Do you sympathise with the strikers?

[TheDoveFromAboveCooCoo]

I'm afraid it's a no from me.

We are in West Yorkshire and we are just entering week 3 of a full bus drivers strike from one of the operators.

It's costing £75 a week in taxis to get my daughter to and from school. It's 6 miles away so too far to walk and I'm disabled and can't drive.

For my eldest daughter to visit her girlfriend it should be a 15 minute bus journey. Now it's a bus to Bradford Centre, then another one to Leeds, then another to her town.

My husband works in a minimum wage job and some of his colleagues who cannot drive are having to take unpaid leave as they can't afford taxis to get them to work and back.

I'm pretty frustrated and wish they would just bloody agree on something!!

Interested to hear other peoples thoughts and opinions especially with all these other potential strikes coming up.

I do have a lot of sympathy with the barristers, after hearing yeasterday that a fully qualified lawyer, starting as a barrister, is earning about £12,000.

While a train driver earns about £40,000

Not from me on the trains side. Very few people have had a pay rise for years and they are pretty well paid. It's too early for all this, 3 months ago TFL were crying about going bankrupt because of covid!

Everyone is still trying to get back to normal, nurses who really do deserve a pay rise aren't striking.

Cost of living is hitting everyone. I don't approve of petulant demands that just make life worse for everyone. They should forces their leaders to learn to negotiate better. And punish those who really deserve it, like BJs government.

No!

I support the strikers. We live in a country where governments have to top up wages with benefits and still working families are skint and having to use food banks.

PAY PEOPLE PROPER WAGES!

But the more professions which increase wages for their staff, the more other companies will have to do the same.

This is short term pain for long term gain.

@steppemum what has it got to do with train drivers?

They aren't on strike. I've been to work today.

Absolutely I do.

How do you suggest those of us in West Yorkshire get a bus when they're on strike too? I had to pay for taxis to take my daughter to GCSE'S, we're lucky we can afford that...

If it helps, these are some of the reasons we are striking from next week:

• We have already suffered an average decrease in our real earnings of 28% since 2006.

• During a single year of the pandemic, our average earnings from legal aid collapsed by 23%.

• In that same year, the Ministry of Justice saved £240m in unspent Legal Aid monies which has never been reinvested to help us.

• 83% of us were forced into personal debt or to use up our savings with no Government support to mitigate that massive loss of income.

• Juniors in their first three years of practice earn a median income of only £12,200, which is below minimum wage.

• We have lost a quarter of our specialist criminal barristers over the last 5 years with 300 walking away last year alone.

• Nearly 40% of our most junior criminal barristers departed in one year.

• The alarming attrition of criminal advocates resulted in 567 trials last year being postponed for want of an available prosecution or defence barrister.

Whilst the commercial barristers may be earning lots, the criminal ones are not. And, who are you more likely to need?

No I absolutely don’t. I also hope the strikers families are affected by the same upset that we are suffering where my family member is unable to get to her long awaited consultant appt. The strikers are deliberately punishing the worst off
in society. Shameful.

The strikers are deliberately punishing the worst off
in society.

They’re not. They’re not “punishing” anyone.

The government are punishing the worst off in society.

What's that Tory saying "If it's hurting, it's working"? Hopefully these strikes will work.✊

I suggest that everyone whose life is disrupted by the strikes write to their MP.

Consumers don’t even factor into it. They are using their right to withdraw their labour. The strikes are the fault of the government and rail/bus companies - they could have resolved all this before it even came to striking and chose not to.

Everyone is still trying to get back to normal, nurses who really do deserve a pay rise aren't striking

The very point of industrial action brilliantly made!

Nurses and all other healthcare staff get shat upon because they do not strike, they have a very weak union... so now we see the Govt re introduce hospital parking charges (for my DD, thats an extra cost of £2300) and now saying they may not implement Pay Review bodies recommendations.

Govt could easily settle this strike, RMT want 7% and Lynch said that could be bargained around... employers have offered 2% with no room for negotiation unless there are job cuts.

MPs pay has risen from 65k in 2010 to 85k now....plus expenses.... i wonder if anyone would notice if they went on strike?

@Alexandra2001 that parking charge is absolutely disgraceful. Shocking they can get away with it

No from me.
I get people are struggling but my daughter can't go for an important scan due to no trains running.
I don't drive, £80 in a taxi.

They get away with it because nurses and other AHPs don't strike.

My DD's former care agency cannot pay the full cost of driving to clients houses because councils via the GOvt, haven't increased the rates in line with fuel increases.

They don't strike either, so we all treat them like slaves.

@Alexandra2001 well I wish they would strike. I'd most certainly support it.

I'm sick of the government and the people at the top leeching more and more off those at the bottom. Something has to give.

MPs pay has risen from 65k in 2010 to 85k now....plus expenses.... i wonder if anyone would notice if they went on strike?

Their pay rise is indefensible in the current climate. But there are only 600 of them. How many nurses? How many transport workers and what does that number multiplied by 7% look like?

Much as I loathe the government, many of the factors causing inflation and COL increases are outside of their control. And they can hardly advise business to keep a lid on wages while doing the opposite for DfT workers.

Absolutely not. The economic crisis is affecting everyone, not just railway workers. Who is going to pay for these large increases in pay? All they are doing in making the rail service unreliable and potentially too expensive and pushing people back on the roads.

No sympathy at all, no company can agree to no job cuts or not carrying out modernisation with means job cuts, higher wages will mean higher tickets prices, higher transportation cost, more inflation, it’s a never ending circle, if they are not happy, why not get another job, you will not because you know you will never find another job like the one you’ve got,

And they can hardly advise businesses to keep a lid on wages while doing the opposite for DfT workers.

Except they aren't advising businesses to do that, they are removing the pay caps for city bosses. It's only low and middle income people that they want to suffer and pay for years of under investment and incompetence. www.google.com/amp/s/www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/train-strikes-uk-bankers-pay-b2105688.html%3famp

Govt could easily settle this strike, RMT want 7% and Lynch said that could be bargained around... employers have offered 2% with no room for negotiation unless there are job cuts.

Mick Lynch said today they want a guarantee of no job loses at all, before negotiations start.

What employer is ever going to do that?

100% I do. I think it's an indictment of how selfish and or stupid we have become that people think strikers are wrong because it inconveniences others. That is the jeffing point.