Rail strikes discussion

[Watershed]

Correct.

If you're unemployed and have no income beyond UC, it's not awfully helpful to be told you're getting a pittance because you have the potential to earn more when you get a job.

 

[SamYeager]

If you're unemployed and have no income beyond UC, it's not awfully helpful to be told you're getting a pittance because you have the potential to earn more when you get a job.

I believe the thinking is that the benefit is set at a level that will encourage said people to get off their proverbial backsides and get a job. In practice life isn't quite that simple for all sorts of reasons. However I don't think this discussion is particularly relevant to this thread.

 

[Xenophon PCDGS]

What a strange thing to say. My identity isn't defined by which newspapers I do or do not read, so I see no reason to "enthuse" about any of them. If my criticism of the Telegraph (or the Daily Mail) offends you, I would suggest it does so because you've aligned yourself with those newspapers and are taking it personally.

Not so, my point was the left-wing newspapers should be so quotable and full of well-written texts that our website membership can quote with pride in their postings, that they would have no need to make any reference whatsoever to right-wing newspapers.

 

[Shrop]

Pensions are taxable income. So someone on just the state pension will pay no tax on that. Whereas the person on £40k plus the state pension will be paying almost £7,500 of tax.
Means-testing would mean providing the state pension cost more and you would get some people who deserved the pension not applying.
I think it would also be sending the wrong message to penalise people who have made provision for their retirement by taking away their state pension.

Yes, I get your point, but someone with an employment pension of, say £60k plus, like a great many senior business people will have, will hardly notice any difference whether their State pension is £9000 or £10,000, especially after tax has reduced that £1000 difference to just £600. That £600 will then equate to just 1% of their income, but for those who rely completely on a State pension of around £10,000, the £1000 difference will be huge, and even more so when you talk about disposable income. Every person in this country has their income tax tested, and when the State pension entitlement age is changed at the end of 2024, the change will be graduated, so these things really aren't that hard to do, it just needs a bit of focus.

 

[Wolfie]

Pensions are taxable income. So someone on just the state pension will pay no tax on that. Whereas the person on £40k plus the state pension will be paying almost £7,500 of tax.
Means-testing would mean providing the state pension cost more and you would get some people who deserved the pension not applying.
I think it would also be sending the wrong message to penalise people who have made provision for their retirement by taking away their state pension.

Absolutely. It's a great way to undermine the welfare state too. If some people have zero prospect of getting anything out they are far more likely to seek not to pay in.

Your first point is naiive, so please don't bandy the word around. The Treasury is not the same as The Government. There is always a queue of Cabinet Ministers lined up to get more money for their particular briefs and almost all are disappointed, and in this case when there are calls for funding from many many deserving quarters I do not think the Department for Transport are anywhere near the front of that queue. The Treasury's one and only focus is inflation, not the wages of anyone in particular. For your second point, if a Daily Mail article quotes the wages of Tube Train drivers in London in bold text, are you saying that a Government Minister told them to do it? THat is not even Machiavellian, it is illogical. Such an action would bring down the Minister who did it because it would be traceable and self defeating. You don't win the war by using false information, because you get found out as Mick Lynch tried on PM last week. Regarding the third point, I wonder whether you would know such arcane technical detail about another industry as knowing whether or not a Class 158 carries track detection equipment or not? MPs look for good soundbites from any sector when the chance comes along. Last week it might be MRI scanners, this week it's Track safety. The list of MPs banging on about Green Energy and Rail without even knowing the difference between a DMU and an EMU does not constitute a Government Misinformation Conspiracy. This thread seems to be more focussed on anti Government rhetoric than on justifying the wage claims.

Your initial comments re HMT are spot on.

Your comments about briefing are naive. Yes Minister/Yes Prime Minister were accurate enough in that regard (one of my all time favourite lines: l brief, you leak, he/she breaks Section 2 of the Official Secrets Act). Ministers don't generally brief journalists, that is true. Their politically appointed Special Advisors (SpAds) do though and three guesses where they get their steer from ..

 

[Horizon22]

View attachment 116543


respect.

Without a base to go from, this information is meaningless. I can tell you across the entire network you’d probably get several wrongly routes services each day.

 

[Wolfie]

Incorrect. The body that has responsibility for inflation is not the treasury. It is the Bank of England which has inflation targets. The treasury is political and so it's only target is to win the next election.

Correct re inflation, rubbish otherwise. HMT is responsible for all Government expenditure.

 

[urbophile]

Not so, my point was the left-wing newspapers should be so quotable and full of well-written texts that our website membership can quote with pride in their postings, that they would have no need to make any reference whatsoever to right-wing newspapers.

As far as I am aware, the only 'left-wing' newspaper currently available in the UK is the Morning Star. 'Left-leaning' papers of which the Mirror and the Guardian are about the only two examples may be sympathetic to causes such as the rail strike, but in many other cases are certainly not 'left-wing'. The media in this country are heavily dominated by right-wing 'media barons'.

 

[Wolfie]

'verbose' for Lynch? In the interviews I have seen he comes across as concise, to the point and calm. Not verbose at all. (Unless you mean articulate)

I am no fan of the RMT and it's message but agree this. While l don't agree his case he presents it well even under provocation.

As far as I am aware, the only 'left-wing' newspaper currently available in the UK is the Morning Star. 'Left-leaning' papers of which the Mirror and the Guardian are about the only two examples may be sympathetic to causes such as the rail strike, but in many other cases are certainly not 'left-wing'. The media in this country are heavily dominated by right-wing 'media barons'.

I would solely add "foreign" to your last sentence.

 

[Broucek]

Pensions are already over-complicated. I can barely keep up and I worked as a pensions actuary for the first 8 years of my career... Adding means testing to the state pension will make the whole thing even worse (and will involve significant administrative friction).

It will also, once again, make retirement planning more difficult - as with the tendency of successive governments to meddle with the Annual and Lifetime Allowances following Gordon Brown's supposed "once in a generation" reform. Whilst those only impact relatively fortunate people in decently paid jobs, it is not unreasonable for such people to have some modicum of stability in something as long-term as pension planning. And whilst a pension pot of £1m is more than most enjoy, it's hardly an egregious level of wealth given today's life expectancy.

Finally some schemes (including some on the railway) deduct the state pension form pensionable salary. How would that work?!!

 

[Domeyhead]

And you are proving mine. You seem to be trying to claim that everything said by the Tory media or the government that could be seen as "dodgy" is simply a mistake or is just simple ignorance. That is being pretty naive in my eyes, especially when the government have been doing the literal same thing over the last few years with Brexit, partygate, the Rwanda policy and loads of other situations too. Deliberately muddying the waters, trying to spread confusion and FUD and down right lying are basically how this government operates now and to assume that it isn't doing the same here is being pretty damn blind.

The fact is that it is the government who essentially control railway funding and spending now. So the government trying to say its upto the employers to agree pay deals is fundamentally incorrect when the employers can't agree anything without the government signing it off too. Based on what has been said it sounds like some ToC's are essentially happy to meet in the middle with workers but the government is refusing to allow them to.

Is it really just ignorance though? I think you are being pretty generous if you think it is just that rather than a specific attempt to muddy the waters.

Again I think you are being pretty naive if you think the MP's and the press banging on about automation don't know a significant amount of it is already used.

Well I'll tell you what then, you list some of these attributable lies - not hearsay or Media headlines but actual Government (and/or DFT) statements about the strike and the dispute. Forget obfuscation into Brexit, Rwanda or whatever and tweets by the Honourable Member for Little Beeching - just this dispute and its consequences and its resolution. The Government releases funds to Network Rail in COntrol Periods - I am sure most people know how this mechanism works. They do not add caveats about how it is spent - that is all done at much lower levels within Network Rail and ultimately the TOCs (or OLRs). You have muddied the waters comprehensively by introducing things like Rwanda and Brexit - so stick exactly on topic with some actual examples germaine to this current dispute and the financial background in the rail industry and we can discuss them sensibly.

 

[Bletchleyite]

I live in the North of England. There's nothing round my way that costs that much money for a terraced house.

Depends where. The Lancashire mill towns are cheap but grim, as are parts of Preston. Lancaster (which is reasonably nice) is typically at that approx £125K for the smallest 2 bed terraces in the roughest areas (north of the Lune). Liverpool and especially Manchester are heading well above that now even in not so nice areas.

Of course, you can't base all your traincrew in Middlesbrough or Blackburn just because the housing is cheap.

Pensions are already over-complicated. I can barely keep up and I worked as a pensions actuary for the first 8 years of my career... Adding means testing to the state pension will make the whole thing even worse (and will involve significant administrative friction).

Means testing the state pension (or indeed anything else like that) is silly. It's far more straightforward to instead play with the boundaries between taxation rates to claw it back that way. And if one has been prudent and saved, why should one receive less money than if one hasn't?

 

[ar10642]

The house price you quote is likely accurate, but is severely inflated by the astronomical prices in southern England. Up north a terrace house might be circa £125k, 3 bedroomed detached starting around your average figure. People don't have to live in London and SE.

The problem with saying that is if there was some sort of exodus and everyone came to the North, it would push prices up to something like that, and I doubt people in the North would like it much. People have to be somewhere.

The state pension is a minimum for those that will be unlikely to be able to increase their income for the rest of their lives
UC is a minimum for those that can hopefully increase their other income.

There are lots of people stuck renting now that will be forced to increase their income when they reach 68 (as it will be at the time).

I don't understand how people survive on UC.

 

[LNW-GW Joint]

Makes sense. Cheers.

Actually, having read the Liverpool Echo report of the settlement, it does not appear to cover the new trains or traincrew, still in negotiation.
It appears to cover station staff however.
No mention of ticket office closures.

 

[ar10642]

I live in the North of England. There's nothing round my way that costs that much money for a terraced house.

I live in a terraced house in rural Sussex, 6 miles from the nearest station. It costs me £1,500 in rent a month and it last sold in 2020 for £300,000. It is a tidy house by no means an extravagant.

 

[Nicholas Lewis]

The Guardian is reporting that NR is going to start looking into laying off up to 1800 staff.

Network Rail to begin formal process to lay off up to 1,800 staff

RMT union told formal consultations on modernisation plans to begin on 1 July to save over £100m annually

www.theguardian.com

Further below in the article this is said:

The implication is 1800 jobs will be lost in maintenance which is huge number. There aren't enough resources now to do anything with labour suppliers being used to top up resources so is the intention to just outsource even more to contractors. If NR are going to seriously up productivity it requires a complete change in the way it goes about maintaining the railway with more engineering access the key but that will always come up against the age old debate is the railway here for the engineers or running trains. Also it will also have to force roster to nights and weekend working.

What are NRs intentions?

 

[duncanp]

There are lots of people stuck renting now that will be forced to increase their income when they reach 68 (as it will be at the time).

Whether or not someone with an occupational pension of £40,000, plus the full state pension, is well off depends on their outgoings.

If you have to carry on paying rent for the rest of your life, you won't have as much disposable income as someone who has paid off their mortgage regardless of what your income is.

This is the problem with any proposal to reduce the state pension enititlement for anyone with an occupational pension over a certain figure.

 

[dk1]

Actually, having read the Liverpool Echo report of the settlement, it does not appear to cover the new trains or traincrew, still in negotiation.
It appears to cover station staff however.
No mention of ticket office closures.

Yes just mentions TSSA are getting 7.1% & other grades are still negotiating. No trains tomorrow or Saturday still due to no signallers.

 

[ar10642]

Whether or not someone with an occupational pension of £40,000, plus the full state pension, is well off depends on their outgoings.

If you have to carry on paying rent for the rest of your life, you won't have as much disposable income as someone who has paid off their mortgage regardless of what your income is.

This is the problem with any proposal to reduce the state pension enititlement for anyone with an occupational pension over a certain figure.

Very few people are going to have an occupational pension of 40k. Mine are worth next to nothing.

 

[gazzaa2]

'verbose' for Lynch? In the interviews I have seen he comes across as concise, to the point and calm. Not verbose at all. (Unless you mean articulate)

Yeah, i've used the wrong word.

 

[Starmill]

The issue with the Network Rail talks appears to be a paradox. It sounds as if the Network Rail line is 'nothing is agreed until everything is agreed'. I.e. they will negotiate a package on changes to roles, technology and terms and conditions, pay, and security guarantees all together. But they won't put down an unconditional guarantee of no compulsory redundancy without something in exchange.

The RMT position appears to be that they will negotiate on security but they won't open discussions on anything else until after that.

This also explains why Network Rail accuse RMT of "walking out" of talks, while RMT call anyone who makes this claim a liar.

The frustrating thing about it appears to be that the guarantees RMT are seeking are actually achievable without too much difficulty. But Network Rail will not make the guarantees with nothing in return as it would risk them getting no productivity agreement.

 

[matacaster]

If you're unemployed and have no income beyond UC, it's not awfully helpful to be told you're getting a pittance because you have the potential to earn more when you get a job.

Whilst I agree that's not very helpful, but basic UC is not intended to be something an able bodied person able to work would wish to try to live on. Those who can't work eg disabled etc will get additional support and rightly so. There are currently loads of jobs at a variety of skill levels available. Many might not be exactly what someone wants to do, but having any job is better when going for an interview for a more suitable job. Sitting at home shouldn't be an option for people who can work. That in my opinion also applies to healthy pensioners.

 

[Nicholas Lewis]

Here is the letter from NR (had to paste in text as don't have a direct link to it)

Eddie Dempsey, Senior Assistant General Secretary (RMT) Harish Patel, National Officer (Unite) Chris Hargrave, Organiser (TSSA) 20th June 2022

Dear Eddie, Harish and Chris Invitation to commence formal consultation I am writing to invite you to a formal consultation meeting on 1st July 2022 at 10:00 hours at Eversholt Street. Background We have engaged with our recognised trade unions via RIRG and directly on the need for reform to working practices. This has included extensive consultation over the last two years on the implementation of technologies to make the railway safer for our people and passengers, as well as more efficient for the passenger and taxpayer. As you will recall at RIRG, at an industry level, in principle the need for changes to working practices was agreed to ensure that the rail industry became sustainable. However, many hours spent in discussions both under the auspices of RIRG and more recently under our own collective processes we have not managed to make meaningful progress. In particular we have been meeting since earlier this year with the aim of seeking a negotiated settlement on how to effectively deploy our Maintenance and Works Delivery organisations in light of the post Covid increased financial deficit with which our industry is now faced. We have always made clear to you that we needed to make material progress in these discussions and that we needed to implement meaningful changes to working practices by April 2023. I am still hopeful that we can agree a way forward. Formal consultation on proposed changes, including redundancies

We very much hope (and anticipate) that sufficient employees will volunteer for redundancy to avoid the need to make anyone compulsorily redundant. Accordingly, the purpose of the meeting will be to:
commence formal consultation on Network Rail’s proposals to implement changes to working practices for all Maintenance and Works Delivery general grades; and as a result of those changes, to begin consultation with you on redundancies potentially arising as a result of the implementation of changes to working practices.

The proposed changes to the working practices will include but are not limited to:
implementing individual rostering, standardising the allocation of night and weekend working and a revised roster authorisation process; and
introducing joint incident response teams i.e., where our front line colleagues work collaboratively to assist each other and respond to incidents together whilst maintaining their engineering discipline.

This would also apply for maintenance tasks where applicable. Detailed information will be sent to you prior to the meeting in accordance with our collective bargaining agreement and the statutory requirements including under s188 of the 1992 Trade Union and Labour Relations (Consolidation) Act. In the meantime, as always, we are open to meet and discuss how we work together to achieve our aim of modernisation. Yours sincerely Paul Rutter Programme Director, Modernising Maintenance Chair of National Maintenance Council

Im disappointed to see Works Delivery being involved as they should be upsized to remove work from outside contractors but of course its its easier to get contractors to work unsocial hours for less money.

 

[ANorthernGuard]

For all the (IMO unjustified) hate unions seem to get these days, Mick Lynch has done a fantastic job with the media over the last day or two. Staying calm when Tory politicians and reporters get flustered and raise their voices, calling out lies and misplaced insinuations and generally coming across as a pretty damn reasonable.

He did an absolutely brilliant job.. The likes of Kay Burley etc. got more and more wound up as he stayed nice and calm with thoughtful answers and never once fell for the bait on offer....So glad I voted for him.

 

[yorksrob]

All you are doing is illustrating the point WBB. I have worked in several industry sectors and the constant sense of grievance that you are illustrating is not typical in other sectors - it is increasingly out of step and in some ways it is now unique. The Ticket Office closure issue has been developing for over a year in response to the need to reduce staff numbers in the face of declining revenue. Nobody wants to do it but you infer that somehow the powers that be want to do it for some strange reason known only to management. More importantly It has not just been annouced - rather it has gained media prominence because of the Rail Dispute. Ditto the Redundancy scheme introduced in the wake of the Pandemic has not been "dropped" - this is just an uninformed Press suddenly dragging out minor press releases which they ignored at the time of their release. I am not sure what lies have been told around who signs off pay rises. Perhaps you can elaborate. The Media might be guilty of some of the things you mention - drivers wages for instance have been quoted by the Tory press but that is journalistic ignorance. Regarding the last point, MPs can and do quote on things they know nothing about - both parties are equally culpable of soundbite politics - and I have even heard the Trasnport Select Committee spout rubbish when they ought to know better, but the only persons who should be held to account for speaking rubbish are the Secretary and the Minister of State for Trasnport and their team. Your post illustrates the point I was making. It does not rebut it.

Ticket offices are the shop window of the railway and their closure would be a bad thing. However, I suppose it's easier than dealing with structural issues such as train leasing costs.

 

[ANorthernGuard]

Without a base to go from, this information is meaningless. I can tell you across the entire network you’d probably get several wrongly routes services each day.

from the same panel?

Yes just mentions TSSA are getting 7.1% & other grades are still negotiating. No trains tomorrow or Saturday still due to no signallers.

Merseyrail have always valued ticket offices over on-board staff. As a Guard myself I never did understand the resistance for Guards to do revenue as almost every other TOC expects it.

 

[dk1]

Merseyrail have always valued ticket offices over on-board staff. As a Guard myself I never did understand the resistance for Guards to do revenue as almost every other TOC expects it.

I would be thinking commission like so many guards I know.

 

[boabt]

Whether or not someone with an occupational pension of £40,000, plus the full state pension, is well off depends on their outgoings.

If you have to carry on paying rent for the rest of your life, you won't have as much disposable income as someone who has paid off their mortgage regardless of what your income is.

This is the problem with any proposal to reduce the state pension enititlement for anyone with an occupational pension over a certain figure.

God only knows what you've been splashing the cash on throughout your life if you've managed a pension pot worth £40k a year, but didn't bother playing a mortgage!

 

[ANorthernGuard]

I would be thinking commission like so many guards I know.

In reality Commission is long gone. Most Guards I know are earning £400 less as etickets etc. have taken over.

 

[moleman212]

Not so, my point was the left-wing newspapers should be so quotable and full of well-written texts that our website membership can quote with pride in their postings, that they would have no need to make any reference whatsoever to right-wing newspapers.

Why not throw all the "right-wing newspapers" on to a big bonfire while you're at it...