Nooo.. what i am saying is that people pressured to work at a lower rate than the market rate..or who are paid not enough to live on and are borrowing just to live are subsidising employers by taking financial risk themselves in order to keep the company going.
Senior folk arent doing that, they are always trying to take more money out of the company than the minimum needed for them to do their jobs..otherwise they withdraw their labour. Those union bashers are just saying its ok to threaten to withdraw your labour if you are posh, professional, or senior, but if you are working class, its your 'duty' to take lower pay than you ought to get.
In fact its the duty of management to ensure that the financial structure of a business allows appropriate pay to maintain safety, motivation, and if not, maintain an appropriate reserve supply of labour.
In this case an appropriate supply of labour, appropriate staffing levels or appropriate pay has been maintained. .because management were focused on shareholders, themselves and profit. Tge consequence of this..deficient, or 'high risk' strategy..depending on how you frame it, is that the risk of not paying enough, and hoping existing staff will accept below market rate AND overloading of job role AND safety risks has not paid off, and caused extremely damaging employer-employee relationships.
An analogy would be buying a cheap pair of walking boots, going up a mountain, hoping to get away with it, not doing, and shouting at the shoes. Good managers will be aware that they were pushing the limits to try to put money in their back pockets, and the gamble didn't pay off.
in the shoe example, you might have money still in your bank account. inthe southern rail example, spare money is taken away by banks, shareholders and directors.
Clearly what they were hoping to do is ride on that sense of 'duty' and screw their employees long enough to report profits ..they haven't got away with it.
Thats (bad) business. so its managerial error, poor risk management, and bad assumptive thinking.
The weird thing is that those same failed management, will have the authority to give thenselves bonuses for managing the strike. its a ridiculous world!