To not understand what the RMT are in a snit about?

[Sistanotcista]

Going to try and post a link to this article, but it might not work. This is the important extract: “If you earned, on average, £44,000 a year, wouldn’t you put up and shut up just now and thank your lucky stars that you’re fortunate enough to have a job which pays at least ten grand more than the UK’s median annual income of £31,772 (to the Office of National Statistics).”

Why on earth are they striking for better pay? I get that we would all like more (of course!) but their salaries seem pretty fair. What have I missed?

www.yorkshirepost.co.uk/news/opinion/columnists/rail-strikes-are-holding-the-public-to-ransom-and-grant-shapps-doesnt-help-jayne-dowle-3729343

It's not a race to the bottom!

A combination of things There’s a “don’t mess with us” aspect to it to discourage any erosion of their terms & conditions. The union has to justify their dues to their members. And there’s some personal agendas among the union officials and the company management is poor.

These out of market arrangements, like tube drivers, tend not to last though and eventually they’ll have their arses handed to them and technology will replace them. I think they know it as well so it’s make hay while the sun shines.

Indeed not. But this will force others further down, as salary increases will simply be added to ticket fares.

www.rmt.org.uk/news/rmt-launch-3-days-of-national-train-strike-action/

a 'snit'? How old are you?

As someone who is about to be seriously inconvenienced by the strikes, I say good on them. Stand up for pay and conditions.

Why don't you read their own page to find out more about it?

Just because someone is on a higher-than-average salary doesn't mean that they should see it eroded! And especially not when the railways are making large profits.

Or do you not care about workers' rights?

YANBU I think they’re being very selfish

They earn a hell of a lot more than many of those who will be most inconvenienced. People who can’t work from home, can’t drive/afford to run a car, whose employers may be unsympathetic.

The way it’s spaced out is to ensure maximum chaos because while there’s no official strike action on the days around the strikes, there will still be disruption due to them.

absolute cockwombles the lot of them.

@Sapphire387 - Thanks. That was helpful, and useful to understand a bit of what’s driving this.
@BIWI - Of course I care about worker’s rights. But there are workers on both sides of this coin - I’m thinking about the temporary staff who will lose income because they can’t get to work, and all the families who are already struggling who will have rail fare increases foisted upon them. I would never want to see anyone’s salary eroded - but as far as I can tell, that is not happening here. I can’t see any evidence of salary reductions being planned? Or are you referring to the erosion of income from the cost of living crisis, which affects us all?

This is what I was trying to say. You put it so much better!

I haven’t been following it

what are their demands? What rate of pay increase etc

Maybe because most of them aren't on that high a salary. Train drivers are on a very good wage, but the station staff, the ones on the gates, on the platforms in the ticket office are on nowhere near that salary.

Perhaps you’re missing the point of strikes? Of course they’re designed to cause maximum chaos, because that demonstrates how reliant society is on the workers striking, thus justifying their salary requests. Little bloody point in a half-hour middle-of-the-night strike, is there?

Drivers are in the main not in the RMT, retail and front line staff don't earn anywhere near £44k even in London and quite frankly having a number of family members in the railway I'm behind the strike action 100%.

As someone said upthread it's not a race to the bottom.

I hope teachers strike next. There's no point striking unless you cause disruption and inconvenience - that's the point.

I suspect that many of the people supporting rail strikes will not be as supportive of a teacher’s strike! But you’re right to point out that they are facing exactly the same problems, and thus should be entitled to cause as much disruption as possible too.

YABVU. They are facing potentially thousands of redundancies, why wouldn’t you strike in that scenario?

Pretty sure that's £44k for a four day week too. Much more with overtime.

They're bastards and cost us all money with their greed.

The government has had 12 years to bring in a law that requires a minimum level of service to be provided in essential services. Perhaps similar to that in place in Germany.

I don't agree with the strikes, but the government should have acted a lot sooner and not be seeking to run down the railways.

Mr Johnson when London Mayor and chair of TfL never met the trade unions, even once, despite a manifesto claiming he would bring industrial peace.

@roarfeckingroarr

No they are not bastards or greedy ffs. Most of them earn nowhere near £44k even with overtime. Most of them don't even earn 30k

Maybe because most of them aren't on that high a salary. Train drivers are on a very good wage, but the station staff, the ones on the gates, on the platforms in the ticket office are on nowhere near that salary.

The station staff and the ones on the platform are the ones that bear the brunt of customer frustration and abuse every time there is a delay or rail chaos which seems to be every week on my line as well

I think it's very difficult to understand why train drivers are so well paid and it is, afterall we, the passengers who pay their wages.

Of course in a perfect world everyone would be incredibly well paid, but the customer (or the taxpayer) has to pay.

They’re causing a week of disruption but only losing 3 days worth of pay, which imo is wrong. If they want a week of disruption then they should bloody well lose a week of pay for it. And the ones suffering the disruption are ordinary customers who have absolutely no say over their pay and conditions.

Well it's not really hard to understand why drivers are paid well. Would you want the responsibility of carrying hundreds of people every day knowing one mistake could cause death and injury?

The government spent billions of taxpayers’ money keeping the railways afloat during the pandemic. Billions. No staff were made redundant and none was furloughed.

Pandemic is over but passenger numbers have not recovered. The government have told the railway to make savings as they’re not prepared to keep bankrolling it at the level they have done.

No one has said how these savings will be made, job losses and pay freezes have not even been mentioned, yet the unions have called a strike just because they think it might happen.