Rail Strikes, what are your thoughts?
In the News
How does everyone feel about the impact this has had on the whole country? Plenty of people arguing they have not had a pay rise in decades and earn much less? On the other hand how do you feel when companies making millions are never willing to eat away at thier profit and the only way to give a pay rise is by making redundancies? In a world where there is a poverty crises even in the UK they can only payout by taking away jobs!
MelissaLee1963 I agree, sometimes desperate times call for desperate measures! Especially with inflation being sky-high!
I’m against striking and feel their demands for such a high pay rise is greedy. After all their earnings are higher than the national average. I appreciate we’re all paying more to live due to inflation but if they get such a high pay increase then other unions (NHS, TEACHERS etc) will start striking too.
Pjran Fair point. This is what many others are arguing because there are people still earning significantly less in most other jobs inlcduing the NHS.
I do feel London weighting in general are absolutely ridiculous and people living in London need a higher pay compared to the national average salary. Despite this being a national strike
strikes are a pain in the butt for people traveling, i understand wanting a fair pay but it disrupts everyone's work and plans, there are many other job as mentioned in the post above just as deserving and yet if they took the same actions it would be viewed differently.
wonderingsoul thanks for commenting. It makes total sense and at the end of the day the difficulties in travel could be extreamly damaging for many people. For example seeing loves ones etc and having to pay extortionate alternative travel fairs.
wonderingsoul I saw a post yesterday that said don’t blame workers for striking, blame the bosses - also worth mentioning that I believe they are striking about more than pay, working conditions and hours and potentially other factors
I can't see the rail service surviving as it is. Already wages are high in the sector and rail fares are ridiculously high and likely to increase even more now causing more people to stop using trains. You could argue that the government should subsidise rail more but the whole country is saddled with huge debts and I can't see that happening either. So you had a huge chunk of people who stopped using trains because of covid and the risk of infection and now another chunk of people will be finding different ways to travel because trains are even less reliable and less dependable and likely to have higher ticket prices.
Sometimes countries just become poorer, they lose industry and don't export as much and revenue is reduced and therefore living standards reduce and then you have times where the whole world economy is effected by things like pandemics and major wars etc and living standards reduce even more. The way to get out of such a situation is focusing on restoring a trade surplus and start paying back debts and then over the decades living standards will increase. There is no magic fix just by paying everyone more money that just makes the UK economy even less competitive and causes more debt and more problems to deal with. Major strikes will cause huge financial disruption which means the value of sterling will reduce so it will have less buying power so goods will increase even more in price that are imported. Propping up sterling with higher interest rates causes an inflationary effect on all businesses with debt which is most businesses.
I think this is a beginning of a journey where the UK economy is going to have a major collapse and huge poverty will be forced on many people. Hopefully then we will start to realise the importance of running a sound economy and people's attitudes will change and they will focus on the real problems which is economic policies. However that is probably years away and for the moment we will probably have a series of strikes and even perhaps riots when people get fed up with their huge reduction in living standards.
soon enough there will be driverless trains, less staff needed at stations, and more automation across the network in general…all part of the game plan
hspexy I'm not convinced that will produce cost savings as the technology is very expensive and I can't see them not having staff on the trains anyway. That's the sort of thing you can have in Japan but in the UK it is more chaotic and there are so many visual checks needed.
I personally think trains should be run at the minimum cost for passengers and cargo to maximise the benefit to the country. I personally don't think high tech high speed trains are a priority. We simply can't afford it anyway.
Ultimately I think more loss making routes will be cut and the frequency of services will reduce.
Locally I am seeing bus routes being dropped so people have to travel further to get to a bus stop. More elderly people will find it difficult to make use of their bus passes. My mother lives close to me and for the last 20 years or so has had easy access to a bus stop but now that has ended, the distance to get to the bus stop is now similar to actually walking into the town centre anyway. So now pointless to use the bus. I think we can expect to see more train services dropped in a similar fashion.
BonzoBanana no, I don’t believe it’s a cost saving exercise - it’s more about the CEOs and whoever is in charge getting an accolade of achieving something (let’s just say they would rather spend the money on innovative tech than give it to the workers, most likely because they have investments in such tech firms). The more the workers cry for a fair cut of the profits, the more the ‘leaders’ find ways to justify why they can’t
BonzoBanana such a shame to hear about your mother. It's so sad to hear such stories and how it is maming many peoples lives more difficult. hspexy I agree it's mostly to do with making the rich richer by means of investments.
hspexy Most of the technology is foreign and the politicians have no shares in it as far as a know, they have to declare their investments. I personally feel its more about show politics and making the UK look progressive and modern. You see it across Africa too where corrupt politicians have allowed the Chinese in to improve their infrastructure but with insane debts placed on the population. It's just the sad state of British politics with 2 grossly incompetent main parties and even more incompetent smaller parties there are no parties with proper economic policies and if they did have you wonder if they would be supported by the general population anyway who seem economically illiterate and seem to think you can live well without industry and commerce to pay for it.
There are no profits in the railway its hugely subsidised despite being part privatised. It may have been more subsidised in the past though. There are no profits to be shared its about how much of a burden the rail system is on tax payers or borrowing. The average train driver gets about £50k a year with the maximum wage of around £70k a year, considering the educational requirements and training required this is a very high wage but that doesn't mean all rail workers get similarly generous pay. Pensions and other terms are also very good. They work about 35 hours a week and get free or heavily subsidised train travel as a perk. It's a fantastic package I think. Compared to people working seriously hard for long hours on the minimum wage with no job security and minimal pension contributions which a huge percentage of the UK population have nowadays especially retail, farming and factory work. Many of which are far higher qualified than train drivers. Obviously they benefit from a union that will fight hard to maximise their pay and improve working conditions that most workers don't have nowadays.
All in favour of people going on strike for a fair wage but when a train driver gets almost double compared to a nurse I am not sure.
It would be great if workers could stop picking on others workers and see that we need huge change to rebalance this country. Stop voting in ETON IDIOTS who have never lived a day in the real world and only care about their own bank account. They've never sweated a 12 hour shift and still not had money for a bus or breakfast.
Hana12 America too! Can't believe womens right are being degraded in a modern western country, we're going backwards 
Midnightflower Ultimately when one set of workers manage to get a large pay increase that is paid for by the state and it is other workers that pay for it. The ruling elite will still keep their high wages and many benefits including generous pensions. They will be unaffected but the rest of the population is saddled with more debt and servicing that debt so they will be taxed more or get less benefits from the state. That's why wages should be fair to all not excessively high because of strike action for some and pitifully low for others who have no one fighting for their pay and conditions. Wage differentials are far too high with boardroom pay excessively high compared to those below. It's the nature of business that the lower down you are the more crap you get in so many ways. I'd like to see some sort of legal framework where strikes are illegal if wage differentials are less excessive. So greedy companies have a choice of being more fair and being strike free or giving themselves excessive pay and risking strikes.
BonzoBanana We'd all love to be rich but I think reasonable people would be happy with a decent wage, which allowed them enough for a secure home, decent comfort and the odd holiday. Everyone can't live in castles but should nurses be using food banks? Over 4 million children in poverty? Yet the rich in this country have somehow got richer from the pandemic and the government have choosen to tax the poorest the most. I like your idea 
Midnightflower @bonzoana (thanks for commenting!l It's such a unjust system. The saddest part is people do not have enough knowledge to make a proper judgment about political parties. This is why we have the government we have today. No party in my opinion is good enough but a far right wing is government will certainly not benefit the majority of the population.
Midnightflower We don't have the level of wealthy people that you see in countries like Germany and France for the simple reason we haven't been doing as well economically. Taxing the rich more won't solve our problems there isn't enough of them and you can only tax up to a point. The problems are caused by running a large trading deficit and transferring huge money to the EU, being in a single market where sadly we couldn't compete in because of higher wages and other issues. We have also all been responsible for causing a large trading deficit which causes huge levels of debt. The government needs to protect the UK economy from us, increase sales tax on very damaging imports like cars and bring us back to a trading surplus, ideally we need a tariff situation where tariffs are charged on goods because that benefits us when we run a trading deficit. More sales tax on certain goods and far less tax on manufacturing and farming. People are always looking for someone else to blame but really the finger points back at us. I see people buying expensive imported cars perhaps every 3 years and taking many foreign holidays and exporting a huge percentage of their income this is clearly hugely damaging to the economy when you consider the scale of people doing this. Most of the damage is caused by the so called middle class, the people with good levels of disposable income who make up a huge chunk of the population, It isn't caused by low wage people because they don't have much money and spend most of it on essentials or rich people simply because there aren't enough rich people. Controlling how middle income people spend their money is how we will turn around the economy. If we can push them not to change their car from 3 to 4 years on average that would have huge economic dividends.
I think people need to understand how the damage to our economy is being caused. It's too politicised with people liking to blame the rich or point to someone else. Focus on the data and evidence not on people you want to blame. Solutions to problems are best done by being realistic not idealistic. Clearly everyone can see that our industries have disappeared in recent decades and its getting more difficult to buy goods made in the UK those are what generate a large percentage of wealth for a country. The issue with politicians are they are completely incompetent and not understanding the problems of our economy or having any policies to restore industry and a trading surplus they are utterly useless individuals. We have a long history of competent politicians, after WW2 we had some brilliant politicians who restored industry and creating good infrastructure, they also protected our industries as much as they could politically. Sadly the politicians we have currently are used to being in the EU and having terms dictated to them and not being proactive themselves with regard policies. We need to get back the political skills that politicians had before the 70s.
BonzoBanana I think incompetent is to kind, considering the level of education many MPs have received corrupt is more accurate. The UK has has seen a huge rise in billionaires recently whilst also seeing a huge increase in child poverty. The government have choosen to put the heaviest taxes on the poorest whilst protecting the wealthiest in society. In recent years private companies have made a mockery of the electorate as they rinse companies of all their wealth for shareholders and CEOS then complain the companies are no longer profitable and the tax payer should foot the shortfall left. Not forgetting the amount of money being held in off shore banks to avoid tax by many politicians and their mates. Jacob Rees Mogg being one and he sits on the front bench in the commons.
Midnightflower meeting Mr Rees-Mog next week, I have plenty to say but must remain professional encase I get escorted out
Hana12 why are you meeting him? I'm not sure I could hold my tongue 
I find he symbolises everything wrong with this country and is a very strange politician. He's dodging millions in tax but he barley spend any money on Mps expenses, I'd be intrigued to understand his logic.
Midnightflower I going to an event with a friend, he happens to be one of the politicians that will be there. Haha, its going to be difficult but I am going to try my very best to stay neutral and keep my gob shut 
BonzoBanana I've just found this article if your interested it says rail firms paid shareholders £500m before asking workers to take wage cut. I think people tend to forget that when these private companies pay such low salaries to cleaner ect, workers often end up needing state benefits on top of working to survive. If they were paid adequately in the first place they wouldn't need so much state help and money could be focused elsewhere. So why are we paying for shareholders profits?
www.opendemocracy.net/en/firstgroup-abellio-rail-strikes-rmt-shareholders-payout/
Midnightflower You are always going to get more billionaires over time as the currency loses value with inflation more people end up becoming billionaires and millionaires. If you look at the UK billionaire list its mainly business people born elsewhere who pay taxes in the UK which is free money to the UK economy and exchequer. The issue of child poverty is more directly related to the £83 billion being paid in interest per year on the debts caused by EU membership, running a trade deficit for decades and buying goods from within the EU when much cheaper goods were available outside the EU block. £83 billion in interest is about £3k from every single working person per year which is just servicing our huge debts. There's about 50 billionaires in the UK but even if you taxed them an extra 1% on their income for that year and made £100 million extra a year, that is small potatoes compared to £83 billion in interest payments. There just aren't enough billionaires to make much difference. Also not forgetting that many of the billionaires would move their tax base to another country if taxed higher so you could end up losing money. I just don't see the point of focusing on billionaires especially when its the general population that have caused the problems anyway. Looking for someone else to blame seems pointless to me. We have to change our own behaviour not expect others to pay for our mistakes. If we just continue as we are running a huge trade deficit and spending beyond our means then the problem will never go away it will just keep growing and more children go hungry. We need to focus on the real problems of the economy and sort them not play the blame game.
Midnightflower 11 pieces of **** are deciding for millions and millions of women. They are ****** up religious nuts jobs stuck in the dark ages.
SilverSurfer it's ridiculous and makes me so angry. No religion should dictate over people's human rights. You could be raped by your uncle at 14 and made to give birth by the USA.... in the land of the free 
Midnightflower so made up book influencing woman’s rights. Anyone who supports the decision should go throw themselves off a cliff
SilverSurfer I like that idea! Its such a bizarre country, an 18 year old can own a gun and its a fundamental right, but a women has no rights over her own body 
Midnightflower Well both conservatives and labour to a lesser extent privatised many companies which were a national asset to raise funds. Some of these sales were financed by shares and the people who bought these shares expect to get dividends on a yearly basis. I'm not going to defend these sales I thought it was terrible short term thinking and simply politicians going for a quick fix because they were very short of funds and were trying to resist borrowing at the time. You have to remember as 1000s of manufacturing companies went out of business and we were paying funds to the EU and Oil revenue was reducing the governments were short of funds and some of the these state owned companies were very unionised and strike prone so it was felt that privatisation would mean money from the sale plus these companies would be more efficiently run in theory.
It's the same situation with selling council housing stock, many people loved this but assets that were paid for by taxation were sold cheap and never replaced and so now the government is paying housing benefit to private landlords which is far more expensive. Again short term thinking that was a disaster. All because they were trying to raise funds for being in the EU that simply wasn't working for us, we were developing a large trade deficit and UK companies couldn't compete with the cheaper labour rates across many parts of the EU so were going out of business.
All the data can be clearly seen on the office for national statistics site. Basically the government itself shows how useless they have been on their own site through the data there.
I'm in two minds on this one.
I believe that people should have the freedom to stand up for their rights if they feel that they are being treated inadequately. But then again, the average railway worker is already earning approximately £45,000 per annum, which is a lot more than many other occupations and should be more than sufficient enough to cope with the current cost of living.
The only way to give railway workers a higher wage would be to increase the prices of train fares and/or make some of the staff redundant.
RegularComper90 I have heard some rail stations have agreed on a pay rise. This is my thought exactly, I can pretty much guarantee these rises will come put of customer pockets! Which is very unfair because most people using trains will earn alot less than the railworkers
I was talking to a member of staff last week whilst on a train and the young lad said they're really struggling as the tracks are crap and they are not getting fixed, high staff turnover so there is more responsibility and he is not complaining he gets the overtime but is doing 6 day weeks and feels burnt out. He said they need to get more staff to fix the tracks and to pay better wages and treat staff a lot better.
I have relatives who uses the London Underground daily and is furious at the strikers demanding more pay, more staff or no redundancies, I could go on. Selfish and greedy comes to mind about these "strikers".
it’s a good idea and it needs to be done i agree but i feel as if it shouldn’t be in the time when students are trying to get to school to do gcses or a levels
It’s more about the workers rights and conditions. More strikes will keep coming and the people who can do something about literally don’t care.
It was inconvenient. I was out of the country but my 21 year old needed to get to London. She had purchased a ticket so had to claim a refund then had to find someone to get her to London by car.
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