To say suck it up like the rest of us???

[ticktickticktickBOOM]

I come from a socialist family, we had striking miner's kids living with us for respite during the strikes. However, the railway unions are taking the pee aren't they? Transport workers aren't the only people taking a hit right now. What about the 100's of thousands of hospitality, leisure, carer and charity workers in bars, cafe's, restaurants, theme parks, swimming pools, hotels, campsites, working in supporting all our children and elderly relatives etc that are getting between tiny and zero wage increases yet have no option but to carry on and make ends meet. Why can't railway workers see the problems they are going to cause and why can't they see that they are IN THE SAME BOAT AS EVERYONE ELSE (except the wealthy obvs).

YABU - striking railway workers are more deserving of pay increases than the rest of us

YANBU - we need to pull together and see every member of society through this and not cause each other harm

Sorry even your YABU "statement" is unreasonable, if you think it's just bargaining for a payrise you are misinformed.

You are being unreasonable.

setting up staw man arguments helps no one.

So basically your saying it’s a race to the bottom and we should all be miserable unless in the privileged upper classes? The rest of us can live hand to mouth while making them richer.

and the strikes are about working conditions not just wages, and anything under and 11% rise is really a cut.

What does that mean? A weak argument?

When one group strikes it doesn't stop others taking strike action or fighting for fair treatment in other ways, it helps them. Either you believe in strike action or you don't. The railways striking for better conditions will encourage other industries to give their workers better conditions so they don't strike, or will help change policy.

That's if striking isn't banned because everyone is so pissed off the railways are striking they will let strikes be banned for public workers and not realise they are shooting them selves in the foot at the same time

Neither of your options are valid

No, we shouldn’t begrudge one sector a pay rise because we all deserve and need one. We should be supporting each sector to get what they deserve. I suppose I any striking sector to get their deserved pay increase and I hope I will be supported when nurses go on strike.

Them striking doesn’t mean they’re more deserving than anyone else. It’s not a race to the bottom!

I never like the argument ‘everyone else is in the shit and getting on with it so you should too’.

I prefer ‘everyone should be paid a living wage fair and appropriate for the job they do’.

Unionised transport workers can strike if they feel the need to, same as any other unionised job I suppose. Maybe the other sectors will do the same?

I fear there is a lot of misdirection at the moment. Wherever you stand on UKs Covid management or Brexit decisions, I’m looking to the government to answer why life is so hard for so many employment sectors right now, and what they plan to do to remedy it.

YABU - although not for the reason you’ve assigned that too. It’s not about who is more deserving. Everyone deserves better - that doesn’t make it a competition.

From Wikipedia

A straw man (sometimes written as strawman) is a form of argument and an informal fallacy of having the impression of refuting an argument, whereas the real subject of the argument was not addressed or refuted, but instead replaced with a false one.[1] One who engages in this fallacy is said to be "attacking a straw man".

The typical straw man argument creates the illusion of having refuted or defeated an opponent's proposition through the covert replacement of it with a different proposition (i.e., "stand up a straw man") and the subsequent refutation of that false argument ("knock down a straw man") instead of the opponent's proposition.[2][3] Straw man arguments have been used throughout history in polemical debate, particularly regarding highly charged emotional subjects.citation neededd^]

I found myself thinking the same briefly earlier on! Then I caught myself on - that's exactly what the Tories are aiming for: working people arguing amongst ourselves and blaming each other instead of the real culprits! So, sorry, but YABU

YABU. Life, workers rights and wages aren't a race to the bottom.

I fully support the strikers.

I have to use public transport everyday
and I genuinely believe that they’re just greedy as fuck now and I’m fully over it
I actually don’t care about their cause, wants or needs and also wouldn’t care if they just employed a whole batch of new workers

and I know that’s shitty and heartless and blah blah blah
honestly couldn’t give a shit
thei get paid more than most, better working than most, and just simply hold the county to ransom because they’re just greedy as fuck

YABU

Rail strikes are inconvenient
Lots of things are inconvenient
We are in a battle for fair wages and homes and food in the cupboards and money to put the lights on and decent education, healthcare and social care. But they want us to see the enemy as the rail workers, not the 1%
They want us so distracted by all the strawmen we don't wake up and see the real enemy

So what we actually have is a highly unionised workforce is able to choose to leverage that to push for better pay.

Other, less unionised workforces, are not able to leverage that.

Maybe the conclusion should instead be that those sectors need to unionise instead?

Shall we just oak them whatever they want whenever they want and however they want simply because they have a good union and decide to fuck public transport users over? Do you actually know how much or costs to travel on public transport?

pay**

Think they are shooting themselves in the foot.
Passenger numbers must already be down due to wfh and with strikes even less people will travel by rail.
There will be a strong case for redundancies if they are not careful.

YABU. It's not a race to the bottom.

If you're going to blame someone necause you're inconvenienced by strikes try looking further up - blame the people whi actually have the power to change things.

Absolute bollocks.
Railway workers work brutal shift patterns. The bastards majority of them are very poorly paid. You said it yourself, you’re an arsehole. It’s not about money, it’s about fairness. Oh and safety.

If EVERYONE was in the same boat and everyone was getting poorer then I’d agree, but they aren’t are they? Lots of people are doing well. Rail unions have successfully maintained good salaries throughout various austerity drives, why wouldn’t they continue to push to maintain their wages in real terms? Especially as companies running franchises have made a tidy profit.

The fact that other unions have been less successful and vast numbers of people don’t have union support isn’t really a concern of ASLEF or the RMT, they are there solely to represent their members.

As you seem to be aware going on strike is no picnic, no one wants to be on strike, it costs a fortune and comes with no guarantees.

Your choices for voting aren’t very good op. No, none of us should be sucking it up, and not sucking it up is looking after all of us.

1. If you really are from a socialist family then you know that people who strike don't get paid for the time they are on strike. Its not a jolly wee day out covered by annual leave. Are you prepared to give up a days pay for something you believe in?

1. One union striking should actually be encouraging others to follow suit. If workers and unions in this country actually stood together for better rights and conditions then we wouldn't have crap like zero hours contracts and piss poor pay as standard.