Unions branded selfish by No 10 over June rail strike plans

24 comments
  1. Whatever your views on the strikes, No. 10 should keep its fucking mouth shut about selfish behaviour.

  2. this is where Murdoch’s newspapers will spring into action, Boris is about to come out smelling of roses thanks to those lefty unions that stop the hard working great british public doing what makes our country great

  3. >According to the Department for Transport, the average salary rail worker salary is £44,000. This is more than the median pay of other public sector workers, such as nurses (£31,000), teachers (£37,000), and care workers (£17,000).

    Good point, pay those people more too

  4. A smart political move to fan the flames of the dispute. An embattled Conservative PM could do with a good long strike battle with a union. A simply excellent distraction. It’ll make Johnson seem tough, workers seem petty and most importantly it’ll appeal to core Conservative voters by reminding them of Thatcher.

  5. Remind me how much MPs got in their payrise ?
    How they partied while people died.
    How the illegally shut down parliament.

    We followed the rules you lot didn’t.

  6. “Selfish” coming from the “I’m alright Jack”, “just don’t be born poor” Tories? The “personal responsibility your way out of a global pandemic”, “facts don’t care about your feelings”, “only give £billions to my mates and literally less than enough to live for the permanently disabled” Tories?

    From BoJers and his deliberate, repeated and now officially unrepentant lawbreaking? Of the laws he made? Whilst also offering tax cuts to the rich and tax increases on the workforce? *Those* Tories?

    Ok.

  7. Nice of the BBC to run the government’s anti-union position right in the headline with no attribution. Very balanced.

  8. People wanting fair pay and conditions? That’s fucking outrageous

    It’s also fucking outrageous that Government is prepared to take a stance and comment on behalf of a privatised company against it’s workers.

  9. Imagine number 10 trying to call anybody “selfish”.

    When are people actually going to be angry at the extent to which they are taking the piss?

  10. We are odds then as i’m branding them ‘excellent’. Apparently we’re getting some strikes possibly around the time of the commonwealth games in Birmingham. That’s the end result if they don’t get their demands taken seriously anyway, and there’s much furious gnashing of teeth from the council bosses as a result.

    Frankly though the whole event is really only for the council bosses. The investment for the games has been hyper-focused on the city center, and all they talk about is attracting more investment. There’s barely a word mentioned about the actual sport.

    And they might now need to bring in the army because all the short term jobs are funneled through so many layers of agencies taking cuts that the pay is shit even by Birmingham standards.

    Nobody here is interested in any of this really. The sorts of investment attracted by BCC just drives up prices for everybody, while leaving the actual living conditions on the periphery of the city in a state of disrepair. Most people will still get to see the games on television so there’s no harm done by the strike except to those businesses conspiring toward unequal gentrification.

  11. How selfish of you to not just eat the shit we shovel. How selfish of you to just take the cost of living spike on the chin. Meanwhile we’re busy doing some world class tax evasion and avoidance.

  12. Tories – If you are struggling to keep up with inflation you just need to get a better paying job.

    Also Tories – Not like that!!

  13. DFT have said average for rail worker, without specifying Mean or median. Then went on to specify median for the other 3 jobs, of which care worker is less than minimum wage. Smells fishy.

  14. This is a direct result of privatisation.

    A lot of government employees such as teachers and nurses put up with awfully low pay because it is a taxpayer funded, public service job. When it becomes a job done for profit workers are well within their rights to demand a fair share off that profit.

    Privatise the NHS and schools and I guarantee nurses and teachers will be on strike too.

    The only greedy people in this scenario are the Conservatives and the owners of the rail companies.

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