Rail strikes for years is better than caving in – However long the threatened action lasts, the network must be run for the benefit of its passengers, not its staff

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  1. >#Rail strikes for years is better than caving in

    >__However long the threatened action lasts, the network must be run for the benefit of its passengers, not its staff__

    >Daniel Finkelstein
    >Tuesday February 07 2023, 5.00pm GMT, The Times

    >I cry when I watch Billy Elliot. Not at all the “he wants to be a dancer but he can’t because his mum died and his dad doesn’t understand, until he does” stuff. I cry because of the miners’ strike.

    >The ballet story plays out against the background of the dispute in the mid-1980s. And there is something so tragic about these dignified, hardworking men and their supportive families engaging in a doomed endeavour. It breaks your heart to watch them trying to defend their livelihoods, their way of life and their traditions while knowing that for all their solidarity and conviction, they will fail.

    >Worse still, knowing they had to fail. That their failure was essential. That their failure was right.
    Saying “no” was a very hard thing to do, and an even harder thing for them to hear, but sometimes there is no alternative. What the miners demanded was not something that could be yielded. They wanted to prevent the closure of pits that were uneconomic. And they wanted, also, to impose this demand on everyone else, using industrial muscle.

    >Resisting the miners was incredibly controversial and many people regard it still as unforgivable. Yet surely time has shown that it was right? The same sort of people passing round a bucket in student unions for money to sustain the strike are gluing themselves to the road to prevent further fossil fuel production.

    >I certainly regard it as a reminder that sometimes it is necessary to stand firm against the claims of good and worthy people, however sincere and passionately felt their demands.

    >And it informs my reaction to the rail unions and their statement that unless we give way to them, they may be willing to carry on their industrial dispute for years. I fear we will have to let them.

    >While I oppose the strikes in health and education, these are, in the end, about money. And a money dispute can ultimately be settled by negotiation. The rail strikes are about more than that. They involve asserting the right of the rail unions and their members to determine how the railways are run.

    >An efficient and modern railway requires management to be able to use new technologies to ensure safety on the railway with fewer staff, reduce or even eliminate ticket offices and change shift patterns. There is hardly an industry in existence that hasn’t gone through similar changes — the media, most certainly, included. Without constant reform customers cannot be served well and at reasonable cost, which is already a serious problem.

    >Whatever the merits of each proposed change, the rail unions are seeking to ensure the railways are run for the staff rather than for users. And this is not an acceptable thing for them to insist upon.

    >In his book The Power of a Positive No, the experienced conflict-negotiator and academic William Ury, co-founder of the Harvard Program on Negotiation, argues: “All too often we cannot bring ourselves to say No when we want to and know we should.” We are afraid of destroying relationships, leading to unpleasant fights.

    >In order to avoid this, we behave in one of three ways. The first is that we accommodate, saying yes when we really want to say no. And there are plenty of people who urge exactly this course on rail. One of the reasons why train drivers are paid eyebrow-raising wages (as much as £65,000) is that no one wants a strike with all the disruption it causes. The idea seems to be that if we buy off strikes or strike threats we will get fewer of them. Just writing this down and reading it back is enough to show how foolish a notion it is. If you buy off strikes you will, naturally enough, get more of them. Like anything else you buy, someone will be there to supply more.

    >Accommodation, therefore, means ending up with a more costly railway, more resistant to change yet even more prone to strike action. If we want to stop rail strikes we have to stop attaching a reward to them. If we give in to this train strike, there will be another one coming along in a minute.

    >The second way of dealing with the difficulty of saying no is to go on the attack — to say no but to say it poorly, increasing tensions and escalating the difficulty. Mick Lynch of the RMT presents an inviting target for that sort of attack but to indulge in it is to ignore his members and to increase their support for him.

    >This is almost as destructive as accommodation. Making people feel as if you have no respect for them and wish to defeat them can lead to greater resistance or, if you prevail, years of resentment. It is true that Lynch has little respect for ministers but that is no reason to reciprocate. As Ury points out, the person saying no cannot be responsible for the feelings of the recipient of the message. The recipient’s feelings are for them to manage. All you can control are your own feelings and conduct.

    >The third way is avoidance, hoping the problem will go away — perhaps not a tactic available to governments when there are frequent rail strikes. But the government might be tempted to hide behind the rail companies and fail to make the public argument.

    >Ury advances the idea of the “positive no” as the alternative to accommodation, attack and avoidance. The core is to root the saying of “no” in a “yes”. When saying no to the demands of the RMT, the government should be saying yes to its own positive and attractive vision for the future of the network. Stress what technology can do, emphasise the way it will improve travel, advance plans to increase reliability and control fair increases.

    >Deliver this message with respect for rail drivers and other workers on the network. People who work on the railway are doing everything we ask of our fellow citizens — working hard, paying taxes, serving the public. It’s only human to try to defend one’s economic position and show solidarity with fellow workers. And even Lynch is just doing the job he was paid for.

    >There is no need, as Ury argues, to say no to the person just because it is necessary to say no to their demands.

    >And if firmness, leadership and respect should fail to avert strikes, the government must have a Plan B, what negotiators call a “Batna”, a best alternative to a negotiated agreement — a way of ensuring that people can continue to be productive and make their way to work by other means on days when the trains stop running.

    >This will be hard to do. But the alternative is giving in. And that isn’t an alternative at all.

  2. This guy’s email is Danny the Fink and he is a little boot-licking rat-fink bastard.
    Look at this throwaway:
    >While I oppose the strikes in health and education, these are, in the end, about money.

    The rail strikers, in contrast:
    >The rail strikes are about more than that. They involve asserting the right of the rail unions and their members to determine how the railways are run.

    Or in layman’s terms opposing changes to working practices that potentially endanger passenger safety.

    This guy just hates strikers and hates unions and loves neo-Liberal economics.

  4. Really ? Where did you amass this wealth of railway knowledge ?

    Everything network rail does the emphasis is on passenger and customer satisfaction and safety. We are constantly trialing new technology once it has been tested to the nth degree. Problem is the majority of this tech and these ideas come from office bods no offence to you office types but you guys don’t have the on the ground experience.

    The railway is sleep walking into a financial disaster not because of staff pay but because they are moving from a preventative maintenance schedule where we attend and perform maintenance every 1-12 months depending on the equipment to a maintain on failure schedule. Think of it like a car. You sort the rust out when you see it and you deal with the cause prevents it becoming a big problem down the line. Leave it till it’s rotten to fuck you’ve lost your car while you find a new one causing delays to your life and you have to fork out a lot more than sorting the problems when they first became apparent.

    This also ignores the problems with suppliers. The railway gets absolutely butt fucked on price because we need to use authorised suppliers. Crimping tool I use for work 110 quid. Exact same make and model from Screwfix I use in my gaff 30 quid.
    Signal post telephones which are only there for emergency where both mobile phone and in cab phones have failed 300 quid a pop. Most last a matter of months we replace them by the fucking pallet load. Most have never been used apart from us testing them.

    Then you have the problem with subcontractors. Charge an extortionate rate. More than we get paid on overtime, for jobs we can do as we have the skills the qualifications and the tools and the advantage of knowing our equipment and the area, but still they get contracts many times they have lower safety standards, worse qualification courses where any cunt can pass and we get back the equipment in a worse state than it was originally.

    It’s also infuriating because hatchet Haines knew this shit was coming from year one of the pandemic and instead of informing us decided to play along with the “you are key workers doing an important job” shit then stuck the knife in when the main part was over.

  5. It’s about raising awareness. Giving in would effectively ban these strikes. There needs to be more strikes not less. I want to see energy strikes, post strikes, pilot strikes, payroll strikes etc.

  6. They can do this but due to my year on year decrease in disposable, I no longer get the train to work. In fact I just booked a flight to Scotland and it was one third of the rail cost. In the past the train ticket fare would be competitive. Last year I took the train to Aberdeen as the flights were too much.

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