What do people think about rail strikes?

[ITUnurse]

I cannot find any threads on the rail strikes / opinion of them.

I personally do support the strikes. We in the NHS will face a similar struggle shortly. I support the rights of workers to strike. Conditions at the moment are dire.

However, if England is so right wing and strikes aren't supported and the Tories continue to be voted in. I've not seen much public support online except from a few and I'm at risk of being in an echo chamber.

Ultimately if England is so under the thumb of the tories, I'm not sure what the long term solution is. The rest of the UK doesn't return the Tories in such numbers.

If you don't support strike action, what do you think the rail workers, NHS workers etc should do? We've already got people leaving enmasse. It's difficult to comment on the conditions of a job you don't work in and nurses regularly get gaslighted on here I am genuinely concerned as to what is going to happen to the public sector of the UK with this right wing stranglehold.

Thanks

I never said I was on a low wage.

No one saw that coming 😁

In general, if you work, it is important to support the right to strike: you may well need it. The economy changes, Industry changes, and workers must be flexible but 'respect' in the form of basic rights should be maintained.
The circumstances of each individual union/ strike / pay deal varies of course. I remember being a child in the 70s & hearing adults talk of the Unions having 'too much power'. I remember the gravedigger on strike & rubbish piled in the streets too. High inflation, high interest rates, everyone scared of the coming months & lots of strikes.

My Father went on strike during the Murdoch years. He was a printer to trade (had been apprenticed aged 14 at a time when a print apprenticeship was 7 years & included hand tooled gilded leather book-binding!) He was in his early 50's & his skills were becoming obselete in the mainstream print industry. However, he was not offered retraining in the New Tech. He was sacked overnight, suffered stress & then depression as a result & never worked properly again (for our family it was disasterous & for a short while we were given food parcels by the miners whom we had given parcels too not very long before). My exH was a bus driver who, due to poor wages & high house prices were he lived (Edinburgh) had to live 40m away from his depot. When (2x in 20 years) on strike, he still had to travel in for the picket line. Eventually he went back to work due to money, & was called a 'scab' by people he'd worked with for 20 years.

So, strikes can have a very personal cost & shouldn't be undertaken lightly. But, I fir one feel a rising anger that geopolitical issues (climate, war) are being exacerbated by a lazy & greedy Govt whilst we suffer (partly needlessly). So I think this will be another 'winter of discontent'.

Everyone that is pissed off/jealous because they don't have the power to bargain for better wages should JOIN A UNION. The reason vital service providers like childcare workers are paid shit wages is they don't collectively organise and bargain for better pay. A single person who needs a wage is easy to exploit, so they are exploited. This is not because their bosses are evil or anything, but this is just how all markets work. Nobody is paid what they deserve, but what they can bargain for.

In other words, the market value of your labour is not a measure of your social value but of your social power.

The reason you don't have power is because you are on your own. It's in the interest of your boss that in any negotiation, you are on your own and powerless, grateful for anything you can get.

If you don't have a union you can join, then you should start one. It's hard. It was hard for people 100 years ago too. But it's the only power we have.

They’re a pain in the arse, but I’m glad they’re happening, while wishing they weren’t necessary.

I support the strike action to an extent.

I would much rather action that hits the people who are responsible rather than hurting those who can I’ll afford the loss

example of how this can be achieved www.bbc.com/news/world-44022004.amp

@mojokoloko sadly, I meet so many young people with work related stress. When I ask them if they’re in a union they look at me like I have two heads. Either not heard of them or as if that’s for someone else.

The Japan strike thing is a great idea- however it was already put to Mick Lynch why we don’t do that and he has already explained that although it’s a fantastic idea- the Tories have made it illegal in this country so they can’t do it

Yes I support them as well as being inconvenienced by them. Work is clearly not working for people in this country. collective bargaining in general is one of the only ways ordinary people can have power. Tory politics is so corrupt, how can people hope to change things otherwise? (Dido Harding, PPE, golden wallpaper and all the rest of it).

Some of these comments are like “Race to the Bottom Bingo”

• XYZ industry don’t get a pay rise so why should you
• Wages need to be low to keep inflation low
• The unions have too much power
• The workers are holding the country to ransom
• Get another job if you don’t like it
• Nobody even uses that service any more so who cares

We just need “Stay in your box, peasants, and be grateful we’re not charging an oxygen tax” and we’ll have a full house.

@Dailymash you forgot to add “it’s all Labours fault anyway”

😂

Alternatively they could find another job if they don't like the T&Cs or pay!

Just a thought!

Alternatively they could find another job if they don't like the T&Cs or pay!

But the T&Cs are changing from what they were. So you're saying that rather than being upset that your employer changes their T&Cs you should suck it up & get a different job? Do you work?

Not much from the railway unions, except for cases of hardship. That's why strikes tend to be the odd day here or there, unlike with the buses who were all out for a month.

Careful what you wish for. That was a popular refrain during covid to teachers who wanted safe working conditions. Lots of them decided that was exactly what they would do. Think the recruitment crisis, particularly for maths and science, should be ramping up nicely round about now……..still, who needs teachers, eh?

@Toomanylosthours really? You don’t work, easy for you to wag your finger. Bloomin Nora.

Yeah, unless we keep telling each other these things, young people won't know them. Why should they know this. It's not going to be in the paper!

I only know these things because other people took the time to talk to me.

For me, I didn't have good working conditions until my 30s. No holidays, sick pay, pension etc - I was in a bad situation for a long time. But because of that time, I really really feel the importance of good pay and working conditions and what it can be like to try to survive without them. It's really hard. We can't let ourselves get rolled back to those times. Rights can be lost if we don't defend them.

Those figures you quote are bollocks, or else I'm owed some serious back pay. The average salary of an RMT member is £33k, which is roughly in line with the UK average.

@mojokoloko yes, we fight to keep women’s rights but somehow doing that for us or our children upsets some people.

This.

DH is self employed and relies on train to get to work. He's lost c. £640 in lost income so far because of the recent strikes. That's money we rely on to pay our mortgage and feed our children. He pays nearly £100 a week for a substandard service as it is; trains regularly cancelled at short notices, constant delays. I know that's a company issue not individual workers but still. It's just fuelling resentment. It's probably more cost effective for him to drive to London daily now.

We don't have a ticket office at our station. Can't remember the last time I saw a ticket inspector or conductor (at least 10 years ago) so I really don't see the necessity to protect those jobs. They're not needed.

Rail workers certainly aren't getting that.

They are. I know one manager (on a decent salary) who is leaving rail to become a hospital porter. He's just fed up with banging his head against the wall. Shame, he was a good manager.

Anyone seen what's happened to the Avanti service recently? That's what you can expect to see if you piss off lots of skilled staff such that they leave or retire.

Why should we expect staff at a station when we do not expect staff at a bus stop ?
We really do need to modernise in this country.As a train driver I was more militant than some of my colleagues when it came to health and safety matters especially regarding fatigue in safety critical workers.
The problem is the politicians whose time horizon is normally the next election.They do not understand economics and the general population understands economics and world politics even less!
We have sold many of our businesses to foreigners who enjoy the profits and keep buying rubbish from China and elsewhere which makes our balance of payments worse and means gradual devaluation of the £,making us all poorer.
You cannot keep on paying yourself more than you produce.How we measure what NHS staff produce is a matter for debate as is the whole way forward for the NHS because it surely cannot carry on as it is.We could spend the whole of our GDP on the NHS and there would still be waiting lists and ambulances queuing outside A&E.

Why should we expect staff at a station when we do not expect staff at a bus stop ?

how is that the same thing?

Fully support them.
Very much eat the rich.
These people are fighting for the people. Just look at the profits these companies have raked in off the backs of workers.
There hasn't been a need to raise costs but they always will to make more profits. And all the while never improving the services.
The enemy are the Tories and their buddies who have never had to even think of their bills. Not the person standing with us.

I think a lot more industries should follow. Including the care sector and NHS