Frustrated with RMT

[ExRes]

Rail has a monopoly. Want to get to Bristol from London in an hour and a half then there is only one choice. Glasgow to Edinburgh in under an hour? Birmingham to Manchester without queuing on the M6?

Rail may have a monopoly if you live in a city and want to travel to a city otherwise no way, tell me how a train can get me from Three Bridges to Paignton quicker than my car

 

[mac]

hope they dont expect support from their union if they need it.

Most of them agree with the first poster and are losing to much money supporting maintenance and will leave the union if they have to

 

[yorkie]

hope they dont expect support from their union if they need it.

I'm not quite sure what you are insinuating but unless the Union are offering to pay lost wages, I don't think the Union are in any position to demand it's members lose money and then refuse to offer the sort of assistance one would reasonableness expect from a Union.

At the end of the day everyone should have the right to earn the wages they signed up to receive and no Union should ever prevent people doing so.

 

[GalaxyDog]

People want to blame RMT and call us out. Just remember that we've played ball no less than three times by cancelling action, wishing to demonstrate that we want to resolve this. Just remember mid November and the two week amnesty of "intensive constructive talks" which were torpedoed by the RDG/Government, last minute, by them inserting an absolute shedload of horrific terms and conditions changes.

Why should we have to accept that trash?

 

[class68fan]

I'm not quite sure what you are insinuating but unless the Union are offering to pay lost wages, I don't think the Union are in any position to demand it's members lose money and then refuse to offer the sort of assistance one would reasonableness expect from a Union.

At the end of the day everyone should have the right to earn the wages they signed up to receive and no Union should ever prevent people doing so.

If they dont support the union when asked to why should they expect the union to support in return.

Legal strike ballot, legal strike so they should strike and if they dont they dont deserve support.

 

[800 Driver]

Rail may have a monopoly if you live in a city and want to travel to a city otherwise no way, tell me how a train can get me from Three Bridges to Paignton quicker than my car

I googled it and it's about. 4h20 by train and 4h15 car. But you should have a rest stop if driving over 2 hours, so the train would win. Plus £65 by train, so. probably cheaper unless you have a very very fuel efficient car.

 

[Snow1964]

People want to blame RMT and call us out. Just remember that we've played ball no less than three times by cancelling action, wishing to demonstrate that we want to resolve this. Just remember mid November and the two week amnesty of "intensive constructive talks" which were torpedoed by the RDG/Government, last minute, by them inserting an absolute shedload of horrific terms and conditions changes.

Why should we have to accept that trash?

Because stalemate doesn’t benefit anyone.

And Government have deeper pockets so can sit it out for months, whereas most of the staff have bills to pay, so don’t want to lose many days worth of wages.

It has already gone on for months, so until we are approaching a General election period, Government might be happy to wait.

There is a point where loss of wages exceeds any potential uplift in wages from continuing to strike, and longer it goes on, more undesirable terms are likely to be added as it becomes a game of who loses the least, instead of battle of improvements.

 

[Novern Uproar]

As a striking signaller, I can say staff are now becoming a bit narked with the RMT leadership. Most signallers I know, especially in the lower grades, do not want this dispute to drag on and on and would accept the pay deal. One gets the impression Mick would have us out indefinitely and that is just not going to happen as people will just start ignoring his walkout calls, as a minority are unfortunately doing now. I personally would prefer a complete overtime ban to bring this dispute to a head.

 

[mac]

If Network Rail doesn't change it's stance then how many strike days each month should the RMT call, already 4 is booked for January should it be 8 every month or more

 

[Carntyne]

People want to blame RMT and call us out. Just remember that we've played ball no less than three times by cancelling action, wishing to demonstrate that we want to resolve this. Just remember mid November and the two week amnesty of "intensive constructive talks" which were torpedoed by the RDG/Government, last minute, by them inserting an absolute shedload of horrific terms and conditions changes.

Why should we have to accept that trash?

That's the separate TOC dispute. The OP is talking about NR.

 

[Bantamzen]

I would hope they would leave the RMT?

That said I do understand the pressures of finance especially at this time of year. Who are you loyal to? The union or your family?

I would hope their family. It is a simple reality of union life, the longer a dispute runs the more members start to struggle and start to break the strike. If the RMT wants full support for strikes, the only way is to find a way to pay strike pay. Bills don't just go away because a union is in dispute with the employer.

 

[gazzaa2]

It is all purely politically motivated by Lynch and his fellow travellers to keep pressure on the government.

The problem is it's become personal. The government want to hurt Lynch and his union and aren't interested on resolving the dispute. It's like Scargill and the mines all over again.

As a striking signaller, I can say staff are now becoming a bit narked with the RMT leadership. Most signallers I know, especially in the lower grades, do not want this dispute to drag on and on and would accept the pay deal. One gets the impression Mick would have us out indefinitely and that is just not going to happen as people will just start ignoring his walkout calls, as a minority are unfortunately doing now. I personally would prefer a complete overtime ban to bring this dispute to a head.

The government are happy to ride the strikes out. I think the Christmas walkout was the last throw of the dice from Lynch but government aren't blinking. Strikes are pointless unless it's all out until resolved like Arriva with the buses.

Overtime ban until resolved otherwise as thats basically a strike day service on many tocs and therefore unusable.

 

[pdq]

I thought unions were there to represent the collective views of their members. It seems to me that, in the case of the signallers, they are not doing this, because they are conflating very different job roles together.

I really wish the unions and employers would all grow up and talk about these issues before they become issues. Some years ago, I was a Unite union rep at a Government agency ('Quango' used to be the term). We worked with the management team to resolve potential disputes before they even surfaced. This was a mature way of working. No 'us and them'. Union members came from all levels - right up to Directors: we all worked for the same organisation and we collaborated to make that organisation a better and more effective place to work. I appreciate that this is different - we often joked about striking when our pay was held back by the Govt (which of course affected everyone, including the senior managers), but concluded the only people that would be inconvenienced (or would even notice) would be the very people we were working to support.

 

[yorkie]

I thought unions were there to represent the collective views of their members. It seems to me that, in the case of the signallers, they are not doing this, because they are conflating very different job roles together

You would think so, but the people in charge of unions often seem to have their own agendas which are not always aligned with the views of ordinary members.

 

[LNW-GW Joint]

I thought the RMT staff were the signallers and maintenance workers who aren't employed by the TOCs, unlike the ASLEF disputes where they are representing drivers who are employed by TOCs?

RMT has most of the guards/conductors and platform staff in the TOCs.
They also have a small number of drivers (and a larger number at LU I think).

 

[superkopite]

Rail has a monopoly. Want to get to Bristol from London in an hour and a half then there is only one choice. Glasgow to Edinburgh in under an hour? Birmingham to Manchester without queuing on the M6?

WOW! What a comment. Given that most people choose to drive/walk/cycle rather than take trains, what is this "monopoly" you speak of?

Your time comparison for train vs car is flawed. How many people actually want to get from exactly London Paddington to Bristol Temple Meads? From where I live in London just getting to Paddington is 45mins by public transport. It's about 2h45m driving as opposed to well over 3hs on public transport.

 

[AM9]

You would think so, but the people in charge of unions often seem to have their own agendas which are not always aligned with the views of ordinary members.

- plus union leaders and their staff are just doing their job - on full pay.

 

[TRXsouth]

As a rail traveller, I ask: what are the specific ‘terms, conditions and working practices’ that Network Rail and the Train Operating Companies are seeking to change?

 

[185]

the specific ‘terms, conditions and working practices’ that Network Rail and the Train Operating Companies are seeking to change?

1. All ticket offices to close. 2. All train guards removed.

 

[superkopite]

I googled it and it's about. 4h20 by train and 4h15 car. But you should have a rest stop if driving over 2 hours, so the train would win. Plus £65 by train, so. probably cheaper unless you have a very very fuel efficient car.

Why do you need to have rest stops every two hours?

Also, £65 for the 206 miles is very expensive compared to a car. Even a car that is not very efficient, will be cheaper

If your car does 30mpg (very inefficient) you will require 6.8 gallons, 30.9 litres. Even paying £1.65 per litre (much cheaper prices available if you shop around), it will only cost you £51 in petrol. If there is more than one person travelling the cost saving is even greater.

 

[CFRAIL]

It's getting to a point where I'll go against the union and attend work on strike days. I've lost in excess of 1k in wages already, I simply cannot afford to lose more. My family and bills must come first. I can't sustain 3/4+ strike days per month in addition to a RDW ban. If that loses me some support or friends in the workplace then so be it, I'm not sure they're the ones I'd want anyway.

 

[Sly Old Fox]

The response (from DfT) read out by Mark Harper strengthened my resolve. They were inches from settling on the 4% + 4% (derisory) pay deal. No-one in their right mind would accept the derisory 4% plus next year 4% with additional conditions of mass redundancy attached.

What is stopping you from being made redundant tomorrow without a payrise?

 

[modernrail]

For leisure I'm sure passengers will return, but for the more profitable business travel the strikes and general railway unreliability at the moment is helping to further ingrain digital / remote ways of working in my experience.

In our business, aside from the commute to office, travel to project / supplier meetings generated some train travel previously. These have switched to Teams calls, some permanently so. So I expect we'll end up with a high mix of Teams meetings and fewer in person meetings even once the strikes end. That's even greener and cheaper for businesses.

If nothing else there is lost income from these strike days. Unless railway subsidy is going to increase to fund this income shortfall, won't this require further savings to be found in this financial year?

This is spot on. It will take a long time for business users to trust train travel for anything remotely time sensitive again. Add in the ease of online meeting and you have lost a lot of the higher revenue passengers, at a time when there was a shift in any case. I literally love travelling by train when it works. I am sick to the back teeth of it now and would not trust the industry to get me anywhere where I actually need to believe the arrival time.

 

[sprite]

What is stopping you from being made redundant tomorrow without a payrise?

Nothing, but it would be fought and contested by the union (s). If they'd already agreed to allow it as part of a pay deal, their hands would be tied and unable to protect their members effectively.

 

[LNW-GW Joint]

The RMT finds itself in a difficult place now the focus of media attention has moved on to nurses, ambulance crews and teachers.
The railway offer is better than that for those public sector workers, and nobody is interested in the technicalities of the terms and conditions argument.
Mick Lynch always wanted a cross-industry strike to make it more effective, but the public are heartily sick of the various unions making the railway unusable by staggering strikes across the industry.
Once an individual offer is accepted, the wider strike will collapse, and we seem to be closing in on that position, particularly on the NR side.
The strikes also mean that reductions in services are ever more probable, so union members will lose out anyway when services are permanently thinned out.
In those circumstances a "no redundancy" demand is simply unrealistic, as it would be in any other industry.

 

[superkopite]

The RMT finds itself in a difficult place now the focus of media attention has moved on to nurses, ambulance crews and teachers.
The railway offer is better than that for those public sector workers, and nobody is interested in the technicalities of the terms and conditions argument.
Mick Lynch always wanted a cross-industry strike to make it more effective, but the public are heartily sick of the various unions making the railway unusable by staggering strikes across the industry.
Once an individual offer is accepted, the wider strike will collapse, and we seem to be closing in on that position, particularly on the NR side.
The strikes also mean that reductions in services are ever more probable, so union members will lose out anyway when services are permanently thinned out.
In those circumstances a "no redundancy" demand is simply unrealistic, as it would be in any other industry.

Very salient points. I would add, in competition with nurses, ambulance crews and teachers for public sympathy, railway workers will most likely finish last.

 

[CFRAIL]

What is stopping you from being made redundant tomorrow without a payrise?







Exactly this! And I work in the industry, folk need to be realistic

 

[newguy]

I’ve never worked in an industry with a union presence. For those members that decide that they are losing too much money and can no longer afford to strike, what kind of consequences are they likely to face from the union and their colleagues. Are colleagues likely to understand given the cost of living crisis or are they likely to get the cold shoulder treatment until they retire. it is a tough position to be in.

 

[mpthomson]

For leisure I'm sure passengers will return, but for the more profitable business travel the strikes and general railway unreliability at the moment is helping to further ingrain digital / remote ways of working in my experience.

In our business, aside from the commute to office, travel to project / supplier meetings generated some train travel previously. These have switched to Teams calls, some permanently so. So I expect we'll end up with a high mix of Teams meetings and fewer in person meetings even once the strikes end. That's even greener and cheaper for businesses.

If nothing else there is lost income from these strike days. Unless railway subsidy is going to increase to fund this income shortfall, won't this require further savings to be found in this financial year?

We've entirely stopped the monthly meetings we used to have in London that required me and my peers to travel there from all over the country, the vast majority doing so by rail, and that state of affairs is the same at all grades of the very large employer that I work for. It's all done via Teams now and won't revert except for once a year.

I suspect that's the same for most large nationwide companies.

As has been said rail has no form of monopoly for business travellers, and especially not against Zoom and Teams. Not to understand this is very naive.

 

[Norm_D_Ploom]

Very salient points. I would add, in competition with nurses, ambulance crews and teachers for public sympathy, railway workers will most likely finish last.

Given that they are all public sector employees paid for by the tax paying public I (and I am sure many others) feel equally ambivalent to them as I so to the RMT.

We really do need no strike contracts for anyone working in a public service, of course that should come with decent pay and conditions.

The police can't strike the armed forces can't why should teachers and hospital staff be different

The problem is it's become personal. The government want to hurt Lynch and his union and aren't interested on resolving the dispute. It's like Scargill and the mines all over again.



The government are happy to ride the strikes out. I think the Christmas walkout was the last throw of the dice from Lynch but government aren't blinking.

Quite possibly but like them or not we did actually have the chance to vote for the current government. The vast majority of people didn't get the opportunity to vote for Mick Lynch, therefore, we cannot have a situation where he holds the country to ransom based on his own perception of the political rights and wrongs of government policy.