Forum Topic

Mike Lynch sign of things to come from Labour

Just shocking attitude and behaviour I thought the hard left had gone sadly not, no room for them. Covid has massively affected working practises, businesses are trying to get staff back to the office let’s not talk about the disgraceful civil service,  this is the last thing the country needs, utter shame on them and all those that support the strikes.

Jayne Thorburn ● 1556d54 Comments

Shocking attitude? You are quick to express your outrage at the actions of the "hard left" but seem to be quite happy to acquiesce in the damage done to the Rule of Law by our disgraceful Prime Minister. Double standards!

Robert Fish ● 1556d

Deafening silence from theBoris bashing gang.

James Dow ● 1556d

So you don't believe in the right to protest? You don't sympathise with workers whose wages have not kept pace with inflation during years of austerity? They are to be reproached for their impudent demands, whilst criticism of a shameless, amoral, corrupt, mendacious, self-serving Prime Minister is unfair? Poor Boris! We should be kinder to him.

Robert Fish ● 1556d

33% employers pension contribution no I don’t sympathise that they want to hold the country to ransom, appalling behaviour

Jayne Thorburn ● 1556d

Isn't it odd when the loudest proponents of market forces believe that they should apply to everything except the supply of labour.Businesses putting up prices? "The free market".Workers threatening to withdraw their labour in demand for higher wages? "Holding the country to ransom".

T P Howell ● 1556d

I've no idea from where you get your 33% employers pension contribution - chapter and verse, please. How would you feel if, like RMT members, you had your salary frozen since 2018?

Robert Fish ● 1556d

Google employees pay 5% employer pays 30%, final salary pension, no staff were furloughed and the taxpayers contributed 16Billion during covid. They want inflation proof pay rises, passenger numbers down so want continued tax payer funding. It’s a complete joke. They want job security, no compulsory redundancies. Just not living in the real world. I don’t know any company offering these terms. This is the hard left, angela was at the protests Keir avoiding making any comment. This is a sign of things to come with Labour.

Jayne Thorburn ● 1556d

Google is not a source.  It's a search engine.No loud voices of protest about the cheif executive of Arriva getting an 18% pay rise to £1.34m, or Avanti paying its shareholders £11m in dividends.The fact is, the government wants this strike - hence doing nothing to try to mediate or resolve it, or to push the rail companies into negotiations.This government thrives on conflict and strife. It fact its their only effective policy.  It needs the smokescreen to get people worked up, instead of focussing on the fact that we have a failing government in turmoil.

T P Howell ● 1556d

Eh? You feeling OK?

Basil Finnis ● 1556d

I am with you Basil, millions of people were on furlough with 80% pay for over a year, they are not striking if anything are thankful for the support and we the tax payers were more than willing to support them. £16B we paid to prop up the railways no one was furloughed this is just an appalling way to treat us. I repeat this is hard left, I thought those dreadful days were over. This will be the last thing Kier wants interesting to see how he handles it. rayner is hard left and supports the strikes she clearly has no concept of how funding is raised, from us!

Jayne Thorburn ● 1556d

See today's tweet from RMT: "No rail worker lost their job or was furloughed because they kept on working throughout the pandemic, some dying in the process, so that those that needed to could get to work. Railway workers are also taxpayers.Now the applause has stopped so must the attacks on jobs & safety.'So Jayne, just how many workers do you think can be furloughed in an industry where many jobs are safety-critical?

Robert Fish ● 1556d

That’s so funny, the schedule was dramatically reduced during covid so there is absolutely no way all the employees were working or if they were they were doing greatly reduced hours on full pay which tax payers funded to the tune of £16B so they can pull the other one 😂😂😂😂 millions of key workers did work full time, retail, NHS, Teachers if anyone deserves more pay its them NOT RMT. Yes they pay tax because the rest of us fund them, if they continue with this approach many of then will lose their jobs

Jayne Thorburn ● 1556d

Hard left. You should go to countries where the hard left has power. We have harsh laws here on striking. If your manager rings you at home and asks if you can start early the next day, can you sue him for spoiling your life? No provision for that. Do women get period leave as in Spain. We toil under terrible conditions and when a group wants to improve their conditions they are hard left.

Nicholas Beard ● 1556d

The train drivers suffer long hours, inhumane shift work. Let's look at French railway drivers, who retire at 55 or 50 if they have worked more than 15 years. More public holidays and annual leave. Other staff can go at 55. The state retirement age is 62, with a better pension than ours. Some people eg ballet dancers retire at 42. I suggest if our train drivers were offered these conditions they would be back within a day.

Nicholas Beard ● 1556d

I'm sure plenty of people would like to apply for a job as a tube driver on current terms. Please could you let me know how you do that as I don't see any adverts for vacancies.

Rob Reynolds ● 1555d

Shapps hasn't met with the unions to make any attempt at discussions since March 8th. Even that well known leftie Tom Newton-Dunne made the point on BBC this morning that the government are loving this ahead of trying to pull their chestnuts out of the fire re the two by-elections this week. Trades unions are the people we owe for a lot of the working conditions in this country, holidays, pensions etc. they are there to represent their members. It might be the rail workers (not just the train drivers) this month - but the teaching and NHS unions are not far behind, yes it is inconvenient and more - but what would be the point of a strike that didn't cause inconvenience to push home your cause? That total sh*tbag of a P.M. keeps going on about a 'high-skilled, highly paid workforce', does that apply to to everyone or just the lot at the top with their telephone number salaries and obscene bonuses? The private companies that run the railways are also in receipt of subsidies from the taxpayer, not too much moaning about that though.

Vanessa Smith ● 1555d

Vanessa a higher skilled workforce means people have the opportunity the earn more money not telephone number salaries, I believe approx 5% of the working population earn over 250,000, a small minority. Surely as a society our goal is to enable workers to become more skilled so they can earn more money. Taxes have gone up for business owners corp tax 19% to 25%. Employers NI by 1.25%. We are a nation built on SME’s something like 92% of UK business employ less than 20 people and turnover less than £2M. This represents a massive share of the market. Unions do not influence working conditions in this sector, it’s good employers and market forces so companies can employ the calibre of staff they need.

Jayne Thorburn ● 1555d

'Surely as a society our goal is to enable workers to become more skilled so they can earn more money.'A laudable aim - but there are a lot of workers we all rely on whose jobs may not be classed as skilled but all of whom we could not function without, where does that leave them?Not one of the Johnson groupies has so far mentioned how nearly all our rail companies are owned by foreign companies who use the money in profits from here to subsidise their railway services, all courtesy of the British taxpayer.

Vanessa Smith ● 1555d

Many of the workers you refer to start in a job and either go through the ranks or move on allowing for new recruits to start their careers. You also have to remember not everyone want career progression and that’s fine too. People are different, have different priorities in life so you can’t treat everyone as one. There will always be people in society that need more support than others but it is minority group. I think our unemployment rate is very low, that’s a positive. Work also gives people Monday other things in life than money, support their mental health, confidence, social activities and the like. Peoples lives are complicated. I read an article on the BBC about a government initiative  through credit unions providing interest  free loans. They interviewed a lady who confessed her money management was poor but as a result of money management  support attached to the scheme  has improved so she can pay her bills and is saving. This is a fabulous initiative  and some people grow their own skills. It’s complicated.

Jayne Thorburn ● 1555d

Yeh, i mean,where would our rail indudtry sit without it. And where is this profit they are taking back home 20/21 income 20.7 billion expenditure 21.0 billion Prior to pandemic profits were 2% accross the board but expenditure allways went up previous year while income has fallen year on year. Love those stories you here and they stick in your head as fact.

Julian Pavey ● 1555d

Do those figures include subsidies by the government?France and Germany subsidise parts of their rail networks considerably more than the UK does.And you have to wonder, why would the foreign institutions that are involved in providing rail services in the UK be involved if their wasn't any profit to be had? Altruism? Don't think so!

Andrew Jones ● 1555d

Hi. I'm here to help and to demonstrate that you are not in the top earning group who look down and assume everyone else is earning more than they actually earn. Which your post risks implying.You accidentally implied that 5% of the working population earn 250k or more. That would be about 2.5 million people who are super comfortable. Which clearly was a typo or mis-speak on your part. Let me catch that error and set out what you meant. Just over 540k people are in the top 1% of earners in the UK. To be in that group, (and haven't we all been there?), you need to be earning minimum of 120k. Gosh, not that elite then. Source: IFS from couple of years ago. There are about 300k people earning 150k or more.I'd hate for people to think that you think lots of people earn lots of money, and lots more people earn quite a lot. And below that there is a little puddle of moaners. We all know that most people do not earn enough. That needs to be fixed.

Alan Clark ● 1555d

AC > "You accidentally implied that 5% of the working population earn 250k or more."£250k/year is chicken feed.

John Whitworth ● 1555d

I know John. For you and me and Jayne the thought of trying to survive on less than 250k a year is quite appalling. Why, I'd have to whittle down my weekly Waitrose standing order. But appalling as that thought is, I'd be willing to do that in order to stand shoulder to shoulder with the 95% who earn less, perhaps 100k per year. So when some moany leftie asks for more or better working conditions then frankly I'm angered. Do you know that I get a quite early train into work to earn my base level 250k? What do you moaners do? And I suspect these well paid train drivers do not get up early. Any of them.

Alan Clark ● 1555d

Very witty Alan, thank you for correcting the numbers I didn’t realise I was in such an exclusive club 😂😂😂🥂 have to confess I don’t get up that early 😂😂😂

Jayne Thorburn ● 1555d

Alan what % of people in the Uk earn telephone numbers? 😂😂😂

Jayne Thorburn ● 1555d

I support the strikes. If inflation is set to rise to 11% and workers within a union have had their pay frozen for five years, then only a simpleton would think that the status quo is ok. You, JT, are a Tory and of the opinion that when the minions bare their teeth, they are automatically in the wrong. This just goes to prove that you are an establishment lackey who only cares about the privileged few.

David Roberts ● 1555d

You have no idea of my politics 🥺🥺🥺🥺 it’s appears that they have had pay rises but Mike Lynch positions his statements with very few facts. In one statement think on the BBC he stated some have not. The drivers are not striking Aslef union and have had pay rises. I do however understand economics , the numbers travelling via trains has reduced dramatically due to WFH and hybrid working appears to be the way forward. So the numbers don’t stack up and something has to be done unless we accept billions in subsides is the only way forward.

Jayne Thorburn ● 1554d

This looks like a page from the Thatcher playbook on the miners strike.

Philippa Bond ● 1554d

That didn’t go well for them did it, although I have to confess I am too young to remember that 😂😂😂😂

Jayne Thorburn ● 1554d

Well, a lot of us do remember that - and Thatcher bought and paid for the police who behaved disgracefully. It wasn't about coal with her it was about dominance, it split communities and like the current shower the Tories fed off the discord, the biggest mistake was Scargill failing to ballot, not the case with the rail unions now. A responsible government would be negotiating and doing their level best to mediate and come to an acceptable outcome, not seeing this as a chance to try and put the trades unions back in their box.

Vanessa Smith ● 1554d

The ONS publish income distribution by each percentage point. 90% of pre tax incomes are under 60k. Only 1% are over 180k, only 5% over 81k. These are national figures, London will be different.https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/percentile-points-from-1-to-99-for-total-income-before-and-after-tax

David Turner ● 1554d

Quite right, Vanessa. Orgreave was absolutely brutal. But a grammatical quibble (with apologies for impinging on Anne England's territory): surely the plural of Trade Union is Trade Unions? I think it was Ted Heath (doubtless a red rag for the likes of Jayne, although she would claim to be too young to remember him!) who started the business of calling them Trades Unions. It's depressing that 38 years on from Orgreave we have the same demonisation of workers, the same divisive tactics from government and the same economically illiterate arguments about managing the the economy, as if it were a household budget.

Robert Fish ● 1554d

There is a view that one of the reasons why the power of the trade unions declined was because EU laws gave employees greater protection of employment rights and employment terms.  E.g. The Working Time Directive 2003/88/EC and the Transfers of Undertakings Directive 2001/23/EC.Whilst those directives remain implemented as UK law, one of the fundamental aims of Brexit was the opportunity to reduce employment, consumer, environmental rights and protections, etc.If employment rights are reduced we can expect industrial strife to increase.Unfortunately, "strife" is this government's only successful policy.  Apparently Johnson and Co are celebrating last week as "Wedge Week" (Google it) - the successful promotion of divisive policies (such as breaching the Northern Ireland Protocol,  the ECHR injunction to prevent deportations to Rwanda, and now the rail strike).It seems that the aim is to whip up resentment and division, with a view to potentially calling a general election in October, relying on the populist vote.  This was Johnson's currency as a journalist (on which he built his carerr), and he has taken those lessons into government. This is why this government has to keep this battles running and running, and look for fights rather than solutions.Look forward to a summer of discontent.

T P Howell ● 1554d

Good analysis TP.

Basil Finnis ● 1554d

Yes ,from a totally biased Towards Labour point of view.

James Dow ● 1554d

Jayne you are wrong on all counts  but on the FInal Salary scheme you are just plain ignorant. The pension is based on service and salary, the salarys in the civil service are low, the contributions are irrelevant, they pay in to make good the promise of a proportion of your pay at retirement.Contributions for employees are much higher now and they have moved the schemes to average career earnings and to state pension age, so 67/68.  They still pay low salarys but the pension is worse than it was. The pension is still good but it is totally idiotic to mention 33%. It isn't and it never has been. And why shouldn't they have a decent pension, just because commercial industries closed theirs to save costs, why should they?Stop posting rubbish and preferably, just stop posting, particularly on areas you know nothing about. Though that may limit your posts to the square root of jack.

Tony Mansell ● 1554d

I don’t think the government is the employer? from everything I have read it appears that changes are required to how the rail network works. Every business needs changes and we have to adapt hopefully for the better. If we hadn’t changed when covid it my company wouldn’t exist now. I appreciate many people hate change but times change and we have to adapt to change.

Jayne Thorburn ● 1554d

Except when its car and cycles?Strange that suddenly the railways have to change when the Tories have been in over for over a decade.  Govt also seem to add or remove the train drivers as it suits despite the fact that train drivers belong to a different union.

Philippa Bond ● 1552d

https://theconversation.com/the-green-gig-economy-precarious-workers-are-on-the-frontline-of-climate-change-fight-133392?

Philippa Bond ● 1552d

"Mike Lynch sign of things to come from Labour"Bit of an own goal here.  He seems to have come across in media interviews very well, putting forward calm and coherent arguments why rail staff should be paid more.It seems he is the only person in public life at the moment vocally standing up for working people.If only Labour were a bit more like him, this country might be in a better place.

T P Howell ● 1551d

Seeing the enormous disparity in the wages of those at the top of Network Rail, Royal Mail, BA, BT etc. compared to the average worker in any of those companies, it really doesn't take an economic genius to fathom out why so many of the employees are being balloted for strike action, let alone those in the public sector. Also, as pointed out in today's 'i'  the RMT's Mick Lynch is just running rings around the high and mighty trying to take him on, he is pragmatic, reasonable and concise, and gets his message across without histrionics. Neither the Labour party or the Tories are coming out of this covered in glory, and the government are just spoiling for a fight - they think this is their 'Scargill moment' - pathetic. How is it that Shapps was up in arms regarding P&O using agency staff just a few months ago but is now prepared to sanction just that on the railways? The modern union leader may yet prove that they can run rings round what pass for parliamentarians with reasoned, logical and justified argument on behalf of their members. Watch and learn Johnson.

Vanessa Smith ● 1551d

He's shown Starmer to be the dull cardboard grey suit he always was who lied his way into the job. I watched a buffoon who used to be on the BBC but moved to Channel 5 put it to Lynch that he has been called a Communist and also a Baron. He replied 'which one am I, I can't be both?' The media twit looked like a fish with his mouth open. Heaven help us, an articulate man of the people that the establishment can't better.

Basil Finnis ● 1551d

...and the today the workers have to vote to go on strike as a last resort rather then being led into it by 'union barons' as might have happened in the past.  Present day union leaders are just representing the interests of their members in a professional way.

Peter Evans ● 1551d

Hasn't stopped people like Johnson and Kwarteng banging on about 'union barons' or 'dragging us back to the 70s', and of course that old chestnut - 'holding the country to ransom'. The TUs have moved on and as Mr. Lynch pointed out they can no more oppose modernisation than they can stop the tide, what a pity the old, tired Tory rhetoric hasn't been modernised too!

Vanessa Smith ● 1551d

..but the Tory papers gleefully run with 'union barons hold country to ransom' headlines as they're expected to, but whether the great British public is falling for it, we'll have to see. They won't buy it if the teachers go on strike as nearly everyone knows a teacher and how badly they've been treated over the past decade.

Peter Evans ● 1551d

'Mike Lynch sign of things to come from Labour'.  I hope so!

Peter Evans ● 1551d

Fragmented and franchised.  What a mess was created.

Philippa Bond ● 1551d

THe press reporting of many of these strikes in interesting. The Mail led with the BA check in staff and said they are demanding a 10% pay rise on top of a 10% bonus.In fact, many lower grade staff had pay cut 10% during lockdowns which has not been reinstated. More senior staff including flight crew and pilots have had their pay reinstated. CEO of parent company IAG is on course to earn £4.5m this year. And has anyone who flies BA knows the airline has been appallingly managed for the last decade, so these top guys are not delivering.So the check in staff, amongst the lowest paid at BA, are asking just to get back to their pre COVID pay. Not even thinking now with inflation about 10% of an actual pay rise. This is the situation for many workers, across the less sexy areas of the private sector and much of the public sector. Teachers have seen their pay fall by around 40% in real terms since the financial crisis. If we value education we need to pay teachers a decent wage and treat them as professionals. Its astonishing how some seem to fall for the propoganda pumped out by our right wing press.

Bill George ● 1551d

Also interesting little nugget came out from 'Question Time' last night about 'archaic practices' - which it seems in some cases have been created by the disastrous franchising model that the Tories so love. Hoist on you own petard or what?

Vanessa Smith ● 1550d

Telephone numbers start with a zero. So that doesn't make sense. If you want a breakdown of the earning ranges of the UK working population then google it - although this is not good at including private earnings or capital wealth.

Alan Clark ● 1550d

From 'Sherwood' currently on BBC1 from a character who is an NUM lawyer on the 1984 miner's strike, about the Thatcher government's tactics. Rings just as real now in the current climate."They wanted that strike. They wanted to change the political landscape of this country away from collectivism towards deregulated market forces. Reasonable people can agree or disagree with that shift. The point is, in order to achieve it they needed a war. They need to, and I quote, 'Provoke a war in nationalised industries'. And they picked coal. And they won. And this country changed forever."

Vanessa Smith ● 1550d

Surely it's a reality of how things are under the Conservatives?Why hypothesise when you have the actual reality happening now?

John Hannon ● 1550d

As always Vanessa wrong, check out the other thread re coals  mines, labourer closed more than thatcher, it was dying Maggie made a good call…..

Jayne Thorburn ● 1549d