Jonfun
Established Member
It certainly isn't about pensions. However, the overall terms and conditions for guards are very favourable. A lot more favourable than many of the passengers being bitten by the strike.
Now the action of the guards is hitting other jobs and businesses without a massive loss to the guards, many people will start to question their support for those in a better position than themselves. Add into the mix that many services in the UK and worldwide operate very safely without a guard, then sympathy and support starts to wane. The "safety and security" angle also fades when most Northern services see the guard locked away on the rear cabin after 8pm - this would not change with a second staff member on board.
I suspect that many passengers would now rather see a service without a guard that runs on a Saturday, rather than no services in 2019.
Ultimately, what the passengers want is a railway which runs an efficient service, and simply maintaining the status quo would achieve that. If the passengers aren't bothered if there's a guard or not, and by having a guard we won't have these strikes continuing in perpetuity, bearing in mind there's no additional cost to the train operator as they'd already guaranteed job security and wages, then why are we trying to change a system that clearly works fine with one which clearly doesn't as it's led to all of this?
The costs of this dispute are astronomical, it's having unquantifiable effect on communities and businesses, but they're still insisting on ploughing changes through when everybody knows that what we're seeing now is small fry compared to how bad the dispute could get.