using collective power to increase wages to keep up with cost of living spikes is perfectly reasonable behaviour – if more people were doing it then Britain would be a far better place to live.
There was a solidarity strike in Finland a while back that literally brought down the government (who were trying to make widescale public sector pay cuts). We should take a leaf out of their book!
Basically the government were trying to make stealth cuts to one sector of the workforce, and many other sectors went in strike in support of those workers even though their own wages weren’t being threatened.
Power in numbers is so effective, but we have a really strong divide and rule machine via British media ownership (and with media participation being dominated by wealthier people) so it doesn’t work here atm.
striking to shut the tube no longer has the clout it used to though, because of work from home. Also the thing is a massive cash sink-hole these days, and I think there are those who have an eye on closing parts of it down to save money.
Would union leaders really fall into a massively backwards looking error, leading to an excuse to get rid of their workers and frighten them out of future strikes? The historic answer is yes.
People hailing this is as a miracle of collective bargaining power ought to consider what would happen if this were a private company in a competitive market.
TFL has no competition and cannot go bankrupt as they will continue to get public money to prevent that happening, so everyone’s tax money (who on average earn significantly less than these drivers) will keep this afloat.
If the same thing happened (assuming workers were able to create similar levels of disruption) at most private companies they’d simply go bankrupt and everyone would be out of work. There is no union utopia where we everyone could do the same thing, because private companies have the ability to fail and they have competitors both domestic and abroad.
I hope we can get driverless trains quickly. Then people’s lives won’t be disrupted by strikes AND the workers here will be free to make better use of their time.
4 comments
good luck to them.
using collective power to increase wages to keep up with cost of living spikes is perfectly reasonable behaviour – if more people were doing it then Britain would be a far better place to live.
There was a solidarity strike in Finland a while back that literally brought down the government (who were trying to make widescale public sector pay cuts). We should take a leaf out of their book!
Basically the government were trying to make stealth cuts to one sector of the workforce, and many other sectors went in strike in support of those workers even though their own wages weren’t being threatened.
Power in numbers is so effective, but we have a really strong divide and rule machine via British media ownership (and with media participation being dominated by wealthier people) so it doesn’t work here atm.
striking to shut the tube no longer has the clout it used to though, because of work from home. Also the thing is a massive cash sink-hole these days, and I think there are those who have an eye on closing parts of it down to save money.
Would union leaders really fall into a massively backwards looking error, leading to an excuse to get rid of their workers and frighten them out of future strikes? The historic answer is yes.
People hailing this is as a miracle of collective bargaining power ought to consider what would happen if this were a private company in a competitive market.
TFL has no competition and cannot go bankrupt as they will continue to get public money to prevent that happening, so everyone’s tax money (who on average earn significantly less than these drivers) will keep this afloat.
If the same thing happened (assuming workers were able to create similar levels of disruption) at most private companies they’d simply go bankrupt and everyone would be out of work. There is no union utopia where we everyone could do the same thing, because private companies have the ability to fail and they have competitors both domestic and abroad.
I hope we can get driverless trains quickly. Then people’s lives won’t be disrupted by strikes AND the workers here will be free to make better use of their time.