Value to society is not important, if they can be easily replaced. The exact same reason remote call handlers in India don’t go on strike, because their low skilled profession makes them easily disposable. Nobody is resigning en-masse in any industry in a recession. They just need to stop moaning and put their efforts into finding better paid work, like actually earn a pay rise ffs.
How does a nurse, teacher, fire fighter, etc actually earn a pay rise? There are jobs where you can point at your financial value to the organisation you work for and jobs where you can't really. The issue is very much as you say, they do indeed leave for other work hence the numbers of vacancies for these public sector jobs are higher than they used to be.
Value to society is the service the individual provides. In terms of being easily replaced, we have a mass shortage in skilled and unskilled labour including in rail workers. And there are fewer and fewer young ppl going into it.
this… My company is now offering retention bonuses to keep hold of certain skill sets. That’s on top of the hundreds of millions they spend on automation, which according to some will do away with people
FFS, the railway is subsidised THREE TIMES as much now in real terms as it was in the run-up to privatisation. Whatever else privatisation may have done, it ****ed the taxpayer up the arsehole with a trumpet. But don't worry, over £25bn has been siphoned off in taxpayers' money in 27 years in the form of shareholders' dividends and executive bonuses. Oh, and it's now twice as expensive per passenger-mile travelled in real terms as in 1995. So as a taxpayer you pay more whether you use the service or not, and as a passenger, you then pay more again for the privilege. "Haemorrhaging money" my ****ing arse.
Amazing how many people spouting that driving a train is so easy have not noticed that the army won't be filling that role during the strikes (or any safety critical role for that matter, from signalling to conducting, to platform duties to track-workers).
Yeah, nurses and ambulance drivers, what a bunch of mugs eh? Saving lives when they could be earning bundles...
I remember people on here saying train drivers weren't going on strike and it wasn't about them. I like the way you quickly move on from train drivers, to other roles - I certainly don't remember anyone saying driving a train was 'easy'? Maybe as you are so well informed, you could tell us exactly what a train driver does do in his cab, apart from look out the windscreen, their hours and their pay and let us be judge whether it's a fair wage and whether the job is in fact easy, compared to other jobs? My view has always been once you give in to one strike, one union, you encourage more, and that's exactly what has happened.
Once you let the Tories stiff one bunch of public sector workers, you encourage them to stiff more, and that's exactly what's been happening for 12 years.
I've really got to you haven't I. It's well known my spelling his shhite, I don't overly worry myself about it on an internet forum, not sure why you do either, unless I'm bothering you of course.
That don't really cover it and you know it. I could as well claim it's because the unions want Labour in power, I'm sure likewise, you will deny that.
I think it’s more that various public sector professions are feeling let down by a government making them poorer in real terms for years on end. But you could be right.
If you think that nurses, etc haven't been objecting to their pay and conditions to the point of threatening strikes for months already (before the first strikes in any sector went ahead) then you haven't been paying close enough attention. The idea that they saw others striking and thought it looked like fun is away with the birds. If I slap four people across the face it's a bit rich to suggest the second person complaining is only complaining because they heard the first person saying "you hit me"
I think possibly they were happy with all of their pay and conditions but then IQ>80 nurses saw the railway workers doing a strike dance on TikTok and thought they'd follow the trend. Utterly plausible turn of events.
Tbh I don't really care whether it's easy or hard. My point which I made earlier is that clearly the railways are of important and intrinsic value to this and most other countries. If those who we depend on to provide that service feel the pay, terms and conditions aren't fair then they haven't come to that decision lightly. It's easy to think that this is all being done on a whim, that you just wake up one morning when you feel like it and decide to go on strike, forfeiting wages just for the fck of it, but that's not how it works. It's always the last resort and something every worker actually doesn't want to happen. Shame the same can't be said for this government.
