Unions (Aslef)

Rouge Penguin

Are they taking the absolute piss with the boxing day strike on the Underground?

Considering they work 35hrs a week, get 43 days annual leave, earn £40k a year and get free travel for them and the other half, thats before demanding triple pay and a day in lieu for working a Bank Holiday.

They dont want much do they

Stewie Griffin

Push lever forward train moves, move lever back train stops. Push button open doors, push button shut doors. Give non feeling apology for when service isn't running properly. Go on strike at behest of fat union three car shunt who has long since forgotten what its like to actually have to work. Yes they are taking the wee wee again. Then again, fair play to them for getting so much for doing a job that a drunk monkey could do.

Pross

Ah, but you are forgetting the important health and safety responsibilities of their job

Wooliferkins

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZYuIYNaKynI

Drunk monkeys..............

Gazzaputt

What makes me laugh is that on the Central line the trains are fully automated so the lazy feckers don't have to lift a finger.

When I used to use this line you'd regularly see drivers reading a newspaper as it came into the station.

I swear they don't live in the real world. Also LU don't help themselves by only recruiting drivers from within.

15peter20

ok. so what the FCUK do you FCKUERS do for a living? (prepare for abuse)

John Stevenson

15peter20 wrote:

(prepare for abuse)

Don't.

15peter20

John Stevenson wrote:

15peter20 wrote:

(prepare for abuse)

Don't.

Happy Christmas John

15peter20

BTW - I work for the charity Kittens for Kristmas - delivering little fluffy cute kittens into areas that have suffered trauma - so I am beyond criticism.

John Stevenson

15peter20

And a happy Christmas to you too!

If you were gearing up to make a point about train drivers' pay and conditions, go right ahead - just don't indulge in personal abuse to make it (and if you really want to annoy the Daily Mail readers here, keep it very calm and reasonable with plenty of actual documented facts)

markos1963

Rouge Penguin wrote:

Are they taking the absolute wee-wee with the boxing day strike on the Underground?

Considering they work 35hrs a week, get 43 days annual leave, earn £40k a year and get free travel for them and the other half, thats before demanding triple pay and a day in lieu for working a Bank Holiday.

They dont want much do they

No they don't I suppose
They might want the 5 years life expectancy back they lose for working shifts
They might want to spend more time with their families over xmas instead of ferrying drunk abusive louts around London
They might want to be able to keep their job if they have only one incident of the line happening
They might not want to be mentally scarred for life when some poor unfortunate throws themselves under their train
They might want to exercise their given and hard fought right to withdraw their labour if they can't resolve a dispute, after all slavery was repealed in the 19th century as I remember.
They might feel that plenty other jobs pay an enhanced rate for working bank holidays so why shouldn't they, a driver might be rostered to work all of the bank holidays in a year so it's irrelavant to them and their family if they get boxing day off on the 23rd of march.

15peter20

John Stevenson wrote:

15peter20

And a happy Christmas to you too!

If you were gearing up to make a point about train drivers' pay and conditions, go right ahead - just don't indulge in personal abuse to make it (and if you really want to annoy the Daily Mail readers here, keep it very calm and reasonable with plenty of actual documented facts)

John - my apologies, I suddenly found myself standing shoulder to shoulder with our tunnel dwelling brothers, but then I realised I am merely a bitterly hungover internet cowboy who should really get on with my remaining Xmas shopping. No abuse or naughty words shall be forthcoming - Happy Xmas y'all!

markos1963

15peter20 wrote:

ok. so what the FCUK do you FCKUERS do for a living? (prepare for abuse)

So what do you do for a living then?

15peter20

markos1963 wrote:

15peter20 wrote:

ok. so what the FCUK do you FCKUERS do for a living? (prepare for abuse)

So what do you do for a living then?

I've just been made redundant from my IT johnnie role (i.e. I'm a useless F**cker!).

markos1963

Well you have my thoughts at this time of year, having been made redundant 3 times in my working life I know how it feels.
Now I have such a limited knowledge of IT I would never make a sweeping statement on the pay and conditions of the job. And this is my point, everybody seems to know so much about other peoples jobs and what they should be paid except they don't know do they?
Train drivers are paid £XXX because of a number of reasons, not least the responsibility they have for their passengers. Whilst the job is running smoothly it IS a seemingly easy job but once things go wrong then they do earn their money. It's much like an airline pilot, spends a lot of time on autopilot so you could argue for minimum wage but you'll pay a kings ransom come time to land the thing.

Pross

markos1963 wrote:

Rouge Penguin wrote:

Are they taking the absolute wee-wee with the boxing day strike on the Underground?

Considering they work 35hrs a week, get 43 days annual leave, earn £40k a year and get free travel for them and the other half, thats before demanding triple pay and a day in lieu for working a Bank Holiday.

They dont want much do they

No they don't I suppose
They might want the 5 years life expectancy back they lose for working shifts
They might want to spend more time with their families over xmas instead of ferrying drunk abusive louts around London
They might want to be able to keep their job if they have only one incident of the line happening
They might not want to be mentally scarred for life when some poor unfortunate throws themselves under their train
They might want to exercise their given and hard fought right to withdraw their labour ifthey can't resolve a dispute, after all slavery was repealed in the 19th century as I remember.
They might feel that plenty other jobs pay an enhanced rate for working bank holidays so why shouldn't they, a driver might be rostered to work all of the bank holidays in a year so it's irrelavant to them and their family if they get boxing day off on the 23rd of march.

In that case they may want to get a different job, surely all of the above is understood when they become a Tube driver? 40k a year is a lot compared to other jobs that require shift working, dealing with drunken louts and potentially witnessing disturbing incidents and presumably is already weighted to taken account of those factors. By comparison a nurse or firefighter will take home far less but have to deal with similar downsides plus work a longer week and get less leave (assuming all the figures in the OP are actually factual). I suspect there's more involved than pushing a lever and a few buttons and as a train driver you will know more than me about that but even allowing for the more difficult working conditions encountered a Tube driver would appear to have a reasonable deal especially compared to a bus driver or HGV driver.

markos1963

Pross I'm not arguing that a train driver is worth more than a nurse or firefighter( i would say these people are grossly underpaid) but as I said in a later post there is a lot more to the job than the public realise.
Get a different job is something that is often said when these arguements come up but if you are doing something that you are good at or love should you have to? It's the same for any job, why not fight for change from within? After all most of the rights and benefits that workers get nowerdays come from ordinary working people who were prepared to stand up and be counted. The people who want to travel on Boxing day who are off have got that holiday because Union members fought for the right to have holidays.

15peter20

The grass is always greener isn't it? My Ire was originally raised because of what seemed like a knee jerk reaction to the cause of some mild inconvenience to someone's travel plans. TBH £40k doesn't seem like a huge amount for what must be a sometimes grinding and stressful job that demands the employee must live close to the centre of a very expensive city.

Wouldn't it be nice if we put aside our selfish 'needs' for a moment at Xmas and considered that maybe a strike is not an act of wilfulness/malice/greed but just maybe it's a justified 'last resort'?? Let's celebrate that we CAN take industrial action to highlight poor working conditions (even if we feel our own lot is a heavier burden) in our ever diminishing free society.

Tom Butcher

It's not really a moral argument is it - tube drivers have been able to get that amount of money through collective action or the threat of so they do - it's really no different to bankers threatening to take their industry elsewhere, footballers threatening to join a rival club etc etc. They just use whatever leverage they have to maximise what they get.

I think it'd be great if we had far more equality of pay but as that isn't the way the world works you can't really single out tube drivers for doing what 99% of others do - take as much as they can get.

markos1963

15peter20 wrote:

The grass is always greener isn't it? My Ire was originally raised because of what seemed like a knee jerk reaction to the cause of some mild inconvenience to someone's travel plans. TBH £40k doesn't seem like a huge amount for what must be a sometimes grinding and stressful job that demands the employee must live close to the centre of a very expensive city.

Wouldn't it be nice if we put aside our selfish 'needs' for a moment at Xmas and considered that maybe a strike is not an act of wilfulness/malice/greed but just maybe it's a justified 'last resort'?? Let's celebrate that we CAN take industrial action to highlight poor working conditions (even if we feel our own lot is a heavier burden) in our ever diminishing free society.

Totally agree with you there. It's a terrible time of year for a strike to go ahead and I can tell you from my own experience I would only ever come out on strike as a complete last resort. It never helps our cause to come out as I can see from the reactions on here but sometimes you have no choice if you want things to get better.

BTW I am not involved with this dispute, I work for another company that doesn't run trains on Boxing Day.

15peter20

yeah - what Tom Butcher said above - im too hungover to sustain a cogent argument but he's pretty much spot on. Quit your whinging!

markos1963

For general information the majority of tube drivers are not ASLEF members, they are mostly members of the RMT and so the disruption shouldn't be too bad.

Rouge Penguin

Sorry Markos, obviously we're not aware of the full facts. Given the turmoil in the general job market, it just seems like theyre being greedy (consider the people trying to get to work on that day too).

Obviously they have downsides to the job (you missed tunnel vision or whatever its called), wanting 4 days back for working one BH (8 or so shopping ones next year, so an extra months holiday to add to the 6 weeks) and you can see why it narks people.

Healthcare, Police, Fire etc must be sick of hearing their whinges.

markos1963

Rouge Penguin wrote:

Sorry Markos, obviously we're not aware of the full facts. Given the turmoil in the general job market, it just seems like theyre being greedy (consider the people trying to get to work on that day too).

Obviously they have downsides to the job (you missed tunnel vision or whatever its called), wanting 4 days back for working one BH (8 or so shopping ones next year, so an extra months holiday to add to the 6 weeks) and you can see why it narks people.

Healthcare, Police, Fire etc must be sick of hearing their whinges.

Given that most of the reporting on this comes from a mainly right wing press it's understandable that peoples opinions on this will be coloured against the dispute.
They may have asked for triple pay etc but the Union would probably have settled for a compromise payment(it often happens without anyone knowing), the management haven't offered anything so the Union have nowhere to go.
Totally agree with you it's not the best time to go into negotiations to get better pay/conditions when so many are out of work. But when would it be a good time? Difficult one to answer and we must not let ourselves in any business get bullied by greedy employers into accepting the status quo.

afx237vi

Aslef? I thought we were talking about this guy:

iainf72

afx237vi wrote:

Aslef? I thought we were talking about this guy:

Isn't that Jesus?

afx237vi

Yeah that's what I was thinking yesterday. As in "Jesus Christ, this film is boring..."

rick_chasey

Rouge Penguin wrote:

Are they taking the absolute wee-wee with the boxing day strike on the Underground?

Considering they work 35hrs a week, get 43 days annual leave, earn £40k a year and get free travel for them and the other half, thats before demanding triple pay and a day in lieu for working a Bank Holiday.

They dont want much do they

You should apply!

proto

I think this says all that needs to be said:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FYVJSOFZxDE

markos1963

proto wrote:

I think this says all that needs to be said:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FYVJSOFZxDE

Excellent, really enjoyed that.
Is there one for bank workers, council chief executives, MP's, lawyers and estate agents?

Stone Glider

In my limited experience of Trade Unionism it was always viewed as a failure to reach the point of strike action. It is not the Trades Union who are looking for thr fight in this country, with the current lagislative framework and bl**dy minded judges. Often, management will look at the odds and fancy a little pressure on the workforce to achieve certain goals, vide the BA dispute? Other workers shouting that the strikers 'have it easy' miss the point. They 'have it easy' thanks to the activity of the Trades Union, the good conditions are unlikely to be a gift from management.