5% is superinflationary. Inflation in the 12 months to February was 3.4%.
That simply isn’t relevant when the pay dispute relates to two previous years where inflation was substantially higher than that. Cumulative inflation since the last time I had a pay rise (2019) is now baked in, and I’m now approx. 25% worse off in real terms.
Would you be happy with your employer only offering you 3.4% in 2024 if you hadn’t had a rise since 2019? If not, what is the relevance of your comment above?
More distraction. The TOCs have contracts which require DFT to agree changes in costs but they are able to negotiate but need the agreement to be signed off. As you confirm ASLEF have not negotiated with the TOCs, the DFT do not employ the staff and the contracts do not require that DFT negotiate with ASLEF. It is always the same ASLEF are not excused from negotiating with the TOCs because the DFT quite properly won't negotiate with ASLEF.
Yes I knew all that but it is just whitewash as usual. ASLEF do not appear to be negotiating in good faith as they agreed to do in the industry wide framework agreement.
The TOCs are specifically prohibited from negotiating freely with ASLEF by virtue of the national rail contracts they have signed (have you read them?). That fact is well known to everyone involved with this dispute, so I’m not sure why you’re disputing it, or what point you’re trying to make. You are simply repeating the same wildly inaccurate points you have made in previous threads, presumably as an attempt at obfuscation/point scoring?
Having worked in retail myself, and having friends in senior roles at Tesco and (funnily enough) Sainsbury’s distribution, it is absolutely the case that everyone is there to grow the business, and has it drilled into them accordingly.
And those are ordinary commercial businesses that are free to negotiate with their employees, and are nothing like the TOCs we are discussing for various reasons, so I fail to see how they’re relevant?
It’s amusing to see that some posters on here consider train drivers (over a year, and £100k + to train) to be the equivalent of minimum wage supermarket staff, which shows how fundamentally they misunderstand the value and importance of the grade’s skill set to the railway.
And we generally do. Just not when we’re taking strike action to protect our work life balance.
I realise that’s something you don’t consider important, and would like to see reduced/made worse, but that’s why we have a union…
The problem of course is that the railway set up isn't conducive to people feeling like they're invested in it. Owning groups come in, do a few years, then clear off and you get a new tie and name badge so you don't care about that side of things - the company you work for is literally irrelevant.
The Government has declared war on you so you have no interest in them either.
You either get lucky and get the Virgin effect, or you keep rattling along doing your job with little obvious direct link between what you're doing, the pay in your bank each month and how the company/railway is performing.
It's the worst of all worlds.
I do my best because I believe in the railway, I actually quite like most of the passengers and it's in my make up to be driven to give a toss.
Even I couldn't care less about the company that employs me - when the employee survey comes around my answer is invariably the same - I care deeply and have a lot of pride in working for the railway, and I couldn't give a monkeys about the train operating company that has it's name over the door this week.
A great post that encapsulates how many of our colleagues feel rather better than I could.
