Tube strikes

Am I right in thinking that if your workforce goes on strike, you could sack them all immediately with no fear of paying redundancy or being sued for wrongful dismissal? And then, could you potentially hire completely different people for more money with the small proviso that they are not allowed to strike?

So, effectively, you’ve given a kick in the teeth to all the people who tried to screw you over (they’re jobless and see other people in their old job earning more money), you have a new workforce who won’t strike, and you’ve saved money in getting rid of some employees who you didn’t want anyway.

Am I right….? No.

I had that dream once, too.

🙂

Who’s up for a London beer tonight while the socialists/communists/lazy-arsed-feckers put their feet up again? 🙂

You could always just shoot them instead.

stoner – damn, wrong part of town again, anyway got a client presentation in NW tonight.

I’m sure Lord Snooty and his pals will make Flaperon’s dreams come true if we’re all dumb enough to elect them in.

actually flaperon’ spost reminds me of a post I made a year ago or so for which I got royally flamed (including by Mr Moses to IIRC – printing business isnt it?) where I rather cheered at the fact that some strike-happy union in the south west in a print works finally broke the goodwill of the company owners who decided enough was enough and pulled the plug. Folding the company and putting everyone out of work.

The Tubes is a bit different as Boris can hardly close it all down…
Proper blackmail then.

I’m with the striking Tube workers.

Anything that pisses people like Stoner off can only be a good thing. 😀

I’d be up for a beer, Stoner, but a nice beer, not that warm, muddy, flat insipid stuff you like…

What exactly are they striking about this time?

Hours?
Conditions?
Pay?
The fact they have a job and millions are unemployed? 👿

What exactly are they striking about this time?
………………………………….

The fact they have a job and millions are unemployed

Good point, well made. They should work for nothing and let the management thoroughly abuse them until 100% employment is resumed.

What exactly are they striking about this time?

Why not try to find out? There’s plenty of information out there… 🙄

I was hoping you would do it for me Rudeboy, seeing most of your “opinions” are googled anyway!

Yawn…

Bored now.

Why Tube workers are stiking this time

I use the Tube. The service is rubbish. These strikers are on another planet! Most have no concept of the customer – the crux of all the issues with the Tube.

Bob Crow is mad supporting a strike in this climate!

He also has spearheaded strikes and disruption over the contracts awarded to the now failed Metronet and also Tubelines. He argues that the maintenance should have remained under the control of the London Underground.

My experience is that LU workers take every opportunity to disrupt the service when there is the slightest whiff of a technical fault of any kind. They then blame Tubelines for this. As far as the LU workers are concerned, the passengers (customers) can go to hell!

There are thousands of people who depend on the tube who are feeling insecure in their jobs. The tube workers frequently make these people late for work and when they strike they make it very difficult to get to work. Many people I know have taken pay cuts and i’m out of work due to these difficult times.

Bob Crow and his bunch of lefty idiots are totaly out of touch!

Sack the lot of them!!!

So basically, because you’re inconvenienced, you want all Tube workers sacked?

Why not get another job closer to home, use another form of transport, move to another city where the transport system is perfect?

i’m out of work due to these difficult times.

So, that’s the fault of the Tube workers, is it?

Basically, your argument just seems to come down to your own anger and bitterness at how you feel you’ve been let down, and you want to las out at someone.

Ironic, considering the very people you’ve taken umbrage with are concerned with trying to secure their livelihoods and future employment…

Just out of inertest; how many of you Tory Boys have actually sat down with any Tube workers, and discussed the issues at stake?

hmmm. pay and conditions for tube workers is hardly that bad – hundreds of thousands of people in the country have opted for pay cuts/freezes/unpaid leave in order to get through the recession and keep their jobs.

striking certainly does not help public opinion sway in favour of the tube workers, most of which did not vote for a strike.

Still, I’ll just ride my bike across london tomorrow instead. 🙂

Nearly everyone has a right to strike or to withdtraw their labour, thats what they have done/doing.

Tough, if you dont like it move somewhere else,that isnt dependant on crowded smelly tubes,full of people who youd never speak to,crammed in like smarties in a tube.

pay and conditions for tube workers is hardly that bad

Eh? I woon’t fancy doing their job! Stuck for hours underground, in stale air, having to deal with all sorts of pissed-up **** in suits of an evening, getting abused, having to deal with emergency situations, fatalities, and a public that moans any time you want to exercise your right to withdraw your labout, if you feel your working conditions/pay aren’t good enough.

Would you do it??

So Rudeboy, project, yot think that the tube workers are justified in striking over pay in this economic climate?

I fundamentally disagree with the right to strike! Unions are bullies, not just to management, but to some or all of their members.

Also, the tube network issues have nothing to do with my unemployment! My point is that Tube workers, by disrupting the service, have not the slightest interest in the innocent people their unreasonable and irrational actions impact on. They don’t give a damn about their customers!

Moving to a different place to get away from London would be nice, but very expensive and it’s not just about what suits me, there are other members of my household. It’s also important to remain close enough to where the main sources af work are. If a great job comes up somewhere different, I’ll give relocation some serious thought, but as it stands, i’m like most other people – you have to live in a densely populated area to get work.

Finally, I have sorted out an alternative to the Tube. I am not a regular commuter now, but I did my DAS so I that I can get a bike to commute next time a job arises (where otherwise i’d be dependent on public transport). I’d sooner drive to work if it was close enough and without too much conjestion.

The Tube will be the shame of the UK in 2012 when stories of how overcrowded, dirty and unreliable it is reach all corners of the globe. If the people who run and man the underground made the effort, the experience would be in a different league from what it is today.

Rudeboy, if they don’t like the pay and conditions, they can always leave!

Frequently Bob Crow defends the safety of teh public on teh tube, hwoever I fail to se how reinstating a member of staff who made false safety claims and opened the doors on the wrong side of a train is doing that.

Two fail at arbitration over disciplinary procedures indicates what a parallel universe the RMT leaders live in.

Interestingly less than half the workforce actually voted for industrial action, yet the picket will stand firm no doubt, inetresting that all these workers will give up wages, when they haven’t even voted for teh action rather than disobey the union.

Although who know’s what tactics teh RMT use when they can’t even manage to run ballots correctly…

I am very happy to support the right of people to withdraw their labour.

But there is a tactical aspect to striking. If you are running what is basically a public service you dio have to bear in mind that striking impactas on users, and how government responds to your striking is affected by public perception.

The tube staff strike rather a lot, and sympathy for them is limited. Tactically I am pretty sceptical that this will get them anywhere very much.

Everyone chooses there job/career. If you don’t like it do something else.

rudeboy, I don’t recall the recruitment process of the underground involved holding a gun to someones head and making them work on the underground. pay is good. condiditions have always been that way, so completely unjustified to use that as a reason for a strike. what are they going to do? install daylight on the tube? have the customers got worse? maybe, maybe not.

No one deserves to be treated badly by customers, but in a customer facing role, it happens, and is endured by waiters, shop staff, bar staff, bus drivers, train conductors (repeat to fade). MTFU and get on with it!

http://www.backingblair.co.uk/london_underground/

Rude word content, so if listening at work, headphones or not at all!

There’s a group on facebook called “Bob Crow and the RMT are a bunch of…” with a graphic showing pay and benefit comparisons for 2008/09 as follows:

Median Private sector / hour: £14.54
Median Public sector / hour: £20.75
Tube drivers / hour : £35.46

They (RMT members) already have 35 hour working weeks and 43 days annual leave. Now they want more pay and less working hours at a time when 2m+ have lost their jobs and most people in the private sector (already paid substantially less) have received pay cuts / freezes and 50% falls in the value of their already limited pensions.

If the driver on the Piccadilly line I saw recently night is anything to go by, it’s not a very demanding job. He was slumped back in his chair, on a mobile phone and with his knees up on the dashboard either side of the deadmans handle as the train pulled in to Hammersmith station.

The only tube driver I’ve known quit the job because she was fed up with the union, not because the work was boring or there was too much hassle from the public…

Does Bob Crow get paid more if the staff strike more often?

“Does Bob Crow get paid more if the staff strike more often? “

In 2007 Bob Crow was paid £79,564 gross salary, plus employer pension contributions of £26,115.

source: Official Certification Officer

I forgot to add that Crow’s wife is Chief Executive of the RMT Credit Union.

Interestingly less than half the workforce actually voted for industrial action, yet the picket will stand firm no doubt, inetresting that all these workers will give up wages, when they haven’t even voted for teh action rather than disobey the union.

14% of the LU workforce voted for the strike.

TM

it’s one thing to strike in relation to pay, but one of their conditions is that there will be no forced redundancies. how can they possibly think any employer can guarantee that at the moment?

Over to you Rudeboy.

From today’s Standard;

A deal to halt tonight’s Tube strike was scuppered by union demands to reinstate two train drivers sacked for serious disciplinary offences.

Transport for London described it as “a slap in the face” to millions of commuters.

The network shuts down for 48 hours from 7pm but the knock-on disruption could last three days at a cost to London of £100million.

An agreement with the RMT union to call off the strike over pay and jobs was about to be reached last night until the shock demand to give the two men their jobs back.

One driver, Carl Campbell, was sacked for opening the doors on the wrong side of the train at a Victoria line station, then lying about carrying out safety checks.

The other, who cannot be named for legal reasons, is due to go on trial later this month for theft.

f you are running what is basically a public service you dio have to bear in mind that striking impactas on users

True but then users should value the fact that such service exist.
If people think tubes drivers are overpaid they could alway apply for the job. But then don’t complain you are not seeing your kids for Xmas.
Anyway, why am I not surprise by some replies on here 😀

True but then users should value the fact that such service exist.

I bet we could restaff this service twice over in quite a short timescale in the current climate. Get rid of some of the ball & chain rights the current employees have whilst we are at it.

You make it sound as if we should thankfull for them doing the job they are paid to do.

If people think tubes drivers are overpaid they could alway apply for the job

You’ll be lucky sunshine.
That cushy little number known as tube train driving hasnt employed direct recruits for years. Closed shop run by the Union.

Unfortunately organisations such as the Tube have entrenched old school unions, who whilst they look after they’re members interests above all, sometimes don’t necessarily get the outcome that their members were hoping for.
Oh, and those of you who think that canning them all and bringing in new people is the way to go would find very rapidly that there’d be no service at all, for weeks if not months.

You make it sound as if we should thankfull for them doing the job they are paid to do.

Well apparently if you are in big trouble when there is no tube you should…

I’m staggered sometimes by what a bastion of conservatism this place is.

God damn it, don’t those peasants out there know their places.

Stoner – IIRC, the company in Frome just shut the factory down while the unions were negotiating, there were no strikes nor threatened strikes. The works was profitable, but new owners decided they could save money by offshoring. Result – no one in the UK won.

If I’m wrong, please find the relevant infos…

Parent company Media & Print Investments Plc (MPI) blamed the difficulties on a threat by the trade union Unite to take strike action over new contracts.

It said the union’s failure to resolve working practices meant finances had been withdrawn.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/somerset/7381212.stm

As is often the case funding offers are driven by revenue contracts. If those contracts can only be considered conditional because of the threat to meeting the contract obligations by the Unions then no investor (bank or private equity) is going to put their stake at risk.

It was extremely naive of the union to attempt to hold the owner’s to ransom. Without being able to offer a stable business from which to deliver client contracts there can be no orders, without orders there is no funding, without funding there is no business.