might find alot more people looking for jobs especially if they are unskilled.

McDonalds are considered a decent employer by the way and there have been plenty of people who have worked there way up the McDonalds system. Might not be your cup of tea..especially if you just hate the brand.The franchise owners have to pay the McDonald rate so to speak ( that is why they are franchise owners.. they cannot do always as they want, they have to follow the model)

I don’t really have a view on HGV driver salaries - none of my business. I’m not on the hook for their salaries.

It looks to be a tough job, with long, anti-social hours, and if they earn what you say, then good for them.

Only interested in industries that rely heavily on government subsidy I guess then. Banking for example.

Forgive my ignorance, but what subsidies?

But basically yes - public sector / quasi-public sector.

https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/-/media/boe/files/financial-stability-paper...

A subsidy that the Bank of England can’t quantify, and that every private bank in the world benefits from… okay…

“The paper has explored estimates of the implicit subsidy in the existing literature, and shown how the divergence between them depends on their differing modelling assumptions and information content. Finding a definitive measure of the subsidy is frustrated due to its terms, and lack of observable price. But despite their differences, all measures point to significant transfers of resources from the government to the banking system”.

The first paragraph of you post at 16.49 yesterday said exactly that. 

But you have no problem (from a different post) with truck drivers earning more even though you also will end up paying them via your purchases. Both are a transport cost, either for goods or people, and all get paid for eventually by the consumer / taxpayer. I find it a bit odd that such a distinction can be drawn in such apparent black and white terms.

Not disputing there is a subsidy; but that isnt there to go to the drivers; they are a relatively small part of the rail operators costs. The subsidy argument is a different one, and part of a very weird business model that, i would argue, doesnt work except for the rail / train operators shareholders. It certainly doesnt directly help the passengers......

The may be privately owned but ultimately their wages are paid by the travelling public or through freight haulage contracts.

Very poor, under that thinking Marks and Sparks, Amazon, Shell and so on are all public companies. 

Unions definitely have a legitimate interest in defending the right of people to work in a safe workplace. The health and safety of workers is of fundamental importance to unions.

Taking reasonable care of health and safety in the workplace is the responsibility of every employee by law. Unions might not be responsible for passenger safety but their members certainly are. Union members could definitely be held liable for manslaughter for something that happened at work.

So, safety concerns are definitely a reason why employees can be in a "Trade Dispute" with their employer about their "terms and conditions of employment, or the physical conditions in which they are required to work" which is a condition needed for industrial action to take place lawfully.  https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1992/52/section/244

As long as there still are any kitchen workers who qualify for top ups that rate is too low and the rest of society have to subsidise their profits. Better let them go bust if they cannot pay a living wage.

CB

Let's drive salaries up from all directions and have a skilled, educated, and organised workforce delivering high productivity in safe and secure jobs. Everybody's a winner then.

The most productive employees are motivated because they are treated as human beings in a supportive work environment. 

No, Tom is arguing the opposite, that because he is poorly paid so should the drivers (or whoever else he chooses to target). 

Modernising the network would hold benefits but the lifetime cost of the project likely exceeds the cost of staff retention and/or isn't affordable. Personally, I cannot see fully driverless transport coming around any time soon. A person in charge/person to blame is required, a factor in the drivers salary that Tom refuses to recognise. 

Agreed, however there is little commercial will to do so, the returns are too distant. Nor is there political will, neither party is keen on projects maturing outside of a 10 year window, the other lot might be in power then and take the medals. 

I am struggling to understand this statement, earlier in the thread you cite globalisation as the reason for your low salary, yet there are countries where you can earn more? On another globe maybe? 

You have a lot of energy in your frustrations, use it more constructively. 

When I was a teenager I stuck 'It's Scotland Oil' stickers on lamposts during the first devolution referendum.

Let me tell you what was immoral. The UK government telling Scotland during that referendum that there was hardly any oil in the North Sea, despite having commissioned the McCrone report which concluded there was a ton of oil and Scotland could be rich as an oil state. McCrone was actually wrong and there was far more oil than he thought. The point where it goes from immoral to fraud is that the UK government classified the McCrone report to stop the voters finding out that they were being lied to.

The second immoral thing was gerrymandering the referendum based on a rule requiring a majority of the electorate rather than a majority of votes cast and basing the calculations on outdated and inaccurate voters rolls containing duplicates for people who had moved and people who were dead or in jail.  A majority of votes cast was in favour and Scotland should have got devolution from the first referendum.

 Scotland has been robbed of around 1 trillion dollars. We should be in roughly the same position as Norway, the only reason we are not is English thievery.

Now they are telling us there could be f*cking power cuts next winter because there's not enough gas. FFS Scotland is about 98% renewable electricity and we have oil and gas to spare. Our problem is being attached to England and being treated like mugs.

I would suggest that true global societal equality, requires losers, and that people in maybe the top 15% (made up UKC %, or also known as a wild guess) need to take less, to make room for those lower to come up, but I have never come across anyone, ever, who would accept that, well they always seem to think the level should be just a teensy weesy bit higher than them, every single time, no exceptions, ever. 

No, in California. I spend most of my time working on projects for US companies, if I lived in the US and had US citizenship I'd get paid more and find it easier to get work. The immigration barriers would work for me instead of against me. The UK let its electronics industry die, it didn't just fail to support it, it actively undermined it with nonsense like the spectrum auctions for 3G, failing to embrace the opportunities of the EU, and eventually Brexit.

I'm using it very constructively to try and get Scotland out of the UK and back into the EU. Once we get the basics in place we can be successful.

I think you're over emphasising the importance of oil on our economy. Fuel security, great, revenue, not so much.

Revenue was just £0.6 billion (0.03 per cent of GDP) in 2019-20. Granted this is increasing to an anticipated £7.8 billion in 2022-23 (0.39% of GDP) but is expected to fall back very quickly for 2024.

In the grand scheme of things it's small fry.

Financial services, manufacturing and services in general is where the money is. Scotland's deficit of £36.3bn cannot be plugged by oil and gas. Remember North Sea gas is almost all in England. Some of the oil is too.

Presumably you are also strongly against the Trade Union Act 2016, which made it harder to take industrial action by introducing the requirement that there had to be a turnout of at least 50% in ballots?

I’m sorry, I know you’re a lefty, but what do you mean by this? You’ve listed a series of public companies…

There are much swifter and easier ways of improving your lot with a greater probability of success. Straying off into the political, my impression of the SNP despite its title is far to the left of your opinions in this thread. 

The implication was, as I read it, that because tax payers buy the services, the business is public sector. Using that thinking the only private sector companies would be yacht suppliers to billionaires.

Is that OK righty? 

Better giving another example to justify what you are saying. For a 16-17 year looking for parttime work its a good starting point.That is why lots of young people go there.

As an example the minium wage for 16-17 is £4.81 an hour, McDonalds pay £6.50 to £8.00 an hour.

If you are in Inverness their local franchise pays £11 an hour as an example.

McDonalds is often mocked by people. Not somewhere I go to , but its development of people from kitchens to management is recognised as being top class if you want a career in that environment( alot of people turn their noses up at it) .Not my cup of tea, but I have learnt not to mock it.I suspect that is what you are doing because it does not tick your boxes.

Okay - got it - you can preach loudly about strikes and unions, but you don’t understand the difference between public and private companies.

I’ll make a note to pay special attention to your views in the future as you obviously know what you’re talking about…

This is a great thread. 
Its like watching ping pong or two boxers, wearily slugging it out, neither will give, ever.
Do people refuse to see other peoples perspective, or are they incapable of seeing the other perspective.
Is anyone actually listening to the person they are arguing with, are they even interested in what the other person is saying.
Just possibly, and I say this warily, because I cannot spell cautiously, its worth reading what your opponent writes, and just try for a moment to see it from their perspective, try and understand that they are not evil people, just people who have led a slightly different life to you. It's even possible, you are both correct, and both wrong, at the same time, depending on perspective.

It’s not that difficult to follow. Presley seems to understand just  fine that a company that is privately owned, but derives it’s income from the public (customers) isn’t a public company. Unlike the OP, who he was responding to.

You're the one arguing for an underclass of less worthy to support your idyll of the status quo. I'd happily take home less in order to benefit from a more secure safety net for myself and my neighbours and to not have to witness families suffering from hunger and homelessness even though they are working. 

You've introduced a total distraction though because we're not talking about taxation, were talking about pay. You've ignored that everyone can be a winner if productivity is also increased. In the case that productivity is not increased, no, prices cannot go up beyond what people are prepared to pay because of competition. Profit share would have to come down and that would be a fair outcome for a society that currently allows working people to suffer hunger and poverty while toiling to create super profits for millionaires to hoard away.

Okay.

>You've ignored that everyone can be a winner if productivity is also increased.

I must apologise, but I cannot understand how the Planet can sustain a level of productivity, increase so that everyone (EDIT, Now and in the future) on the planet is a winner.

>In the case that productivity is not increased, no, prices cannot go up beyond what people are prepared to pay because of competition. Profit share would have to come down and that would be a fair outcome for a society that currently allows working people to suffer hunger and poverty while toiling to create super profits for millionaires to hoard away.

I have read that a couple of times, am I understanding that this is different to Capitalism, is it Socialism, but not Communism?

I'm not quite following this paragraph.

You say that if "productivity is not increased" then "prices cannot go up beyond what people are prepared to pay because of competition".

But surely if productivity is low, we will have an under-supply of goods and services and thus a lack of competition and a sellers market meaning that prices will sky rocket. A similar result to printing money.

So profit share wouldn't come down, in fact, profits would go up, except they will be help by fewer people.

What you want is a is slight oversupply such that you have healthy competition, but not so much that swathes of businesses go under. It's a bit like spinning a million plates in an angry storm however.

If prices that the less well off go up faster than their incomes, then, even with a larger income, the less well off are even worse off.

Isn't it about time that people whose income is almost TWICE the national average - and even that figure is boosted by the incomes of the mega-rich, so it's probably more like THREE time the average shop worker etc. - stopped being just plain greedy.

What are they going to spend it on ? Another fortnight in the Bahamas, a villa in Spain, a second Range Rover. Or maybe buy up housing stock to rent out and fleece the less well off even more ??

How would that compare to those on TEN, a HUNDRED or a THOUSAND times the average shop worker stopping being plain greedy?

And an awful large percentage of the population have zero access or use of passenger trains - because they just don't exist in some places since Beeching - so why should they pay for something they cannot use. If there's going to be any price increases they should be on the tickets.

After all, when petrol goes up those who have to drive to work don't get subsidised - quite the opposite, the Government rakes in extra dosh through the tax element (to spend on railways maybe ???)

We could have done with such a "gerrymandering" exercise when the EU referendum was set up. Indeed would it not be better if this was always the case for referenda ?

People earning £50k are very unlikely to be buying villas in Spain or driving around in multiple range rovers. A TFL driver on £50k if renting a 2 bed flat in central London might easily be spending £25k on rent. Remember, £50k is £37k after tax.

If they've got two kids in Nursery, you can add an extra £20k to their annual spend. Ahh they've gone bust. .

In London, earning £25k basically means your life is on pause. Holidays, kids, etc forget it. Possibly even means living with parents.

Double the average you can get by, but not lead the life you're suggesting.

Even as a proud Scot that's drivel. Before Scotland had oil it wasn't exactly paying it's way, it was a uk team effort. The oil industry has done ok for Scotland, lots of well paid jobs, investment, an alternative to the fishing industry for most of the east coast, plus all the jobs created in the secondary sectors supporting the oil exploration, extraction, shipping and so on. 

When the oil is gone, then Scotland will be back to relying on a team effort, and as far as climate change goes the less oil that's pumped out the better.

Let's be honest, the average Scot doesn't have a save for rainy day mentality.  Norway has a young iraqi migrant to thank in part for their oil industry, but also the wisdom not to waste their new found wealth like the Arab nations he left. https://www.ft.com/content/99680a04-92a0-11de-b63b-00144feabdc0

Gas, Scotland is a net importer. It's easy to merge the two sectors together but they different to a degree. The renewables might be sited in Scotland but nearly all are owned by uk and global companies, funded by uk private and public monies, this is great for Scotland as it's employment, but they aren't Scottish.

Mugs, the mugs are those who think Scotland could go it alone. Yeah brexit was and is a disaster, but Scotland shouldn't compound it by having an exit of it's own. Better to work from the inside and steer the uk back towards the eu over a decade or two.

Not really. Expenditure on roads vastly exceeds the tax take on petrol. And roads dominating everything is terrible for people.who don't drive.

This is madness. You really have lost the plot.

Do you ever stop and reread what you're about to post and ask yourself whether you might just be talking complete bollocks?

You don't have to be a billionaire to be greedy. Or do you suggest that people in any occupation can keep on demanding pay rises until they're taking home as much as Elon Musk ??

Having seen the wide range of ways you were willing to misuse, misrepresent, misconstrue and otherwise abuse any and all statistics in your quest to show the English government was worse at dealing with Covid than the Scottish one, and having gone through detailed unpickings of your deceit to ever more off-the-rails replies...

Whenever you post something like this, I find myself wondering "Is TiE just bullshitting as badly as he was with Covid?".

OK, who is it that downvoted this comment - presumably some Brexiteer who doesn't give a sh1t how they get their way so long as they do get their way. There's been enough said here (and nationally) about the narrow way that Brexit got through, and the lack of any rule regarding turnout/super majority and so forth.

Spend last year on roads was 11.6 bn.

https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.statista.com/statistics/298667/uni...

income from fuel duty alone last year was over 25 bn

https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.statista.com/statistics/284323/uni...

Then there's RFL and vat on fuel.......

We don't all live in London you know, certainly not in Central London. I would imagine only a very few extortionately (over)paid people actually do.

Plus a train driver certainly doesn't have to, especially as they get free train travel.

You sound like that Tory Minister, who declared that he couldn't live on his MP + Ministerial salaries. But well more than half the British population has to live on an income of less than half what the Train Drivers currently get.

How does bread get to the shops. And milk, potatoes, rice, meat, ........

You are suggesting manipulating referendums to get your way; you haven’t exactly got the moral high ground there. I wasn’t the downvoter but I would have been if I had seen your comment. No, it would not be better if all referenda were rigged and manipulated. It would be better if none were rigged or otherwise manipulated.

Do you understand what gerrymandering is?

Do you ever think that there are people out there that have to eke out their income just to make sure that they can eat, pay the rent and replace worn out clothing - and that's by getting handouts !

Various ways. If you think roads are so dominant because of delivery requirements, that's nuts.

Look back in the thread - It wasn't me who first used the term gerrymandering.

But you must be one of the few people on here who believes that having a referendum on such a major issue - and aren't all referenda on major issues - should have been allowed if the end result could have been decided by a single vote with a miserly turnout.

And that's completely forgetting the fact that the EU referendum wasn't even a legally binding one, which meant the rules regarding preventing the (what would have been illegal) shenanigans which went on couldn't be applied.

How is yours delivered to the shops, drones don't have the capacity to move a pallet-load at a time.

And if they did it would be a lot more dangerous being under them than under a pigeon that needs a sh1t.

The original post in this thread is about RMT strikes in London so I would have thought London salaries and their living costs are rather relevant don't you think?

Hmmm, plenty not so well off people live in central London. Quite often in illegal multi-occupancy properties. The commuter belt that keeps prices high goes a long way out of London. Further than you would likely be willing to commute.

And why do you think people in central London are they overpaid? People earning six figures in London do not have unions artificially raising their salaries. They are in demand and their employers don't want to loose them.

If you think they are over paid, then feel free to get the relevant qualifications, gain the experience, earn the ridiculous salary and stand at a food bank and hand out piles of cash to those who need it.

I have no idea of the relevance of that with regard to the point to which I was replying earlier. 

Why are you not banging on about those on TEN, a HUNDRED or a THOUSAND times the average shop worker if you consider THREE time the average shop worker greedy?

To be fair, I assumed the OP was about the national threat of RMT strikes, and the current impacts on Trans Pennine, so must say, have been rather confused by the London centric posts.

Why do you think this relates particularly to London?

Motorists (myself included) don't pay the full cost of motoring.

Motorists contribute to fine particulates that result in a six month reduction in average lifespan here in the UK.

 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-56801794

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/...

Only because the OP mentioned "a three day visit to London including a social event (in House of Commons as it happens) and a theatre visit are scheduled for 21st to 22nd June"

Maybe he was more concerned about the journey into London, can't be sure, but what springs to my mind is the amount of strikes from Tube strikes in London (there always seems to be a few planned).

Thanks for the apology, I took a tone in reply that I should probably also apologize for.

To be absolutely honest, I also share your doubts about how much economic growth can be sustained on our planet because growth traditionally means converting resources into profit. But, if we can find a way to grow without destroying our world then let's go for it because everyone can be better off that way. That's yet another side point to explore but to understand a problem you need to some simplifying assumptions so I'd rather leave that discussion alone for now.

It's Capitalism. In a capitalist economy businesses are in competition with each other and cannot arbitrarily increase prices just because their costs have gone up. If they raise prices then their competitors who resist raising prices, accepting lower profit margins, will win the market share.

If productivity reduces then I think you'd be right but I'm arguing for an increase in wages, not a decrease in productivity.

Accepted. Let's do everything we can to make sure the less well off are paid properly then.

I'd like to see a world without greed. However, your target - striking train drivers are not being greedy, they are actually taking a risk in support of their underpaid colleagues. Most of the strikers are maintenance and station staff. If they didn't all show solidarity the strike would have little impact and could not succeed.

This is what we need to see more of if we want a fairer deal for low paid workers. People who are doing well enough need to show support for their colleagues. Join a union, get organised, and get a fair share.

Traditionally yes, but we are way beyond that now. Most of UK GDP is through services that require almost no resources other than human brains, data and software.

And we will continue to move in that direction.

Energy certainly is relying on less and less raw materials, we are using more and more renewable materials in manufacturing, construciton etc. I think the last hurdle that will be a bit of a sticky one is farming but I think we'll see some amazing advancement in that area before long.

It maybe what sprang to your mind, and formed your perspective, but on the 24 th May the RMT announced the result to a ballot on national strike action, the only people not for full action are GTR workers, that's south east and greater London, so possibly you have been barking up the wrong tree.

And what does all this software run on?

Yes, hardware, which is forever being upgraded. How many billions of computers, smartphones etc etc are there on the planet?

So you had no political sense when you were a teenager. I thought it was something you had developed as you got older.

Quite possibly

And hardware is becoming massively more efficient as time goes on. Moore's Law hasn't expired yet, in fact quantum computers are on the brink to be used on a commercial basis.

I don't think we're about to run out of silicon and copper any time soon, and since computers need less and less of it to work, and copper is easy to recycle I'm not convinced there's a long term issue here with regards to computer hardware.

We just not to stop shipping them to places like India to be "carefully disposed of".

I am surprised that you consider the potential for catastrophic climate  change and ecological destruction, through unsustainable consumption, to provide growth of production to enhance the lives of a small proportion of the worlds population, and will impact most, those who are less able to deal with the consequences, and will see no benefits, a side point. I had assumed you are in favour of Social Justice.

No, but it was you who suggested that it should be done for every referendum. Did you mean it when you said gerrymandering should be standard practice? I ask that as a serious question, because I wonder if we are talking at cross purposes.

No idea where you have got that idea from. You have completely misunderstood. I agree that there were/are myriad problems with the Brexit referendum. I don’t agree with the idea that rigging votes as standard practice is any kind of solution. 

For clarity, “gerrymandering is the political manipulation of electoral district boundaries with the intent of creating undue advantage for a party, group, or socio-economic class within the constituency.” (Wiki)

Is that what you are advocating?

You should review your own advice before posting.

You've portrayed my viewpoint as evil twice now, you've jumped into what I've said without seeming to have taken any interest in the conversation I was involved in, and you keep trying to introduce points that take us away from the issue at hand.

I am putting forward an argument in favour of securing better terms and conditions for workers.

Protecting the world that sustains all of us is of prime importance, I've never argued for anything else.

I have been arguing for better terms and conditions for workers, nothing else. The wage share of the economy can increase relative to the profit share whether there is growth or not  Growth came in to the discussion from others who want to improve standards of living but also defend profit.

You on the other hand have argued that wages shouldn't rise because prices will rise (which is incorrect, profits will reduce all else remaining equal). If you get what you have been advocating then the wages of the poorest are never allowed to rise and you have locked in social injustice forever.

(Edit - corrected a rogue word - read to said)

Maybe the RMT could suggest to their Union Members that the already highly paid Train Drivers forego a pay rise in this occasion and instead pass on the extra money to the lower paid staff in the rail industry? 

Maybe the very generously paid rmt bosses can take a cut and reduce membership fees, every little helps in a cost of living crisis. 

In reply to ExiledScot:

Maybe you two hypocrites could get active in your own union and put forward a motion to forego your own pay rises. Or maybe just get behind what is generally a good cause.

No. I just think rmt bosses wages are a little excessive, does he really earn or deserve £150k? 

Good cause? It's not charity work, people are paid to do a job. I'd rather the ticket checkers, platform staff and any other low paid customer facing roles saw a wage rise long before any drivers. They were the ones working with people through covid and are back in the thick of it now.

Plus, now if everyone's wages went up, the prices of all goods and services would just increase more, catch 22.

If I was on £50K in the current financial climate I wouldn't expect a pay rise and I also wouldn't begrudge someone on a much lower wage getting one.
Why do I get a feeling that your flavour of socialism is based on ideology as opposed to doing what's best for the lower wage earners in this situation. 

I advocate a levelling, with some people coming down, to allow some people to come up, with no overall rise in consumption. Redistribution of the existing pot. And even that may not be sustainable for the planet.

You on the other hand, if I have read correctly, have advocated increased production, which I believe to be unsustainable.

I suppose a problem with redistribution of the existing assets though, is that could lead to more consumption. A rich person will never spend their Billions, whereas if that billion was redistributed to a million people,, they would consume more, a lot more than the billionaire would have .

Maybe the level would have to be a lot lower than I thought. I wonder what living standard is globally sustainable? 

Anyway, it's not going to happen, so let's not worry.

£150k is peanuts when you consider how many members they represent and if you compare it with the earnings of the people they are negotiating with.

Salary is not the sole indicator of capability of worker but it is a fair one. It could be argued that there is little wonder unions are so weak. 

I am not sure that is true. The billionaire's money is not under the mattress making no contribution to economic activity, employment, consumption and environmental damage. The billionaire's money is in banks, shares, bonds and whatever financing economic activity, employment, consumption and associated environmental damage.

I'm sorry and I'm not getting at you - but how do you know that?

There's an article about how billionaires spend their money, which says "billionaires can typically afford to spend $80 million a year, with many spending their wealth on private jets, real estate, remote islands, cars, art, trips to space, and superyachts."

https://www.thedrum.com/opinion/2021/12/21/the-world-s-billionaires-where-t...

Surely it's better if they spank their money. Creates a lot of jobs. Interesting jobs too that people and progress through.

How do you suggest unspent wealth is held in a way that does not generate economic activity?

In reply to FactorXXX:

I've explained how the strike helps low paid workers in the rail industry and has some positive benefit for low paid workers everywhere. Most people will agree that raising low paid people out of poverty is a good cause.

I've explained how wage rises for everyone can't result in price rises for everyone beyond what people are prepared to pay. In the aggregate, the profit share of the economy must fall faster than price rises because of competition.

Neither of you has put forward any counter arguments, if you have any let's hear them. Instead, you have just tried to sow division between workers like true Tories.

If you believe in what you say there are a few simple steps you can take to make it a reality.

1) If you are not already in a union, join one.

2) Attend your union branch meeting.

3) Submit a policy motion to be debated and voted on at the branch meeting. Make your case and vote for it.

If successful your proposed policy will become a motion to be voted on at national policy conference.

4) To give your policy the best chance of being successful at national Policy Conference you could consider running to be the branch delegates at the national Policy Conference, or you could vote for the people to be delegates that you consider to be the most committed to arguing for your policy.

Why do I get the feeling that you are more interested in sowing division by picking at any minor disagreements about strategy as opposed to doing what's best for lower wage earners?

There are a few ways but basically you're right, I agree, thanks for correcting that 

You want to discuss the environmental impacts of economic growth which I think is a side issue on a thread about the "Threat of Rail Strikes". Fair do's, it's a more important topic in the run of things and I've been guilty of introducing topics that are slightly off the main thrust but still have some relevance to a thread in the past as well. However, my intention in this thread is to defend the right of workers to stand up for decent terms and conditions so I don't want to get too drawn away from that issue.

Other posters have said that increased productivity is a route to increased pay. I have said that if we can increase productivity without destroying our world then I would support it. There has been some debate about whether this might be possible or not.

There are 171 billionaires in the UK, with a fortune of almost £600bn combined. There are 14 million people living in poverty. These billionaires could give every person living in poverty £30,000 EACH and STILL be billionaires. Worldwide, the richest 1 percent bagged 82 percent of wealth created in 2017 while the poorest half of humanity got nothing. That's the scale of the disparity.

As well as their insanely wasteful lifestyles where they treat the planet as their own personal playground, it's the billionaires that control the oil corporations, the car manufacturers, the agri-conglomerates, and all the other dirty industries and activities that are despoiling the planet that sustains us. It's the billionaires who are able to exert undemocratic power over government policy to favour profit over people and the planet.

Reducing the living standard of the bottom 50% of the world population would achieve nothing environmentally, it's at the billionaire level where you need to focus and billionaire's get their money through profit. The best thing you could do for the environment as far as it can be affected by wealth redistribution is to support a fair deal for workers so that the profit share of the economy falls relative to the wage share. 

To be honest, your lengthy and boringly technical reply just reinforces my opinion that this a political game to you and that you have no real interest in getting better pay for the people at the lower end of the wage market in the rail industry.

As a person who supports rmt, a union which consistently strikes at times to cause maximum hassle to the public, asking for rises, one off bonuses etc.. complains of others sowing division! 😀 

Sounds like the 70s.

The only sustainable way the uk can increase low paid wages in through increased productivity, the uk hasn't excelled at this for a long time. There are pockets of great efficiency in the uk, often where one large union has the least influence in companies like Nissan.

Education, Training, investment by companies, technology and government support will bring efficiency and higher output. I'm not for a second suggesting the tories are doing this. No one has done it for years. Blair's Education,education... just gave everyone a degree but it doesn't improve productivity, we just have higher qualified low paid workers! (Often with uni debt)

The unions are stuck in past, it's not the 1920s anymore, yes they did a lot for workers rights, but that's a hundred years ago. Now we have legislation, everyone can vote, Labour needs to become less wedded to the unions and draw in voters saying it will push for laws that will improve their lot. Every time someone is an hour or two late to work because of strike action uk production declines and the chances of real growth goes down with it. 

.... I agree that there were/are myriad problems with the Brexit referendum. I don’t agree with the idea that rigging votes as standard practice is any kind of solution. 

Since when was requiring a decent majority rather than a simple "1 more than the other side" regarded as "rigging votes".

I'm simply stating that changing the status quo on rather major matters should require a sensible majority to enable that change - otherwise we end up with a dogs breakfast as in Brexit.

This could be a Naive view, but I think, the Conservative party kind of represents many values that people hold dear, a bit conservative really, but are too much in the thrall of lobbyists of big business and the very rich.

Wheras, the Labor party, was and maybe could be, a bit more progressive, so not as conservative, but they are too much in thrall of the Unions, who only represent their members, not wider society, though they do tend to frame their disputes as for the good of wider society, ie Rail safety or whatever. 

Soo, possibly the people who are not very rich, or in Unions get shafted, either way. Now I am sure someone will be along to say join a Union then, but many sectors are so global, or have so little power, that if they went on strike, no one would notice, or if they did, the market would replace them, quick sticks.

Both parties kind of hark back to imaginary good times, when the unions had power and a voice... or the good old days of feet and inches, the 11 plus. Rose tinted nostalgia of eras that were often pretty grim, but time dulls the pain. It's clever marketing, preys on weaknesses, desires, insecurity and aspiration, pretending they can deliver the impossible to different sectors of society with different flavoured carrots.

I think what really matters is their policies which all seem fairly similar these days.

I'm sure many will disagree with me on this one, but I get the feeling that the Tories and Labour have both merged together offering two centrist options which differ only by branding. Yes there are a handful of policies like Rwanda which I don't think Labour would have gone for, but on the whole, they very much align with eachother.

I don't think there would be much material change to the country whether Labour or the Tories are in power at the moment. Back in the Corbyn/Cameron days you had a clear left and right option.

Do you really believe that the Conservatives have moved towards the centre since Cameron?

Of course.

Look at the massive increase in public spending during BoJo era. Yes some of it is Covid related, but not all of it.

Speaking of Covid, look at the furlough scheme. Cameron's government was centered around reducing public spending (or what turned out to mean, not increasing public spending as much as labour historically did, but still increasing it).

And the you've got his pipe dreams like bridges to Ireland, airports in the sea, big big government spending.

I have a theory that labor wouldn't have been as generous as the Tories regarding the furlough scheme if they we're in charge because they would have been torn apart for spending £70 billion on such a scheme. They never would have lived it down.

Boris is very left wing for a Tory. I can't think of a more left wing Torie leader that they've had than Boris.

And then Starmer is basically Tony Blaire 2.0 without his charisma and a weird pigeon bob thing that he does with his head as he speaks.

If you remove bojo spending on covid related issues, or a sticky plaster over brexit cracks what's left? 

They throw out sound bites like "spending on health or education is up..." hoping the last part of the sentence is clipped that says "in relative terms over the last 1,2,3.. years". It's a bit like their claims of highest ever employment, which will always be broken with a growing population, however wage levels haven't kept pace with inflation, so more people are in work, but working for less in terms of spending power. However ftse100, 250, even aim are buoyant which would imply money is being made, but not by the workers! 

Gerrymandering is what I referred to as rigging, because that is what you said you were calling for. I provided a definition to help clarify and to check whether that was actually what you meant. It kinda feels like you are wilfully misrepresenting what I said now and just trying to manufacture a fight.

It sounds like you either didn’t understand or mean it when you advocated gerrymandering and you actually were talking about a supermajority, which explains why I misunderstood your point and disagreed. That’s fine. 

I think you might be confusing ideology and panic.  Johnson and Sunak are trying to be popular in the face of an unmitigated Brexit disaster and Covid mishandling and corruption.   Johnson does not have any political allegiance other than to himself.

The drivers are in dispute in Scotland. Timetables have been cut due to a reliance on voluntary working which is not being done.  The conversation re the drivers union, is relevant.

Thanks.

As far as I can see one large union has had a hugely positive relationship with Nissan at Sunderland.

Here's Unite in 2018, putting forward proposals to secure training, investment, and government support for transformative technology that will secure good jobs into the future and transition the factory to produce a more sustainable product.

https://www.unitetheunion.org/news-events/news/2018/march/unite-lays-out-ro...

And here's Unite, and the Nissan management, and government ministers celebrating a successful campaign in 2021 having secured the investment to create thousands of sustainable skilled jobs.

https://unitelive.org/great-day-for-incredible-nissan-workforce/

The forward looking union there has had to drag the company management and the government into the 21st century thinking to embrace reskilling and adapt to the changes that are needed in the industry, and it has done so very successfully.

There's nothing forward looking about what's happening to the railway industry. Government and management want cuts which means reduced and inferior services and less frequent maintenance.

You have faith in the legislation that gives us rights at work, but the unions have been weakened by anti union laws and demonised by the corporate media for decades now and the consequence is  that the legislation that protects us is being removed piece by piece.

Conditions at work are getting worse with the rise of the gig economy and the working poor. For 100 years there hasn't been a more important time to join and support the union movement.