London Transport Unions

[Finallylostit]

Today instead of my 10 min walk to the tube and into work - I had to drive 20 mins to a national rail station which was open, pay nearly £20 for parking , an extra £22 on a train ticket to arrive in London.

I then had the choice of joining the queue for the bus- what a joke!
Join the queue for a taxi ha ha 123 in the queue and taxis turning up every 3-4 minutes or walking.
I walked 15234 steps

After standing working in an NHS hospital my 11 hr shift ended and walked 16284 steps back to the train station to catch the train home

An expense I did not need from a bunch of people who have just had a massive pay rise and this is not about safety because if it was - then please tell me when we can see a member of staff on the platform at Harrow on the Hill - helping people with buggies, disabled etc jump from platform to platform as you change them every 5 mins.

The thought of doing it again tomorrow is just depressing.

There is a cost of living crisis, spending an unnecessary £42 today which I can ill afford is not good.

please tell me when we can see a member of staff on the platform at Harrow on the Hill

Given they were striking against job cuts then I trust you'll be supporting them.

londonist.com/london/transport/tube-strike-6-june-2022

I wonder what some station staff actually do. At the station near work there are four staff who spend a lot of the day chatting in their little booth even at the height of the pandemic when there was supposed to be social distancing.

Instead of a bus, could you get a hire bike?

What station staff do is provide assistance, for people needing directions, passengers with additional needs, perform station checks, and are there in case of an emergency. They are trained to access the track and evacuate stalled trains. Their numbers have already been massively depleted by a ‘restructuring’ of the workforce and they are fighting to prevent further job cuts.

You work for the NHS, an organisation whose strike action was massively misconstrue by the media and made to look dreadful for their strike action and yet you take no time to educate yourself about why tfl were striking today and instead write this post to slag off them striking you should be ashamed of yourself. Tfl have like most organisations had their workforce cut, simultaneously some were offered a "raise" to make it appear that they are being unreasonable, this surrounded by lack of job stability and worse unsafe working conditions and changes to pensions . If you are happy, as a female travelling at night, with unmanned stations then great, most of us aren't and I'd hope fully support the strike action.

You are directing your anger at the wrong people. Direct it at the bosses who don’t give their staff decent enough working conditions, not at the workers striking to protect themselves. It is the company that caused the strike, not the workers.

Yabu. Everything isn't about you and your convenient commute. People have a right to job security and good pay and working conditions. Unions and collective action are by far the best way to achieve that. If you aren't a union member more fool you.

The sooner their jobs are automated, the better.

I remember getting blisters during the tube strikes in the 1980s. Had to walk to Soho from Waterloo

Plus ca change.

Bloody well said!

Here here! Educate yourself OP.

If more people stood up for themselves and other workers BS like zero hours contracts wouldn’t exist. Unions gave you every right you have, even the right to have a day off. It’s not a race to the bottom.

I'd like to see how a robot would deal with a train full of Saturday night drunks.

Tfl are essentially bankrupt, they are relying on government bailouts. Services are only about 70% of pre-pandemic level. That, coupled with ever-increasing use of contactless cards, means there isn't a demand for staff as there used to be. And as for pensions, they are still offering final salary schemes. I don't agree that taxes should be used to fund final salary pension schemes, they no longer do for nurses, teachers, civil servants etc. So why should TfL staff be any different?

completely off topic but that’s not that far!

That's like 20 minutes 😆

They're striking against job cuts and against having their pension taken away.

I get so cross about this assumption, not helped by how certain newspapers bring out the wages thing.

The payrise isn't a lot and has been totally swallowed. I know this because my partner is a tube driver. We rely solely on his income because I'm disabled. The wage isn't actually as much as the papers like to say, but it's not bad.

However. We can't afford to live here. We live in little more than a box. For logistical, practical reasons we cannot move far away to somewhere cheap, for another five years.

Our NHS staff (particularly those who aren't consultants or higher level nurses etc) need to be paid more, the nursing degrees need subsidising properly with bursaries, and there needs to be more staff per shift in most departments across the board.

In order to make this happen, the union for nhs staff needs to action more strikes. There needs to be more effort, more frequently etc.

Just because one vocation has got a decent union who manages to negotiate for basic workers rights, doesn't mean they are then deserving of the utter scorn and rudeness they receive from those in other professions.

Yes the strike was inconvenient. But what use would a strike be if it wasn't. The union for nhs staff needs to make a nuisance of itself with all of your colleagues backing the action. I know it's difficult for departments delivering 24/7 care to those who will die without it but the union with the NHS staff's support should be able to work out what strikes CAN be actioned.

We are literally just on that cusp which means we don't get any benefits etc for my conditions - just my pip. Yet having a tube driver partner doesn't give us holidays, we run one car but don't take it out where possible because of fuel costs, the mortgage on this tiny stupid box is the same as local rent costs, we can't save in order to afford the fees involved in moving.

We don't like to complain because we could be miles worse off. But if they cut my partner's job, we are done - he doesn't have any decent qualifications. If they take their pensions, we are screwed. The minor wage increase was swallowed by an increase in our mortgage payments, making us worse.off than we already were.

Again: it's not ideal you had a bad day because of the strikes. But the union is doing the level of job for its members which all other unions should be doing for theirs.

Excellent post - you’ve articulated really well. It really does feel like a race to the bottom with how some people think.

Are you taking the piss ?

If it was all about my inconvenience then fine - I would not have come to work and 20-30 people needing treatment would not have been seen - I chose to come in and yes it was a nightmare, nothing selfish in my actions

Was it nightmare for the workers, union of tfl staff - absolutely not!

AS to educate my self - I have - job cuts will make no difference to the 5-6 members of staff who sit at the entry gates at harrow on the hill, grunt if you ask question and dare to stop their conversation. Are they down on the platforms helping their customers jump from platform to platform by the bridge or tunnels - are they heck. So cutting staff will make no difference to safety.

Pensions - everyone has seen a fall in their pensions, Why do they feel they are immune
At the end of the day - you are employed to provide a service , as am I and many others who were hugely inconvenienced and lost monies from one groups action. But as someone said this was going on in the 70s and will continue whilst the unions refuse to move with the times and work in the 21st century

Wouldn't it be good if we had strikes that didn't actually inconvenience anyone. Like teachers striking in the school holidays etc.

Something to think about, no?

But as someone said this was going on in the 70s and will continue whilst the unions refuse to move with the times and work in the 21st century

How old are you? If you think unions have the same influence and MO as they did in the 70s then you can't have heard of Thatcher.

The real place to direct your ire OP is successive governments who failed to invest in a decent public transport system. TfL is pretty well bankrupt and the government's advice was to start charging kids. A well run, subsidised public transport system that provided a good service across the whole country would not only be good for the planet but help lots of people out of poverty - being able to access better job prospects/better education etc.

I know it’s disgusting, tube drivers have it pretty good and I’m fed up of being held to ransom by them.

I’m with you OP. Can’t the drivers and staff see that their jobs are unskilled and automation is making their jobs obsolete and that is not a bad thing. Why prop up their employment, fund tfl to keep paying them if their jobs aren’t needs? Why can’t the money that goes on keeping 3 people staffing one station at the same time be reduced to funding one person and the money saved go into bringing down fares? This makes sense. The people made redundant can get other jobs. There are lots going currently.

And why should we pay for tfl to pay their staff final salary pensions when 90% of the rest of us don’t have such a generous benefit?