RMT union vote for a national rail strike

[ZedLeg]

98elise said:

ZedLeg said:

Everyone deserves to earn a decent wage for a day’s work.

So choose a job that pays well. It might take more effort or there may be compromises, but that's why it pays more. That's now those difficult jobs get filled.

Simple jobs will always pay less. You can't pay a decent (say average) wage for an entry level job. The money has to come from somewhere and that mean inflation so you end up back where you were.

There aren't infinite well paying jobs, if the entire working population decided they all wanted to work in IT then the value of the jobs themselves would drop.

Before my current place I spent around 15 years working in brick and mortar retail. It's an industry built on exploiting employees, no one gets paid well and if you're in a management position you're expected to prioritise your job over pretty much anything else. Employers hold all the cards because they know that if you quit, there'll be 10 people waiting to step into the job tomorrow and having bodies on the floor is more important than retaining staff who are good at what they do but "causing problems". These kinds of jobs are the ones that need the extra support.

[98elise]

ZedLeg said:

Johnnytheboy said:

ZedLeg said:

The company I work for is great. I’m not under any illusions as to what our relationship is though.

The relationship between employer and employee is inherently uneven. The employee needs their job to live, whereas the company is constantly trying to minimise their investment in them and only needs them for as long as they are valuable.

This is why it’s good that there are mechanisms in place to try and make sure that workers aren’t exploited. Be it unions or government policy.

Yes, but the employee may leave at any time and it benefits the employer to try and retain staff.

In theory that’s true but it’s not viable if you’re living pay cheque to pay cheque as a lot of people who are on the minimum wage are.

How does that stop you getting a better job? There isn't a forced period of no pay between jobs.

[motco]

98elise said:

Ouroboros said:

ZedLeg said:

You mentioned the alcoholic before, I’d still be curious to see more details.

I worked at a maintenance depot for Vigin Trains.

This old guy who was an alcoholic, job was to apply brakes and then inform cleaners to clean outside of the train. Well he never applied the brakes, train rolled forward and only luck, the cleaner weren't killed or had legs removed.

Procedure is drink test, which was done hours later, the guy was 3 times over limit.

Me i thought he would be sacked on the spot, the union argued stress etc, and dragged it out and eventually got them to early retire him on full pension. It was mentioned by union rep, he had been drinking heavy for last 10 years and this had happened before but 2nd man applied brakes.

The cleaners were just minimum wage non union people, and no sts given to their potential deaths, that is what shocked me the most. It just seemed protecting this guy, who was over retirement age so could have left earlier anyway, when all the unions reps knew he had a drink problem but hid it.

in fairness the mangement weren't the best but that was to do with the US and them mentality.

There was a guy who failed drugs tests 3 times and was still being supported by the unions.

As Angela Rayner says...

"There are times when it's one of my members who has acted badly, but even then I blame management – after all, they recruited that person. Management created the mess, so it is up to management to sort it out, with the best possible result for the member I'm representing."

https://www.theguardian.com/money/2012/feb/17/work...

Apologies if it has been posted before but in 2014 a tube worker was sacked for being drunk and RMT siad it was a management fit-up Daily Mail sorry for Mail link.

[Prawo Jazdy]

Mr Spoon said:

See, if you do work for the rail, then I have no empathy for you. If you do not like your working conditions go find a new job, but wait, your job is so much easier than having to be accountable in the real world, that you would prefer to moan and groan and go on strike. Good work.

Why would they not be accountable to anyone in the real world?

[Welshbeef]

ZedLeg said:

The company I work for is great. I’m not under any illusions as to what our relationship is though.

The relationship between employer and employee is inherently uneven. The employee needs their job to live, whereas the company is constantly trying to minimise their investment in them and only needs them for as long as they are valuable.

This is why it’s good that there are mechanisms in place to try and make sure that workers aren’t exploited. Be it unions or government policy.

A company values staff highly - without good talented engaged staff you don’t have a company really.

The drive the vision the engagement the fact they will go way beyond they are brand ambassadors the knowledge.

I’m sure there are companies who treat staff badly don’t recognise them and use the stick over the carrot. I urge anyone in those situations to now use this great opportunity to try to get one of those 1.2m vacancies. Do it don’t get stuck in a dead end job that you hate and a company that you hate working for bad culture bad ethics etc.
aside from probably better pay your mental health will be dramatically improved too and it may well see you stepping up and up in roles.

[Dblue]

98elise said:

valiant said:

And what’s the average salary for a nurse in London?

Not starting salary but the average for a nurse as the poster I replied to mentioned?

And why the heck do people always compare nurses to tube drivers? Is it some sort of metric used to calculate inflation or something? Every bleedin’ time tube or train drivers salaries are mentioned someone brings out the nurses.

Just accept that different professions pay different salaries.

A nurse needs a degree, and is doing a job that involves people lives. It doesn't pay that well becasue enough people want to do it. It is a desirable job at that wage.


Different professions pay more because of the skills required, and the desirability of the work

Rail workers get paid more because they work in a monopoly and can blackmail the country.

If there was any competition unionised rail would fail within a very short space of time.

Unions started out with good intent, but they have developed into a mafia. I'd love to see the back of them.

And this is exactly my point. The inherent worth of two apples and pears occupations are miles out of line because of longstanding aggressive industrial action in one case and a complete unwillingness to put themselves first in the other.

I think its self evident that the bullies have prospered.

Now, that doesn't mean getting protected from exploitation isn't desirable and necessary , it is, but train and tube staff are not at the front of that queue -

[Welshbeef]

Dblue said:

And this is exactly my point. The inherent worth of two apples and pears occupations are miles out of line because of longstanding aggressive industrial action in one case and a complete unwillingness to put themselves first in the other.

I think its self evident that the bullies have prospered.

Now, that doesn't mean getting protected from exploitation isn't desirable and necessary , it is, but train and tube staff are not at the front of that queue -

The value of wages is wrong in so many way.

Let’s take pre school childcare for example - I’d argue that job is crucial and is founding in so many ways how a child will grow up.
It gets paid tuppance …. This is totally wrong.

Let’s take care of elderly people - minimum wage. Shameful and a hard job.

Let’s take education £25-35k teaching…. Seriously? A farce. This is the future

Let’s take nurses - woeful pay for such an important and hard job.

Let’s take Drs and GPS vital and difficult work - appears to be good salary but I’d say it isn’t.

Etc etc.
then we have footballers earning in some cases ten years teacher salary in a week.

Society has got valuation of work so wrong.


When we start to properly value these and other jobs our society will improve no ends.

I’m sure plenty in here who do earn well would be happy to hold salary for years or pay cuts with those cuts going to these jobs for the betterment of our society vs us building up wealth. Money doesn’t buy happiness all it does it makes the ability to do more nice things easier - and yet others simply can only dream about doing only some of these….
Really makes you think when you see the genuine struggle people are having

[rxe]

Welshbeef said:

The value of wages is wrong in so many way.

Let’s take pre school childcare for example - I’d argue that job is crucial and is founding in so many ways how a child will grow up.
It gets paid tuppance …. This is totally wrong.

Let’s take care of elderly people - minimum wage. Shameful and a hard job.

Let’s take education 25-35k teaching…. Seriously? A farce. This is the future

Let’s take nurses - woeful pay for such an important and hard job.

Let’s take Drs and GPS vital and difficult work - appears to be good salary but I’d say it isn’t.

Etc etc.
then we have footballers earning in some cases ten years teacher salary in a week.

Society has got valuation of work so wrong.


When we start to properly value these and other jobs our society will improve no ends.

I’m sure plenty in here who do earn well would be happy to hold salary for years or pay cuts with those cuts going to these jobs for the betterment of our society vs us building up wealth. Money doesn’t buy happiness all it does it makes the ability to do more nice things easier - and yet others simply can only dream about doing only some of these….
Really makes you think when you see the genuine struggle people are having

Work gets paid what it is worth, according to the rules of supply and demand.

Footballers get paid a lot because they can make a lot of money for their clubs, and the clubs want the absolute best - the crittera is simply “lets get the 11 best players that money can buy”. That will be expensive.

Nurses get paid less because the entry criteria are far lower, and every year, thousands of them sign up to become a nurse. If that stopped happening, they’d get paid more.

It does not mean that nursing is more or less valuable to society than football.

Train drivers are an aberration. They are less skilled than nurses, and get paid far more. Train driving jobs are so scarce that the general labour market never gets a look in - they’re all grabbed by mates in the business. Hopefully they’ll get automated of out existence and the silly striking can go away.

[valiant]

rxe said:

Train drivers are an aberration. They are less skilled than nurses, and get paid far more. Train driving jobs are so scarce that the general labour market never gets a look in - they’re all grabbed by mates in the business. Hopefully they’ll get automated of out existence and the silly striking can go away.

That’s complete nonsense.

Train driver jobs are openly advertised by many TOCs on their websites for all to apply. Some companies prefer to concentrate on internal employees like promoting station staff but they will advertise externally if few internals make the grade.

The days of ‘jobs for the boys’ went out with the Ark.

Competition for the jobs is fierce and only a handful will make it from application stage to being handed your keys at the end. The failure rate at the testing stage is huge and the training can be long and intensive.

Automation may come along but not in any meaningful form in our lifetimes. On the tube which is relatively simple system in train terms, it would cost around £12bn to automate and that only turns it into GOA level 3 which means a staff member has to be on board. The mainline network is orders of magnitude more complicated and would cost probably hundreds of billions and take decades to automate. Basically, automation ain’t happening any time soon.

Besides, naturally everyone’s ire is against drivers where most belong to ASLEF who are not involved with this dispute but don’t let details bother anyones frothing…

[ZedLeg]

Welshbeef said:

I’m sure plenty in here who do earn well would be happy to hold salary for years or pay cuts with those cuts going to these jobs for the betterment of our society vs us building up wealth.

I have the feeling that you're in a deep minority on that front

[irc]

Welshbeef said:

Let’s take Drs and GPS vital and difficult work - appears to be good salary but I’d say it isn’t.

If we are going to talk salaries we might as well be accurate. Average GP salaries in England are £100k. Anybody earning more than £80k per year is in the top 5% of earners.

Are you seriously saying top 5% is not well paid?

https://digital.nhs.uk/data-and-information/public...

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/nov/22/f...

We would all like to earn more but the country as a whole only has a certain amount of wealth.

[Welshbeef]

irc said:

Welshbeef said:

Let’s take Drs and GPS vital and difficult work - appears to be good salary but I’d say it isn’t.

If we are going to talk salaries we might as well be accurate. Average GP salaries in England are 100k. Anybody earning more than 80k per year is in the top 5% of earners.

Are you seriously saying top 5% is not well paid?

https://digital.nhs.uk/data-and-information/public...

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/nov/22/f...

We would all like to earn more but the country as a whole only has a certain amount of wealth.

The work they do can save lives / prevent death / support terminally sick people

Surely you’d want the smartest minds in the business to be working in this sector so if there came a situation where it was you needing that support - I think if it could save your life you’d give everything away for that.

[irc]

Welshbeef said:

The work they do can save lives / prevent death / support terminally sick people

Surely you’d want the smartest minds in the business to be working in this sector so if there came a situation where it was you needing that support - I think if it could save your life you’d give everything away for that.

I agree. I'm just saying they are already well paid.

[crankedup5]

And then we have businesses such as Carillion run by people who had just one personal ambition.

[faa77]

98elise said:

valiant said:

And what’s the average salary for a nurse in London?

Not starting salary but the average for a nurse as the poster I replied to mentioned?

And why the heck do people always compare nurses to tube drivers? Is it some sort of metric used to calculate inflation or something? Every bleedin’ time tube or train drivers salaries are mentioned someone brings out the nurses.

Just accept that different professions pay different salaries.

Rail workers get paid more because they work in a monopoly and can blackmail the country.

If there was any competition unionised rail would fail within a very short space of time.

Unions started out with good intent, but they have developed into a mafia. I'd love to see the back of them.

This!

[anonymous-user]

faa77 said:

98elise said:

valiant said:

And what’s the average salary for a nurse in London?

Not starting salary but the average for a nurse as the poster I replied to mentioned?

And why the heck do people always compare nurses to tube drivers? Is it some sort of metric used to calculate inflation or something? Every bleedin’ time tube or train drivers salaries are mentioned someone brings out the nurses.

Just accept that different professions pay different salaries.

Rail workers get paid more because they work in a monopoly and can blackmail the country.

If there was any competition unionised rail would fail within a very short space of time.

Unions started out with good intent, but they have developed into a mafia. I'd love to see the back of them.

This!

[faa77]

ZedLeg said:

98elise said:

ZedLeg said:

Everyone deserves to earn a decent wage for a day’s work.

So choose a job that pays well. It might take more effort or there may be compromises, but that's why it pays more. That's now those difficult jobs get filled.

Simple jobs will always pay less. You can't pay a decent (say average) wage for an entry level job. The money has to come from somewhere and that mean inflation so you end up back where you were.

There aren't infinite well paying jobs, if the entire working population decided they all wanted to work in IT then the value of the jobs themselves would drop.

Before my current place I spent around 15 years working in brick and mortar retail. It's an industry built on exploiting employees, no one gets paid well and if you're in a management position you're expected to prioritise your job over pretty much anything else. Employers hold all the cards because they know that if you quit, there'll be 10 people waiting to step into the job tomorrow and having bodies on the floor is more important than retaining staff who are good at what they do but "causing problems". These kinds of jobs are the ones that need the extra support.

Why should someone get paid "well" for having skills a lot of people posess?

Edited by faa77 on Thursday 26th May 12:14

[anonymous-user]

motco said:

98elise said:

Ouroboros said:

ZedLeg said:

You mentioned the alcoholic before, I’d still be curious to see more details.

I worked at a maintenance depot for Vigin Trains.

This old guy who was an alcoholic, job was to apply brakes and then inform cleaners to clean outside of the train. Well he never applied the brakes, train rolled forward and only luck, the cleaner weren't killed or had legs removed.

Procedure is drink test, which was done hours later, the guy was 3 times over limit.

Me i thought he would be sacked on the spot, the union argued stress etc, and dragged it out and eventually got them to early retire him on full pension. It was mentioned by union rep, he had been drinking heavy for last 10 years and this had happened before but 2nd man applied brakes.

The cleaners were just minimum wage non union people, and no sts given to their potential deaths, that is what shocked me the most. It just seemed protecting this guy, who was over retirement age so could have left earlier anyway, when all the unions reps knew he had a drink problem but hid it.

in fairness the mangement weren't the best but that was to do with the US and them mentality.

There was a guy who failed drugs tests 3 times and was still being supported by the unions.

As Angela Rayner says...

"There are times when it's one of my members who has acted badly, but even then I blame management – after all, they recruited that person. Management created the mess, so it is up to management to sort it out, with the best possible result for the member I'm representing."

https://www.theguardian.com/money/2012/feb/17/work...

Apologies if it has been posted before but in 2014 a tube worker was sacked for being drunk and RMT siad it was a management fit-up Daily Mail sorry for Mail link.

Union reps are just people with a self perceived level of importance that doe not exist. They are nobodies that have tried to create a something out of their otherwise less important lives.

[ZedLeg]

faa77 said:

Why should someone get paid "well" for having skills a lot of people posess?

Edited by faa77 on Thursday 26th May 12:14

I’m not saying that everyone should be on £50k. A full time job should pay a living wage though.

[stitched]

valiant said:

rxe said:

Train drivers are an aberration. They are less skilled than nurses, and get paid far more. Train driving jobs are so scarce that the general labour market never gets a look in - they’re all grabbed by mates in the business. Hopefully they’ll get automated of out existence and the silly striking can go away.

That’s complete nonsense.

Train driver jobs are openly advertised by many TOCs on their websites for all to apply. Some companies prefer to concentrate on internal employees like promoting station staff but they will advertise externally if few internals make the grade.

The days of ‘jobs for the boys’ went out with the Ark.

Competition for the jobs is fierce and only a handful will make it from application stage to being handed your keys at the end. The failure rate at the testing stage is huge and the training can be long and intensive.

Automation may come along but not in any meaningful form in our lifetimes. On the tube which is relatively simple system in train terms, it would cost around 12bn to automate and that only turns it into GOA level 3 which means a staff member has to be on board. The mainline network is orders of magnitude more complicated and would cost probably hundreds of billions and take decades to automate. Basically, automation ain’t happening any time soon.

Besides, naturally everyone’s ire is against drivers where most belong to ASLEF who are not involved with this dispute but don’t let details bother anyones frothing…

I earn enough to support my lifestyle.
Working with HV and LV my life is at risk daily, caution is a part of my daily life, the job I do requires a high level of qualification and training.
I have never driven a train, I have however flown a glider, a plane and a helicopter.
My personal opinion is that driving a car through Birmingham is probably more skillful and stressful than driving a train.
I'd quite enjoy seeing the train unions broken and the jobs paid at @ £30k tops.
HTF can you be consistantly late on a vehicle you can't steer?