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

I agree with you op

Norway's rate of tax isn't really higher than ours. It's 53.75 at the higher rate. We pay 40% plus 13.25% in National Insurance. Norwegians get free university tuition, free childcare and free social care for their taxes. We are highly taxed and get very poor public services for what we pay. We're certainly not a low tax nation.
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Ridiculous OP and nonsensical voting options.

How does the RMT striking prevent others from striking? If it wasn’t for people striking in times gone by you’d have no weekends off work, sick pay, holiday pay or Mat leave.

If you want to sit quietly and martyr yourself good luck. Other people won’t sit quietly and you should be thankful because the noisy lot help everyone get better pay and conditions.

..patiently waits for Elon Musk and the other billionaires to ‘pull together’ and see me and my family right. Any day now.

Maybe Rishi Sunak’s wife is currently developing a plan to ‘pull together’ and move her money onshore to help pay for vital services. Any day now.

If I remain very quiet and cause no trouble I’m certain Jacob Rees Mogg will take pity on me and campaign for more workers rights.

I could be here all night answering the so many derogatory and presumptuous comments. However I'm a single mum who works full time and I really don't have time.

However, @luckylavender , of course I understand what strikes are for. I just do not agree that this is the best way to effect change. Very few strikes have achieved their aim. The only one's that do are usually lengthy and impact the people at the top of the industry rather than fellow working people or the vulnerable. Too many working class and vulnerable people are going to be affected and potentially die if teachers, NHS, caring staff etc go on strike for the lengths of time needed to cause any real change

The world is struggling financially due to covid, war and natural disaster brought on by climate change. If people think that their pay will be able to continue to rise to ensure none of us are impacted they are living in cloud cuckoo land.

As @Iamthewombat said, if every public sector worker was given a pay rise to keep in line with inflation how on earth would this be funded? More widely, if this was demanded across the board many charities and businesses would likely collapse, it's just not realistic. The economy would become paralysed.

Unions are not as great as you are all saying. I bet half of you are no longer union members as you're sat there in your retirement being armchair social media socialists bleating on about social change yet you have no idea how to actually get it, otherwise you'd have done it years ago so none of us have to go through this shit time and time again. I have been a fully paid up Union member for over 20 years. Despite huge employee support our Union was unable to prevent a 'sign your new (shit) contract or you will be fired by April' action going through, they were unable to prevent over 300 of my colleagues being made redundant in one fail swoop, they were unable to get our employer to honour the annual 3% pay rise we had negotiated 3 years earlier, they were pretty much totally ineffective. They balloted for strike action and members could not vote for it due to the nature of our charity work. Many would have suffered and died. So, yes, thanks Union, you did Jack Shit for us. They didn't even answer my emails. I've given them 1000's of pound of my HARD earned cash over the years and they did NOTHING for me or my colleagues.

All you PP who have called me ignorant and worse, shame on you.

And then the Queen despite being almost 100 years old and never giving away as much as a brass farthing heard of this novel concept of ‘pulling together’. She was so excited by it she immediately announced she would sell 1% of her vast spare land to developers to allow them to build genuinely affordable homes. The Duke of Westminster followed suit and Princes Charles and Harry played ‘Give it away now’ by the Red Hot Chilli Peppers on repeat.

Yes let’s all sit patiently and watch poverty increase and watch workers rights being stripped away by the ‘Brittania Unchained’ gang (who include Liz Truss) who called British workers the ‘worst idlers in the world. I’m also certain Rishi Sunaks father in laws ‘Infosys’ company is well up there in the best places to work stakes with 5 star Glassdoor reviews.

@Inkyblue123
I totally agree.

@Kidsaretryingtodestroyme so what are YOU doing then? Out of interest . . .

I've just worked out that if I'd put the £14 per month into savings for the last 20 years instead of giving it to the Union I'd have £3360 right now to see me through this next 12 months.

You selfish bastard, I hear you cry.

Or perhaps just a sensible bastard.

Why ever in history has anyone ever wanted to strike? I’m certain employers gave us weekends off, Holiday pay, sick pay, anti discrimination laws, Mat and paternity pay just from the goodness of their hearts.

Surely none of them would ever try and reduce any of this? They have workers best interests at heart at all times. We must ‘pull together’ by doing precisely nothing to shield ourselves from inflation or our governments aim to make the U.K. more ‘competitive’. Better still we must criticise those fighting against it. That will help us all and make our bosses take pity on us and give us better pay and conditions.

@Kidsaretryingtodestroyme
I just think striking is ineffective, old fashioned flag waving which achieves very little and harms the working class and vulnerable.

Yes it served it's purpose once, mainly in Victorian times, but surely we can think up better ways to effect change that doesn't harm our fellow hardworking and also vulnerable comrades?

Come everyone - THINK OUTSIDE THE BOX! Surely between you disgruntled lot you can come up with a better way to effect social change than this?

Well, what’s your solution OP?
How do you get companies to pay a wage people can live on? Energy prices are set to be significantly worse than thought, we’re hearing today, and already people can’t heat their homes or feed their kids, even when they work. You say it’s not sustainable for people to get their 10% payrise, but it’s not sustainable for people to lose their standard of living like this. People are desperate. Nobody actually wants to strike and lose pay.

‘Come everyone - THINK OUTSIDE THE BOX! Surely between you disgruntled lot you can come up with a better way to effect social change than this?’

1. What are you alternative suggestions because I think workers normally only withdraw labour after every other means have been tried. It’s a last resort - have you seen how low strike pay is? Nobody does it willy nilly.
2. I’m not disgruntled at all. Both DH and I are higher rate tax payers and mortgage free. I just realise and respect how much unions have done for me as an employee.

I think amongst us we need to find a new way to pressurise, I don't have all the answers @liliainterfrutices I'm disappointed that the Unions still use strike - they are paid a HUGE amount of money by us workers to help us find solutions to improve our pay and conditions and they are failing - across the board!

When are THEY, the UNIONS going to be held to account? I absolutely do not want the right to strike to be removed by Truss and I want Unions to continue to be strong and exist - but what the Fuck are they doing????

I don't feel supported by them, I don't feel listened to, I feel like I've totally wasted £3360. Seriously. If I'd paid another organisation that amount for a service and they didn't perform I'd be able to get some money back. Our Union was useless in the last 5 years of discussions. I am annoyed and I do not want bloody unions balloting for ineffective archaic strikes when they do nothing to improve standards nowadays and harm millions of people and small business, workers, vulnerable people - everyone!

We need something modern, collective and different. Anyone??

Actually I find my union a bit crap too, but I absolutely support these strikes and I really don’t think we can ask people to suck it up. People are desperate.

Interesting that you have chosen Norway, which with its huge sovereign wealth funds can afford to subsidise its citizens.

How about Denmark or the Netherlands? They both pay much higher income taxes than us and are a better comparison.

The Dutch have no personal allowance and their top rate of tax, for salary above about £60k, is 50%. Below that, it’s 37%. Our basic rate is 20%. Theirs is 37%. We have a personal allowance of £12.5k before any tax is charged. They don’t.They are paying 9% on their first £30k.

The Danes pay, on average, 45% on their entire income.

You also neglect to mention that in this country there is no NI due at all on the first £240 a week that people earn, and that the rate drops to 3.25% on earnings above £960-ish per week. So nobody in the U.K. is paying 40% plus 13.25% on their entire income. To suggest otherwise is misleading and disingenuous.

But, that typifies some of the poorly though out arguments we’ve seen on this thread. They go like this: “Give the entire public sector a 10% pay rise, yeah! Backdated, yeah! I’m not paying any more tax to make it happen, though. No. We already pay far too much tax, boo. In fact, I want a tax cut. Somebody make that happen.We definitely pay as much as, or more than, those smug Europeans with their better public services…don’t we? Make Amazon and the billionaires pay all the tax instead! Yeah, that will work! Those tax inspectors simply aren’t working hard enough.”

Op, you seem not to understand the fundamentals of strike action. Of course it will impact people - that's precisely the point. Making it clear how vital the roles are. And if no-one went on strike unless there was no-one worse off it'd be a race to the bottom

Well you were the one who initially mentioned Scandinavia, so it was fair enough to look at Norway, but if you object, fine, let’s look at Denmark. 34.3% average going up to 55% high earners. But what you get for that, again, is a much higher level of free public services - no cildcare fees, which can be more than £1000 per month here, no university fees and free social care, so people are better off. No, I didn’t go into the nitty gritty of the thresholds etc, brcause I was giving an overall general picture. I could have pointed out, as could you, that these countries also pay out much better child benefit rates. And I don’t know why you’ve taken it upon yourself to declare that I don’t want to pay more tax. I’d actually love to pay more tax if it ensured these kinds of benefits. Sadly in the UK under the current government we pay a lot of tax for a miserable return.

No, you deliberately cherry picked Norway, which is a special case, to support your argument that income tax in the U.K. is on a par with other Northern European countries, which it is not, and your belief that we as a country can afford to raise public sector wages significantly and backdate that rise. Because the secret money must be hidden somewhere, eh?

I note with no great surprises that you’d be happy to pay more tax if you personally benefited from free stuff. The problem with that is, we need net contributors - people who put in more than they take out - to make the sums work.

We don’t actually pay ‘a lot of tax’ in the U.K. and that is why the ‘return’ is ‘miserable’. It will get a lot more miserable for the poorest people if costs are driven up further by other groups’ wage demands.

I think the Rail Workers are unrealistic . They are losing public sympathy ATM. Many other workers have a grievance but dont go on strike. Right in the middle of School Holidays ,the start of The commonwealth games as well .Its set for maximum disruption to ordinary families and commuters.

The comments about Denmark and Norway are spot on. Public services are not free - they are paid for through taxes. There is plenty of money in the UK that is not making its way to public coffers because of tax evasion schemes.
Most people in Scandinavia do benefit from public services such as childcare, uni fees, social care at various points of their lives - why shouldn’t they? They aren’t free, though. They come from the taxes to which most people contribute. People do seem to forget that the government is spending our money - it’s not some benevolent body to which we should all feel beholden.

And we do pay a lot of tax in the UK. It’s masked by being separated into income tax and national insurance, but put the two together and it is pretty hefty.

It really isn’t. Do I need to explain it again?

If we were paying as much tax as other Northern European countries, we’d have services as good as theirs, wouldn’t we? But we don’t. Why is that? The answer is obvious.

Here is what the answer ISN’T:

Foreign rail operators taking ‘obscene profits’ from running our railways (of the two examples of ‘obscene profits’ cited on this thread, one was a government body and the other only showed a profit, and a modest one at that, by selling non-rail businesses, and wasn’t foreign).

MPs giving themselves ‘big pay rises’. This is a group of 650 people. Even if they gave themselves an extra £10k each it wouldn’t touch the sides.

Tax avoidance and evasion. We’re no worse off than other Northern European countries in this regard.