Is Going On Strike The Answer?

Railway workers strike

In today’s news (Rail Workers Strike) it seems that the trade unions have managed to successfully call for a strike for the usual ‘conditions and pay’ reason.

Union behaviour over recent years has become less extreme as their perceived power and popularity continue to decline, most ‘modern workers’ are not unionised in the private sector and so the union’s grip is focussed mainly on public sector or business-out-of-public-sector (Network Rail) organisations.

If the RMT still had significant power would it hold a strike on a Bank holiday or is it using the bank holiday as a way of causing the least disruption to travellers. After all, any rail commuter will tell you that the partial Sunday service delivered on a bank holiday with replacement busses is at best an appalling rip-off.

For example, you may want to get from one place to anther on a train. On Sunday only half the trains are running, on a Bank Holiday there are rail works so some of the lines are closed which means a replacement bus service. Replacement bus services do not serve food, do not have usable toilets and take twice as long to get wherever they’re going. This charged at the standard rail fare where ‘fair’ is not the word to use.

Is a Bank Holiday strike a way of appeasing the city by ensuring that those in central government roles are still able to get to work after all, you can’t negotiate with a transport minister who isn’t at work because there is no transport.

Union Historical Value

In days of old when there was wide spread misuse of employees, the unions were a blessed relief from the employees point of view. Some more mature readers may well remember the zenith of union power in the 1970s with the never ending calls for “everyone out” from miners, to car manufacturers and yes the railways.

In these times though, conditions were harder for workers, more was expected of them than perhaps the pay rate would reasonably expect. No doubt the unions took a dim view of employers as they moved away from the big four private companies who were broke, out of cash with a rundown system itself worn out from misuse as a result of the demands placed on it by the government during WWII. The move towards public ownership was supposed to help the railway system but as usual, a system that was beyond repair and a constant demand on the public purse was never going to get the attention it needed, enter Mr Beeching.

With such a demand on the public purse, wages will always be kept low, the public sector is not a good payer but if it’s employees want a 09:00-17:00 5 day/week job, or in the case of those providing a service a 37.5 – 40hr week with no stress, challenges or reward then its the place for them.

Unrealistic Demands

There seems to be a huge disconnect between the public and private sectors when it comes to pay expectations. Generally the evil nasty private sector is subject to trading conditions, the profitability of the business, the state of the economy, forecasts and so on whereas the public sector seems subject to ‘reasonable expectations of annual pay rises’.

Over the past few years, certainly up until recently, those in the private sector seem to have been saddled with little or no pay increases but then with an inflation rate of 0.0% does that change one’s lifestyle? – Not dramatically.

Yet the public sector expect pay rises and feel insulted if its not a point or two above inflation.

If your role is the genuine care of your union members you would discuss all of the available options with the employer to avoid strike action, a strike means loss of income to those members many of whom do care about their job and cannot afford to loose income. Will an extra 0.5% over whatever pay rise was going to be offered make up for that loss of income during a strike? Doubtful.

Confrontational Approach

If your role is to make anti-government social statement then that is a different thing, you as a union no longer have your members interests at heart but you own and no amount of social upheaval, unrest and suffering is enough to pay for that oh-so-valuable political point designed to remind the government you are still there, a Lion with one or two very worn down teeth.

A Common Theme

The railways in particular deliver a service that has lots of room for improvement and whilst there are very serious problems with overcrowding, delayed or cancelled trains and of course strikes the railways are again failing to react to the demands of its customers which as any business knows whether private or indeed public is fatal. Another example would be the Royal Mail.

It seems that wherever there is a strong union presence, the employees see private enterprise as a profiteering beast who treats its employees as slaves, all take and no give. One can’t help but ask if this is the right way of building a successful environment, built on mistrust and hatred. From what I have seen of the public sector, the political infighting, the paranoia about the use of politically incorrect language and the ease at which accusations of prejudice can be made leads to a very negative environment. It feels wrong and it feels as though there is too much protest from the public sector. If such an environment existed in a private company it would fail – take a look at ‘The Fixer’ programmes.

The outcome of this observation is that union driven organisations are stuck in past delivering poor service based on their own goals under the thinly veiled disguise of looking after their members.

In all companies whether public or private the purpose of those companies is to provide goods or a service to their customers and in the case of a private company yes to make a profit. That is what it is all about, nothing more or less.

Providing a service to customers

The last time the railways failed to react was in response to the emergence of the car and specifically trucks and vans. Whilst the transport minister of the day had his fingers in a construction company share scheme and started building big roads and motorways, their building was inevitable at some point. People could now travel without the hassle of missing connections or standing up for 1hr 20 mins on their commute.

More importantly, goods were now going via road and the transport of goods was the reason the railways were built in the first place, this was their business model and the world was changing under them. What did they do? Nothing. Business as usual, revenues being lost hand over fist to cheaper road transport. Thank heavens for WWI and WWII for without them and the resultant resurgence in rail travel and goods transport they would have collapsed earlier.

Yes in the 1930s the railways tried to woo passenger numbers, it took a war for them to realise things were not as they should be and great engines like The ‘Mallard’ and the ‘Flying Scotsman’ did a lot but general strikes undid more.

No matter what they did at that time, it was not enough, their own costs were too high, the introduction of diesel and electric engines reduce the footplate count by 50% and cheaper running costs yet it still failed.

Yet here we are again, slightly different demands based on vastly increased demand for passenger journeys to the point where there are no seats, not enough trains – simply not enough capacity in the network as a result of being cut back to bare bones and insufficient investment for years on end.

The Problem With Privatisation

What is the problem? Well with a properly privatised system nothing.

In a rush to both privatise the railways and pacify the unions of the day, the spineless politicians decided to privatise the trains but hang on to the infrastructure.

This bizarre situation has left us with a railway system that cannot expand due to funding limitations placed on the public sector. It is incredibly difficult to introduce a new service or open a previously closed station because there is apparently little appetite to cause extra cost to be incurred. New stations need looking after and both stations and new trains need signalling and timetabling. . . its simply too hard, there are too many bodies involved.

If privatisation had been something like the big four railway companies who had control over their own track, trains and timetables things may have been easier.

A relevant service

There is plenty of money available though £15bn and counting however this is for high speed lines linking London to Birmingham and Liverpool to Hull to create the northern power house.

This raises the question of how does shaving 20mins off the time it takes to get from London to Birmingham justify spending so much money that those missing trains and stations could be replaced on the existing infrastructure and benefit many more customers.

This controversial plan remains so mainly because of that simple question which is a very difficult one to answer. The fact that it is difficult to provide a convincing answer makes one assume then that HS2 and HS3 are in fact nothing more that glory projects.

Does the building of these railway projects provide the railway customers with a relevant service?

There are many millions of passenger journeys done every year so that is where the main customer base is. Building new railways to run in parallel with the existing ones will not alleviate that much traffic (see M6 Toll) and the vast number of passengers will become more discontent wit the service they have. They are of course a captive customer, many have no option but to use railways.

Is A Strike The Answer

The Public Sector is there to deliver a relevant service to its customers, it must be why else would it exist. The imbalance is where those public sector works feel aggrieved about their employment circumstance and feel that a strike is the only way forward for them.

One can only question whether the strike is being brought on them because of the political whim of the union or whether this behaviour is so endemic in a workforce caught in a world of negativity.

Is there money to pay for them and would it be enough to cover their cost of striking?

If £15bn is not a wise spend then maybe there is but a few days on strike is all it takes to negate any gains in pay as a result and so purely from a personal expense point of view, irrespective of whether or not there is money in the pot to pay for an increase in pay, it is never worth striking.

Instead trust needs to be built across the business, closer working relationships formed and everyone aligned for the success of the business, but then that’s not what unions are about is it. . .