Oh dear, this has now turned political. I wish I’d never posted that Currys piece 
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Agree to disagree. We’ll see. Royal Mail already changed their company name to reflect that they’re focusing on other business areas. They’ve said they’ll divest the brand unless the government manage to make some meaningful changes too iirc.
A pay rise: they’re lucky to have not had 90% of staff receive their P45s during C19 lockdown when passenger numbers talked by 90%.
Now they want the taxpayer to fund their raise. It’s honestly disgusting. They should be happy to not be on Universal Credit. We should learn from the US and pass some legislation ending the strikes and dictating reasonable contract terms.
19.2% nurse pay raise. NHS makes up a large bulk of government spending at a time when everywhere is being told to make spending cuts; that’s as good as bankrupting it. RMT wants 10+% to last I checked and that’s definitely not affordable when passenger numbers still haven’t recovered past 2019 levels.
This is assuming the rising cost of living is here to stay. The majority of current high inflation is due to global gas prices. They won’t remain high forever. To give lots of raises now would in-turn end up with the current inflated cost here to stay.
As for the assurances around their futures, how can a business promise to not innovate and guarantee that someone won’t be made redundant? Technology is ever evolving. For example, we definitely do NOT need ticket offices in 2022.
It’s not a disagreement on a point of principle, it’s just false. Look up numbers of staff, average length of service and average salary and do some fag paper maths. You’ll soon see how far that dwarves the cost of losses endured during a strike.
This is all to say nothing of the fact that it’s illegal to make staff redundant unless they are actually redundant.
You’re letting your ideological persuasions get in the way of the fundamental economic theory here. There are not enough guards and drivers to run existing services, there is limited capacity for more to be trained and a long lead time for new recruits to become active. In other words demand is high and supply has been reduced to a trickle.
And yet, despite that, the government is trying to unilaterally reduce their salaries in real terms. It beggars belief.
The reason they are particularly thin on the ground currently is that a huge number of them left during covid after having a taste of early retirement. There would be no train service at all if the entire workforce was sacked during covid.
Ignoring for a moment the disaster that’d be - once again I would encourage you to try and actually work out how much you’re proposed mass issuing of P45s would cost. Railwaymen and women are relatively well paid, and average length of service is high.
The NHS isn’t a business (yet). It cannot be rendered bankrupt as the government has a statutory obligation to fund it. The demand would be utterly meritless if NHS staff had the moderate boosts along the way which would have kept pace with inflation int the 10s, but they weren’t because they were frozen on ideological grounds.
“10%+” is, in real terms, nothing at all - literally. In fact a 10% rise today is in real terms a 1-2% cut on pay this time last year.
They were at 95% of 2019 levels this summer, with some TOCs (particularly Intercity ones) recording a raise: National Rail passenger numbers recover further | Railnews | Today’s news for Tomorrow’s railway
This despite the fact a number of TOCs were running reduced timetables (due to staff shortages).
Next slide please.
This isn’t how it works. The RPI in October 2022 was 11.1%. That means every £ earned in October 2022 was worth 11% less than a £ earned in October 2021. That is inflation that is done, negative inflation is rare, slight and shortlived - people spend money when commodities go down, on a 2-3 year trend prices will only go up.
If you don’t keep pace with inflation, in real terms your salary has gone down.
“Wait and see what happens” is an exceptionally poor argument when you consider how much forbearance NHS staff have asked to show getting us here (which is reflected in that 19.2% figure you’re so grossed out by).
That’s part of the problem though isn’t it. Rather than proactively engaging on reforming roles (as Scotrail did decades ago with reforming some guard roles to on-board customer service type role) they’re doing the whole thing by stealth.
It’s the same deal. DfT isn’t proposing anything. It isn’t even outright saying that it would like to close ticket offices. And yet they are constantly trying to manoeuvre their contractors in to doing exactly that. It’s not acceptable to treat your workforce in that manner, nor passengers for that.
Nobody (including the RMT!) would argue that all railway grades are fine as they are and there is no need for reform. The way to do that is by engaging though, not force majeure.
Sorry folks, but this thread has clearly run it’s course as an avenue for inclusive engagement. Moving on….
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