Trouble on the Tracks
After 15 months of strikes, the industrial action hurting the customers of Southern Rail continues, demonstrating how greed is infecting the rail industry.
UK Politics
Matthew Waterfield
— — — — — — — —
It is often said that the premiership of Margaret Thatcher ushered in a new era where greed reigned supreme. People on the left like to claim that the free market economy that she introduced has led to a business culture where profits are put before people and that this change has made us a more uncaring country.
But nowhere is greed more evident today than in Mrs Thatcher’s old enemy, the trade unions. For the last 15 months, the RMT union — joined by a fellow union called ASLEF last November — have inflicted misery upon millions of people who rely on Southern Rail to get to work, school and home.
The dispute has been accompanied by an unprecedented level of false claims by the unions about their reasons for striking, as well as displays of astonishing selfishness not just by the union leaders, but by the members of the unions too.
The dispute is multifaceted, with pay and the changing role of train guards being two of the key issues. Train drivers are currently paid £49,001 a year for working just 35 hours a week , but they are vying for more — as a result, they were offered a stunning 24% pay rise by Southern Rail, which would bring their salary to £60,683 a year. To put that in context, a biomedical scientist working for the NHS could expect to earn between £27,000 and £36,000 a year — paltry in comparison. And, as expected, the drivers rejected it, still wanting more. And why would they accept it?
They have the ability to blackmail their bosses and their customers whenever they feel like it at little personal cost to them, so it’s no surprise they choose to milk the system rather than accept that they are completely undeserving of their already momentous salaries.
With regards to the part of the dispute that relates to the new role of train guards, the unions have told lie after lie after lie about their reasons for striking. Southern Rail have said that they are going to give the responsibility for closing train doors, something previously done by conductors, to train drivers. The unions are upset about this, pretending that they fear the change will lead to a reduction in passenger safety.
This is nonsense. The Rail Safety and Standards Board, an independent organisation set up to regulate the rail industry, has said that the change “does not increase the risk to passengers at all”. As the BBC have suggested, the unions’ true motive is their fear that this change will lead to a decline in the effectiveness of conductor strikes.
At the moment, if train conductors strike, then the strike will likely have a huge impact, because the train can’t run without a conductor there to close the doors. However, if drivers become responsible for the closing of train doors, then the conductors are no longer essential. RMT would lose their power as trains could run even when the RMT affiliated conductors were on strike.
I am far from the first person to lay the blame for this fiasco at the unions’ door. Last year, a Network Rail director named Chris Gibb was appointed to conduct an independent review into the dispute and his report was made public in June. His report found that the unions bore most responsibility for the clash, labelling them the “primary cause” of the dispute.
However, in all fairness, it is worth saying that the leadership of ASLEF has now twice accepted offers from Southern Rail to end the dispute and has twice balloted their members, recommending that they accept the offers on the table. Unfortunately, in a damning indictment of how little they care about their customers, ASLEF members have now twice rejected these deals.
That is possibly the most disturbing element of this dispute, which is perhaps better labelled a scandal. It comes as a surprise to absolutely no one that the leadership of unions like RMT and ASLEF would inflict widespread misery upon the public in order to retain their bargaining power in disputes. Sadly, this is what we have come to expect from hard left unions when a Tory government is in power — Arthur Scargill’s attempt to bring down Margaret Thatcher during the miners’ strike is another prominent example.
But the fact that the members have become even more radical than their leaders — such as ASLEF president Tosh McDonald, who views Jeremy Corbyn as a “messiah” — is nothing short of frightening. It demonstrates that when these union members are too much given power — in this case the power to destroy the lives of commuters — it can go to their head, and that they can become entranced by this power to the extent that they become consumed by greed, just as much as an any banker or politician could be.
Although they’re severely weakened by the election, it is incumbent upon the government to deal with this issue, which may necessitate further alterations to trade union legislation, such as allowing agency workers to cover for striking workers. This measure, originally meant to be included in the 2016 Trade Union Act, would partially shield Southern Rail customers from the wrath of the unions by allowing more trains to run during strikes, a development that would be welcomed by the worn down commuters of Southern England.
However, the government has Brexit to deal with, so one suspects that intervening in this seemingly ‘unwinnable war’ is towards the bottom of their to-do list. As a result, it seems likely that this dispute will continue, emboldening the greedy and the selfish at the expense of the rest of us — after all, why help your customers when hurting them could earn you a pay rise?
