Management and Unions need a plan to modernise the railway. Only they can hammer out the detail of services, safety, investment in automation and pay that can help the railway adapt. A business which has lost so much revenue needs convincing ways of wooing back customers and restoring turnover, otherwise it needs to adjust its cost base to the reduced usage of its service.
The best way to resolve the disputes would be an agreement to the joint purpose of restoring revenues. It would be a plan to put more training and automation to work so pay can go up backed by substantial productivity gains. Only an expanding passenger base allied to new ways of delivering good service can bring forward the cash for higher pay than is already on offer.
It is going to be easier expanding rail freight from here with environmental benefit of taking trucks off the road. Wooing back five day a week commuters is going to be more difficult as many like some working at home. Many have been put off five day a week rail travel by high season ticket prices and unreliable services. The railway is not going to sustain its current cost base by just relying on expanding the leisure railway with plenty of off peak discount fares, especially given the difficulties getting enough weekend rail capacity for special events. The railway should be able to slim its cost base without compulsory redundancies if there is a shared wish by the Union to modernise.
June 22, 2022
Good morning.
I confess that I have not been following this as what goes on does not affect me. But when I have had need to use the rail services I have found them to be good with nice comfortable trains and friendly staff, even though they are a little pricey. The goings on remind me of the bad old days of the 1970’s with the unions wanting to thrash it out with the PM at Downing Street over beer and sandwiches no doubt. Trouble is, it is not the 1970’s and people can work from home, so their strike action lacks the punch it once had and, if anything, will further encourage business to move in this direction, further undermining the industry.
No railway anywhere in the world makes money and no one has a lifelong right to be employed. The government who, through taxpayer subsidy, is keeping these people in a job need to realise this and stop hurting those who are paying their wages twice fold. Once though their ticket and then trough their taxes.
It’s all change from now on. Best get use to it.
June 22, 2022
Appeasing the now politicised unions by offering them some form of industrial partnership achieves nothing. Their intent is not civil but ideological and political in nature.
June 22, 2022
+many
Spot on.
A glance at RMT website confirms that they are claiming industrial action is needed to save the planet. ( ie get rid of cars..globalist vision of small, dial-up-buses)
MP Mr Gullis is 100% correct!
June 22, 2022
Dom,
Why not? Johnson now offering people on welfare to have mortgages!! Why work when the state, ie taxpayer, buys you a house! Another mass immigration incentive by the ultra socialist culturally Marxist Tory party.
Illegal criminals entering the country by boat being put up in four star hotels plus spending money!! Now the incentive of being given a house without working, I think it should make everyone strike. The only sector better off with second homes, unjustified expenses and massive pay rises for a part time unqualified job are MPs!
June 22, 2022
Experience tells us ( reminds us) that strikes of this magnitude and power usually end with no coal mines, no Fleet Street,no steel, no car manufacture…no nothing of any use.
I imagine that the true aim of this strike is to do away with staff and train drivers ( they want driverless trains…oh joy!) and possibly the entire railway system.
As to who is pushing the whole thing and why who knows?
The weasely and cynical government? Marxists, not to help workers, but to bring about further collapse? Who knows.
But we’ve seen it all before.
Except this time it is kicking away the final supports
June 22, 2022
no HS2….excellent
June 22, 2022
You’d think that the RMT, true union style, would be “pulling together” to get the country back on it feet rather than further crippling it.
How many sheeple will bang pots and pans in favour of the strike?
Where’s Johnson’s Churchill spirit now?
I believe that a number of soldiers are trained in the gentle art of train driving?
June 22, 2022
E,
Why work when you can be put up in a four star hotel with all the trimmings or be bought a house on welfare. Johnson is making mugs of the working people, savers and strivers. His magic money tree keeps on giving to the world population and provides incentives to come here by the ship load not dinghies. Over a million last year came here.
Do not fall for the unions bad line anymore when those in charge are making a mockery of everyone who works.
June 22, 2022
Rail workers, like all employed people, need reasonable pay, conditions, and job security.
June 22, 2022
NLH what is reasonable pay in your mind for a cleaner in the National Rail network? The full package of benefits totted up and considered not just the hourly wage compared to the Real Living wage?
Do they deserve double the pay of a cleaner in any other industry in the UK because they work for a monopolised industry with no competition holding the public by the goolies? Because it is the general public that will pay and not the ticket holders. £600 per house subsidy and counting.
June 22, 2022
A-Tracy. Exactly right. Most taxpayers don’t use the bloody railways and yet have to pay for them. They all have excellent wages. My neighbour is a ticket inspector on the Welsh line. He gets £400 for a Sunday if he gets called in. He is always bragging about his easy life and high income. It’s the big unions that get the big wage increases and the little man in the street that pays for it. I’m fed up with the blackmailing.
June 22, 2022
They have that in spades already and have very good index linked pensions too. If they do get even higher pay it will be at the cost of people who earn less in general with even higher train fairs and even more taxes for train subsidies. Surely even you can understand this? Where else will the money come from?
June 22, 2022
Which is basically what they’ve got ….. and if they are losing job security that is partly their own fault for refusing to modernise their working practices and make the railways run more cheaply and efficiently.
June 22, 2022
If we ran fewer trains and sacked the excess drivers we would save costs of Median £59k + add on employment costs like pension and benefits. Then the level crossing could close less often…
June 22, 2022
Performance based pay sorts out what work is worth. Freight trains at night are more efficient than heavy lorries attempting to match the same distance, speed and weight performance. Stimulating more passenger train journeys solely to enable economies of scale and pay rail workers more is a wrong way round.
We do not need fuller trains, but a service which matches what the consumer needs. Consumer demand dictates what is created, produced, sold and delivered. However, too many consumers make many non-essential or heavily wasteful purchases which fill their bodies, and refuse bins in blocked van streets, and rail roads that don’t work.
Less is often most efficient.
June 22, 2022
The old style level crossing at Wokingham station is a good example. The traffic sits with car engines running for an age , even after the train(s) have passed through. Meanwhile at the Easthampstead Road crossing the gates close and open about 30 seconds before and after the train passes through. Surely technology can solve the problem at the station and would reduce pollution.
June 22, 2022
That’s not my experience at Easthampstead Road (Star Lane) crossing. The barriers come down long before a train passes and the queues of cars and vans can be two or three hundred meters long. I had a prolonged wait this morning at 9.40. If I behave like a good “Green” and switch off my engine the catalytic converter cools and the emissions that belch out until the converter regains its working temperature when I restart can’t be good for anything!
June 22, 2022
For some reason Boris Johnson now favours the televising of the start of his Cabinet meetings. If it’s to try and endear himself to the public then he’s failing. Yesterday’s ‘we must stay strong’ regarding the rail strikes sums up a siege mentality and how out of touch he is. It sounded as though he was preparing for war against his own people. Even worse yesterday was the appalling Grant Shapps saying rail workers are ‘being led down the garden path by a left wing union’. What a disgraceful, patronising attitude – as if working people choosing to strike, many of whom will have voted for this government, are too thick to know what they are doing.
June 22, 2022
If Johnson wasn’t squandering £105 billion (and the rest) on the idiocy known as HS2, there would be a great deal more money available to improve the railways across the country.
Since he’s so keen on pre and early Industrial infrastructure, I’m surprised he hasn’t come up with a plan to squander £hundreds of billions on “modernising the canal system.” Barges were so useful for moving freight around in the 18th century. We could develop a thriving Heavy Horse breeding strategy to go with it.
Governing is to choose and he invariably makes the wrong choice.
Ian Wragg: If you read this, could you please let me know where you get the information on the contribution Windmills are making to our daily energy supply. Thanks in advance.
June 22, 2022
While greencrap is more important than moving goods and people from A to B, nothing much will change.
Fortunately, some MPs are prepared to put their heads above the parapet and condemn this government’s green agenda publicly:
‘The government’s policy of achieving Net Zero at any price and at an arbitrary date has been forensically taken apart as a fruitless ambition by the National Audit Office.’Craig Mackinlay, MP for South Thanet.
Well said, sir.
June 22, 2022
Indeed the net zero agenda is compete lunacy. For it to make any sense at all manmade CO2 needs to be the cause of a thermal runaway climate disaster AND we would need all countries India, Russia, Brazil to cooperate in cutting CO2 hugely AND the “solutions” pushed by out idiotic government Wind, Solar, EVs, tidal, geothermal, heatpumps… would have to actually work to cut CO2 and do so significantly.
None of these three things is remotely true and all would have to be true. Indeed & even if they were true adaptation would make far more sense than cutting CO2. The idea that CO2 is some convenient World thermostat is bogus science and patently idiotic to anyone sensible.
Thanks very much for this lunacy T May, Ed Milliband, Carrie, Boris, Kwasi… time to grow up you unscientific net zero religious idiots! You are wasting £billions, crippling the economy and freezing pensions to death! Depressingly only a tiny handful of MPs did not vote for the climate change act so ignorant are they of reality. Many are not even MPs now the sensible Peter Lilley and Ann Widecombe for example.
June 22, 2022
+1 but so few sensible MPs
June 22, 2022
“Many have been put off five day a week rail travel by high season ticket prices and unreliable services.”
No. They were put off by being told to stay at home and get paid for doing nothing by economic illiterates. It’s a habit that understandably can be difficult to break.
June 22, 2022
Rather inconsiderate bluster, Sir Joe: all my three adult sons have been told last week (in various parts of the country) that on the strike days they could work from home given that their employers had already done what was necessary for such a thing in 2020 during the various lockdowns. If you were to tell them to their face that they had been paid for doing nothing, I am not sure what exactly they would answer back but it would certainly be along the lines:
– you are past your best,
– you are a know-nothing and employers can actually check that people supposed to be working from 9 to 5 are actually there and doing something work-related as expected by the boss,
– you do not know how much can be done WFH,
– you might spend your day by Sir John’s blog but there’s a bit more to life and work than that,
– plus eventually something more gross (that I think you deserve).
Get a life for Pete’s sake. The weather is rather nice, what about taking a stroll or relaxing in your garden?
June 23, 2022
I would reply to your three sons @Hef – any job that can be done from home can eventually be done from Mumbai.
I am sure your sons are conscientious but WFH is merely a tool among others within the working week’s armoury. Some days in are essential for innovation, communication and learning.
June 23, 2022
They were in their respective place of work on Monday and Wednesday, and I guess will be there on Friday.
The point was that the usual newspapers telling us that the end of the world is nigh, that Brits are angry, that all train workers are getting huge salaries, only reflect what they would want their readers to think. A certain press and some columnists (nicely paid by the papers’ proprietors) are whipping up discontent/dissent in the country.
And interestingly the guy who wrote about the ‘House of Unelected Wreckers’ in May 2018 might get a seat in this august Assembly.
June 23, 2022
furlough
/ˈfəːləʊ/
noun
leave of absence, especially that granted to a member of the services or a missionary.
“a civil servant home on furlough”
June 23, 2022
Gosh you are so rude and grumpy hefner.
Can’t you ever post without making such comments?
Try imagining you are chatting to someone face to face before you unleash your keyboard warrior personality.
June 26, 2022
Don’t worry P2, I would be very calm but tell people the same face-to-face, not one bit aggressive but giving the exact same arguments.
Keyboard Warrior Personality’: Do you ever produce any original thought?
June 22, 2022
+1 economic and health care illiterates. The statistics now suggest that there was no health benefit from the lockdown, the masks, test and trace and even the “vaccines” (ineffective and not safe) seem to have done rather more harm than good especially in the young. Boris and this government got the big things wrong on Covid, on net zero. on tax increases and on the economy!
June 22, 2022
Slightly better than Labour/SNP/Plaid/Libdims/Greens… is the best one can say for this appalling socialist green loon government.
June 22, 2022
Absolutely. And why not Johnson actively encouraged it. Are all civil servants back to work? What proportion are? How does this help the economy around where they used to work?
I tried contacting the council last week, three half an hour telephone calls that went dead. I had the pleasure of an automated message saying people are working from home and calls might take longer!! Do we have a community secretary?
June 23, 2022
I suspect in your case the working from home excuse is a cover for fewer staff. There is no reason for response times to drop when staff are home based.
It is my experience that their access to the correct information when you do get through is less than ideal, the technology for sitting in a meeting may have improved but the virtual networks and data protection systems are not there yet. Nor is access to a supervisor to escalate matters.
Service providers should not work remotely (perhaps one day a week of admin and writing up of cases where applicable).
June 22, 2022
We read legislation has been ready for some time. Yet again nothing until we are in a mess and why are we now reading about ridiculous costly rules from another century that management has done nothing to fix.
Actually Sir JR we need leadership with courage from both management and politicians in the DOT. Sadly for decades we have had neither.
June 22, 2022
Who actually owns the railways? Are they private or nationalised? What another socialist Tory mess!
How much do the bosses get in charge of the railways? Relevant if heads of unions are being outed for what they earn. Have the bosses of the railways represented the public or staff as well as union bosses?
June 23, 2022
Nationalised and paralysed
history repeating
June 22, 2022
“Management and Unions need a plan to modernise the railway.”
But the government stepped in and chucked £16bn at the railway two years ago so why not now? Why should either management or unions bother to modernize when they’re aware the government can just keep things going with no passengers regardless? We’re being run by idiots.
June 22, 2022
I don’t blame the railworkers for campaigning for a pay rise to combat inflation. After all, it was the government decision to close down the country and print 100s of billions of pounds to fuel it. Plus, they are only asking for 7%, which is well below current inflation.
I have no sympathy for strike action though. If they don’t like their terms and conditions, let them get another job – there’s plenty of demand for labour.
June 22, 2022
Dave so when inflation is only 1% or 0.66% is everyone saying match pay to inflation?
The NLW went up 6.6% people want their differentials, the NMW went up 9.8% for 21-22-year-olds and the age the NLW kicks in reduced by a year, it will reduce by another year next year and another year the following year. It inflates prices no one ends up better off, pensioners, prisoners and benefit claimants all want their 7% parity never-ending spiral, we’ve only got away with it in the past with their big increases at the bottom because they bring in loads of minimum wage workers from Eastern Europe who live 6-10 to a house and send their money home just existing here for a couple of seasons or years and getting all the top-up benefits, often carrying on claiming them for months after they themselves have finished working here and gone home.
June 23, 2022
We will eventually run out of third world (or Eastern European) inflation busters. This is not the high innovation, high productivity economy we need, it is a Ponzi scheme.
June 23, 2022
Absolutely agree, i think that is why so many migrants are allowed without turning them away, they prop up the black economy in cities allowing the wealthy to get their meals and orders delivered on the cheap. It’s just a pack of cards economy waiting for a puff of wind and the left are gearing up to deliver it with their inflated demands. Why should people with no job security at all provide them with job security out of our tax subsidies? You never hear the tv journalists asking just what is the full package, do you get full sick pay, how many days holiday per annum, how much extra pay for evenings, nights or weekends and bank holidays? What is your pension terms? What is your free family rail passes worth? They don’t realise just how lucky they are, well actually a few of them do and brag about the crazy payments.
June 22, 2022
Do please explain, Dave, how a campaign for a pay rise ever works, except via a threat of strike action. Think doctors, nurses, and teachers, not just railmen.
June 23, 2022
This is the problem of collective bargaining. The good workers in single party arrangements can always leave. Collective bargaining rewards the dross the same as the good.
And national settlements – that is just ridiculous why should someone in the North be paid the same as someone in London?
June 22, 2022
Workers providing monopoly services should not be permitted to strike. Work to rule – yes, strike -no.
These unions are leveraging their position as the only provider against the customer. Any business that has competition is likely to go under is there is industrial disputes, a monopoly provider’s unions can leverage the customers’ misery. That is why public sector and other monopoly providers have powerful unions and overpaid staff.
I keep hearing about laws to stop these strikes happening but they never come to fruition. These workers deserve to be paid fairly (but not overpaid) and the customers deserve a service that continues.
Governments like to legislate against its people, why not legislate for the people?
June 22, 2022
+1 NS – as you say, it is unfair to allow monopoly or essential services to strike, as they have so much more power and leverage than the private sector, and unlimited funding from the taxpayer, many of which will be worse off than the strikers that are ‘blackmailing’ the public and the government by grinding much of the country to a halt.
I wish the government would work to please the majority, just for a change, instead of (seemingly) appeasing and kowtowing to every minority in existence no matter how ridiculous their demands may be and how badly it affects the majority!
June 22, 2022
It’s not so much the monopoly service aspect as the fact the railways are subsidised. Let the workers have a vote on whether to accept government subsidies, with the proviso that if they do their pay can form no part of a reason for industrial action.
June 23, 2022
I accept that a railway SERVICE requires a subsidy to run a full service. The level of that subsidy can be decided by those that know more than me but the workers should not have a wage advantage because they can strike and there being no alternative inconveniences the passengers (customers in other industries).
That the RMT is making for greater subsidy for their monopoly is insidious but the nationalisation for the railways is getting closer, the Train Operating Companies will hand back the keys if wages become unsustainable.
June 22, 2022
Our deputy PM confirmed today that we will be staying in the European Court of Human Rights; but develop our on duplicate two tier UK Human Rights system alongside the supreme ECHR….. to make it look like we’re sovereign
Maybe Rabb could go to the ECHR to stop the RMT going on strike
Just another nail in the coffin for the forthcoming Wakefield bi-election
June 22, 2022
‘’We will keep the UK out of the single market, out of any form of customs union, and end the role of the European Court of Justice’’ Tory manifesto 2019
I just can’t see the logic of remaining a member of the Council for Europe and its European Convention for Human Rights
June 22, 2022
+1000
Good grief!
REALLY?
They call it Torylogic!
June 22, 2022
All manifestos (not just the CONS) have become works of fiction, and are for the sole purpose of gaining votes, and then discarded the day after election.
June 22, 2022
The NI Protocol requires us to stay in the ECHR.
June 22, 2022
….and we have the best civil servants in the world writting these protocals
June 22, 2022
Pulling out of the ECHR would mean this government reneging on the Good Friday Agreement.
It is written into the GFA that the ECHR be directly enforceable in Northern Ireland.
June 22, 2022
Correct
June 22, 2022
+1.
June 22, 2022
As part of ‘modernisation’ the railway companies apparently intend to close all ticket offices because tickets can be bought on-line. This sounds like part of the drive to force everyone to carry a smartphone, already ‘essential’ to enter many sporting events and concerts. At Birmingham New Street the ticket machines spread around the concourse have been boarded over and replaced with a smaller number of new machines at a single location with a queue to get to them and an awkward interface when you do.
June 22, 2022
Agree….there was a time when cash was king
June 22, 2022
Digital tickets are already fully operational, if people put their digital box receipt either on their phone or printed ticket against a reader in each seat it would just beep if someone sat down without scanning the ticket but too many passengers have to stand up (they should pay reduced ticket prices if they do anyway).
Technology is being brought in to reduce the need for lower-grade workers providing tickets and checking tickets, it is what to do with those workers when ticket windows and handling cash are not required. I bet they wish the Elizabethan line was a DLR system now.
June 22, 2022
if the number of passengers keeps falling it will be cheaper to close ticket offices and remove ticket machines..
Have onboard sellers.
June 22, 2022
It maybe cheaper for rail delivery operators to buy and use coaches instead of trains !
June 23, 2022
with axles designed for railway standard gauge tracks…..great idea?
June 22, 2022
Indeed why do we subsidise rail and public transport and over tax cars and trucks. The idea that on is better in CO2 terms is drivel once you account for staff, tracks, ticketing and average occupancy over the whole day. Doubtless why a full car can cost about 10% of just the train ticket and it goes door to door.
So Raab says we are going to stay in the ECHR but witters on about pushing back against it and protecting free speech. Either the court is supreme in these matters or it is not Raab – we should certainly withdraw the ECHR is not fit for purpose it is an affront to democracy in the UK.
Philip Johnston today is right – “Britain can’t claim to care about free speech if it extradites Julian Assange
The Wikileaks founder is no angel, but should be treated fairly by the criminal justice system”
Surely the man has suffer quite enough an appalling decision by Patel.
June 22, 2022
Defending the UK’s mad subserviense to the ECHR Raab says “it is part of our history”. What sort of a moronic argument is this for a suposedly sensible lawyer to make? So is hanging people for stealing a sheep or executing Kings wives Mr Raab!
June 22, 2022
The number of people in London and Manchester, for example, has gone up high in high rise buildings without room for cars, therefore, people need public transport in the Cities, nothing would move if public transport wasn’t there the jams would be horrendous.
June 22, 2022
LL,
No other country has to be in ECHR to have a trade deal with EU. Only Johnson and his bunch of incompetents! Then Lie to say we are a sovereign nation taking back control! No, UK is subject to ECJ and ECHR and regulatory orbit of EU. Johnson lied and failed the nation on Brexit. He serves no purpose for us anymore.
Cameron, May and Johnson all claimed to get UK out of ECHR as it tied hands of many govt.s. All lied/failed.
June 22, 2022
I am really surprised that all the Tory backbenches didn’t walk out of the HoCs during Raabs human rights statement, in disgust
June 22, 2022
If a union manages to increase pay and conditions for its members it can only do so by decreasing the numbers enjoying this higher pay. The more their members cost to employ the fewer it makes sense for the rail companies to employ. So they employ fewer & run fewer trains and services.
June 22, 2022
Is potential increase in productivity ever entering your thinking. And such increases in productivity do not always mean cutting the number of staff hoping that the same amount of work can be done by fewer people.
By the way what is the productivity in all the various businesses you pretend to be leading?
Usually BTL is only ‘productive’ through increases in rents, nothing bringing too much exertion to the ‘CEO’.
June 22, 2022
The Unions do an have modernised. Especially signallers where there has been mass natural wastage and centralisation of signal boxes.
Some of the nonsense about Spanish practices in the Daily Mail needs to be taken with a large dose of salt.
For example. A big thing was made in the Daily Mail of ‘walking times’ being rostered to crew. Seeing as a ‘walk’ to-from messroom to rain can be 1/2 a mile and the teleportation machine hasn’t yet been invented ‘walking time’ is necessary. Sometimes these are extended times for when a crew member in uniform has to walk through a busy station and must expect to be stopped by passengers to answer questions and must do so helpfully and courteously.
In any case. Walking times aren’t there to make life easy for the staff but are there so that a manager may ask of someone languishing in the messroom “You are meant to be walking to the yard now. Why aren’t you ?” Full break times (20 minutes) are set by the Hidden Rules since the Clapham disaster, not by union negotiation. So now you can see why a 1/2 mile walk could severely impinge on a 20 minute rest in what could be a 10 hour shift.
Other things such as “A manager can’t say hello to a guard in his lunch break.” Patent and utter nonsense. As was “Union members get a free day off on bank holidays and unpaid volunteers come in and do their work.” as one reader here claimed.
The majority of rail workers have either private sector or military experience before coming into the industry btw.
June 22, 2022
Train not ‘rain’.
June 22, 2022
Replace Grant Shapps asap
June 22, 2022
No the sharpest tool in the box, and it is a box full of very blunt tools.
He even thinks HS2 is sensible and carbon neutral so obviously bonkers or just a liar perhaps.
June 22, 2022
He does seem to spend too much time in his alter ego as Mr. Green, or minister against transport.
June 22, 2022
There are political objectives to many strikes as there are to this railway one and union resistance to modernise is well known, so it is difficult to see if any kind of rational conversation could be had with them.
June 22, 2022
Indeed but then the same applies to this Gov. KEN Clark yesterday on Radio 4 the BBC favourite said the government did not want the cost of living crisis. If so why do they have policies that clearly create it? MONEY printing. The pointless lockdown, test and trace:, HS2, Net zero, renewables, vast manifesto ratting tax increases, vast government waste and over regulation, public services that are a sick joke…
June 22, 2022
They have got to work smarter not harder. My neighbour who is a guard got called in on a Sunday and joined another three also called in just in case they were needed. Sat in a crew room all day on double time.
The railways are all small departments in reality, not talking to one another with no flexibility and that goes for managementas well. No direction, no vision and no passion for the job. Turn up leave brains on gates and switch on auto pilot.
June 22, 2022
Inflation figures published today 9.1% ….so in the real world its more like 15%
This government has lost the plot
June 22, 2022
Presumably, the highly paid Union executives need to maintain their membership numbers ?
June 22, 2022
“Ob-la-di, ob-la-da
Life goes on, brah
La, la, our lives go on”
June 22, 2022
Isn’t HS2 so that foreign trains can run on tracks throughout the UK? Does that mean in the future the only rail travel at times of strike will be foreign companies moving on UK rail lines but with EU staff?
How do our Railway cleaners, ticket collectors and guards pay per hour worked and benefits package compare with our nearest competitors i.e. France, Belgium, the Netherlands and Germany? Are railway staff getting paid breaks? Is it true they get 12 minutes walking allowance per minute?
June 22, 2022
Surely the backdrop to all this mayhem is if the government and its civil and public services reigned in on the obscene we waste that happens everyday then maybe there would be more that could be done in other critical areas. Why is the head of Railtrack be worth £600k per annum? There are too many demanding their share of an ever decreasing pot.
It comes as no surprise when the Auditor General is flagging up the cost of Net Zero as reported on Not a Lot of People Know That Web site. When are we going to stop digging these massive holes to dissappear down without trace? Is there anybody listening?
June 22, 2022
It is no surprise that the Unions are demanding better pay and conditions for their members because that is their job.
However there has to be a better way of sorting out these disputes without resorting to strike action.
There needs to be a proper arbitration system where a jury of industry experts can listen to the arguments on both sides, then examine the demands by the unions and the offers being made by the employers and decide which one has merit.
June 22, 2022
Only one Tory MP had the gumption to question the government decision to stay in the ECHR today at PMQs…..maybe the rest are all in favour of ECHR
June 22, 2022
There are two separate issues here:
1. The need for driverless trains, on both mainline and underground railways. The technology is now fully available. It is SAFER than using humans, and also cheaper (in the medium-to-long term), is less susceptible to strikes (although of course the controllers could go on strike), and can offer a more flexible service, with more trains to cope with peak demand. So why hasn’t the government MANDATED the IMMEDIATE introduction of driverless trains? Because Boris is a COWARD who doesn’t want the short-term strife for the long-term gain.
2. In terms of strikes, I would say that public transport is an ESSENTIAL SERVICE, and therefore all strikes by any public transport worker should be immediately made ILLEGAL. Again, why doesn’t Boris do this? Because he’s a useless COWARD.
Don’t you get it by now? NOTHING will improve in Britain until the useless piece of rubbish known as Boris Johnson is GONE and replaced by a decisive, courageous and patriotic man of ACTION.
June 22, 2022
Freight usage is the obvious use of rail going forward.
However, I’m not sure “productivity” increases in return for more pay is the way forward. If the railways run ok now, then what would this increased productivity achieve? If the workers become more effective/efficient at doing the same things, then the corollary would be simply that we need fewer workers to achieve the same goals – so redundancies are implicit in that suggestion (not necessarily wrong, but good luck selling that to a union).
Also, how would you measure this? History seems to show that those measuring productivity simply fiddle the stats so that they all get paid. and all keep their jobs. What are the productivity measures that you would put in place? After all, somone who, say, checks tickets… they would currently have to do this in a set timeframe (before the passengers disembark?) so how can that person’s productivity improve? We need more than vague standard terms here, we need to understand what they really mean and how they apply to the national rail situation.
A key point here is that the jobs are low-skilled. The way normal people deal with this is that if they don’t like their job, they get another that pays more. Instead, these people try to fleece the country’s finances to feather their own nests, but that’s an aside…
How do we know that they are low-skilled? Well, if they weren’t then no-one would be suggesting that agency workers could cover for them. Any role that someone can learn to do in a few minutes on Day One must involve simple tasks that anyone can learn i.e. it is low-skilled.
Overall, we should aim to phase out railways other than for freight use. They are an anachronism is this day and age. That may mean government policies aimed at decentralisation of the workforce away from London and other major population centres. Trying to preserve the status quo are technology advances is like govt suport for horse-drawn carriage companies after the invention of the motor car. Business has risks, some businesses fail and are replaced with more efficient businesses, that’s the way of the world and govt should not allow lobbyists (and party contributors) to protect their outdated business models.
June 22, 2022
Listening to the Bill of Rights Statement today it’s become clear that the repeal of the ECHR is a none starter, like VAT, the ECHR can’t be removed because its written into and codified within the Northern Ireland Protocol and Belfast Agreement
If we’ve left the EU and are sovereign why is ‘’Europe’’ even mentioned in any new law ?
June 23, 2022
What of the ECJ?
June 22, 2022
Merseyrail staff and management have reached a below-current inflation agreement.
June 23, 2022
Peter and where will they get the extra money from? Do they have enough passengers in Merseyrail to pay for it?
June 22, 2022
Why is it the public sector (including transport companies) seems to think they have a god given right to inflation busting pay rises, a final salary pension, no redundancies and perks that others would dearly love – at our expense – and for which very few in the private and self employed sectors enjoy.
In the old days public sector pay was below that of the private sector. That is not true anymore.
June 22, 2022
They’re just following the example of our MPs
June 22, 2022
I would also like to add:
The Government should bring in new laws that allow Unions (and their representatives) to be sued for harassment and intimidation.
If a worker does not want to strike, they should be allowed to work without the fear of being labeled ‘a scab’ and subsequently blanked by their unionised colleagues. Nor have to tolerate future intimidation and harassment as a result of their decision.
In other industries this is considered workplace harassment.
June 22, 2022
You should watch episode 4 of Sherwood on BBC iplayer and fast forward to the NUM solicitor who sums up Tory government dealings with unions brilliantly, and then look at how much profit has been made by shareholders to the detriment of rail passengers since privatisation.
Personally I feel much safer travelling on a train where there is a guard / ticket inspector so I don’t think more automation is a good plan, and if ticket offices close life is even more difficult for disabled passengers.
June 22, 2022
I hear in the EU certain minimum service must be by law maintained. Now we all know EU law, what is enforced and on whom varies.
Perhaps that might actually be a useful addition. Especially since it appears HMG are unable and or unwilling to take back control.
June 22, 2022
A bit off topic, but I would like to know how many commuters who no longer travel.in 5 days are still getting a 5 day travel expense allowance – a full London allowance.