As we all know, 2 weeks ago the rail workers went on strike. All services were disrupted, and many who were reliant on public transport were majorly inconvenienced. But the worst thing is that since negotiations still haven’t been successful, the chances of further strike action this month are incredibly high. The RMT secretary Mick Lynch himself said that the strike actions on the 25th won’t be the last.
One thing that some people have pondered is why haven’t rail workers taken a similar action to what bus drivers did in Japan. In Okayama in 2018, unhappy bus drivers declared that they were going on strike. However they carried on turning up to work. They just failed to charge customers using the bus service. By doing this, they made sure the people didn’t pay for the failings of their company, and in turn got greater support from the general public. If train drivers and ticket staff who were on strike operated this maneuver, no doubt the everyday worker in the UK would be on their side over the government.
At the end of the day though, our railway is a vital infrastructure, and is in constant need of maintenance. Knowing this, one action that the Government is looking at taking is to repeal the ban on using agency workers. This has been widely seen as a negative move, with this proposed law ‘fundamentally undermining a worker’s democratic right to strike and stifling their civil liberties.’
We’ll finish with a message to Network Rail. We don’t do temporary roles, but if you ever need any long-term staff, we’d be more than happy to help. We have recently placed café and retail staff in a few nearby stations and have started working with companies to place engineers.