Re: Railway strikes : Mon Aug 01, 2022 11:00 am  

wrencat1873 wrote:

Suppressed wages throughout the austerity years, coupled with raging inflation, there was always going to be some kind of reaction.
It's great keeping the lid on public spending and squeezing those workers, while many of the large companies make staggeringly huge profits, whilst taking huge handouts from government under the furlough scheme but, as you mentioned in your previous post, the scales have tipped far too much in favour of the employers and there needs to be some redress.
Maybe it's payback time ?

What I did find unsavoury, is the notion that anyone asking for a pay rise to match or beat inflation was some kind of traitor or pariah, trying to blame the working man for the utter mess that we are in. That is just wrong.

There has to be more balance - drip down obviously doesn't work - perhaps CEO's bonuses should include a clause about the lowest labour costs in relation to their pay?

My wife works for William Hill - they handed back all the furlough monies despite having their shops closed for months. Many large businesses did the same once the trading environment had been known.

What do we consider to be a reasonable return for a business to make - Centrica made 1.5bn which sounds like a lot but it was only 8.5% of revenue - that is not excessive. If you look at supermarkets Morrisons 2.5% on 17.6bn - not a great return wouldn't take much for that to be a loss - give all the staff £1k increase you would c40% of the profitability.

Lynch is clever he is hanging on no redundancies - easy get out for him, not realistic but it means the bits he doesn't want you to talk about don't get mentioned.

I would agree about the government they need to grow up take the debate out of the schoolyard

Re: Railway strikes : Wed Jun 14, 2023 9:14 am  

jools wrote:

YEP. teachers, nurses and other nhs workers next.

I used to work in education. The pay isn't bad as a teacher on the face of it - but the workload is absolutely shocking.
I would easily be putting in 60 hours a week in a 'normal' week, and during the "holidays" that you all think we get I would work at least half of those. We would be expected to come in and do revision sessions during holidays, after school sessions etc, parents evenings, open evenings, so really when you work it out you are earning minimum wage. And don't even get me started on the bullying culture that exists on staff in many schools. and if you work in a 'tough' school its even harder.

all that is before COVID, I really don't know how my ex colleagues have dragged themselves through the last two and a half years. I look back know and think F*** what I put up with!

nurses are in a similar boat with shortages and all the extra they are having to do.

Interesting read that jools
When you were offered the position/job did your employer not outline what was entailed?
If they did why did you accept it ,if was so bad ?
The answer to all these ongoing strikes is to let the public sue the unions.

Re: Railway strikes : Fri Aug 18, 2023 2:40 pm  

Durham Giant wrote:

From someone who works on the railways...
Three years ago we accepted a 0% pay rise, two years ago we accepted a 0% pay rise. But this year they came to us with a 0% pay rise plus over 2500 redundancies, changes to terms and conditions. An increase from 28 weeks of nights to 39 weeks of nights. An increase from 32 weekends worked to 39 weekends worked.
Currently for a night shift we get time and a quarter, for a weekend turn we get time and a half. They wish to cut both of these to time and a tenth. So that’s a 15% pay cut on every night shift and a 40% pay cut on every weekend turn. But they want us to work more of them. This is their modernisation they talk about. Not technology, we embrace technology and have seen more and more of it in recent years. They also wish to fire and re-hire the operative grades and bring them back under a new job title but on £9000 a year less. They also want them to use their own vehicles to get to work sites, this when fuel is at its highest. They will also be pooled when currently they are part of the team. The press are painting this to be about pay above all else. It is not. But now we’ve said sod them we are going to demand better. I wish everyone could see past the government controlled media smear

So we have an effectively privatised rail system atm with the government giving railways £16 billion. Rather than running the railways for a non profit format they are reducing wages and terms of employment so they can increase shareholders bonuses.

Last year £800 million pound of shareholders profits was paid out effectively the tax payer putting £800 million into the pension pots of hedge fund managers

From my mate Dave who's a train driver
I think Mick Lynch is proper bo ,I earn over £60000 driving trains and good old comrade Lynch thinks I should get payed loads more,I think he's ace
Oh BTW I've had an inflation busting salary rise of sh*t loads over inflation levels over the last 10 years