The foolishness of the government’s appeasement of the unions is becoming clearer by the day. The 15 per cent pay rise for train drivers had hardly been signed off when Aslef announced a further set of strikes on LNER trains over rostering. Now, it is the turn of the Transport and Salaried Staff Association (TSSA), which represents office workers and senior staff in the rail industry. They are demanding not just a pay rise but also a 35-hour working week and 38 days’ holiday a year – a full ten days above what most people are awarded under their employment contract.
Any genuine private industry which carried on like this, rewarding hefty losses with fat pay rises for staff, would rapidly go bust
If it isn’t already, it will soon become apparent to the government just why the previous administration had pretty well given up speaking to the rail unions. Indulge them and they will merely be back for more, demanding to work ever fewer hours for ever more money – while refusing to budge an inch on restrictive working practices. The assertion by Darren Jones, Chief Secretary to the Treasury, that the pay rise for train drivers represents ‘good value for money for taxpayers’ is blatantly dishonest. Taxpayers are getting nothing whatsoever for the extra money they are going to be spending propping up a chronically unprofitable rail industry – on top, that is, of the £11.4 billion they already give in subsidies. This is already well in excess of the £9.2 billion which the industry earned in ticket sales.
Any genuine private industry which carried on like this, rewarding hefty losses with fat pay rises for staff, would rapidly go bust. But the unions have no intention of yielding to economic reality. All they are interested in is trying to force ever higher wages by using the threat of strikes to achieve their demands. The previous government did attempt to blunt that weapon by imposing a legal duty on unions to provide minimum service levels on strike days, but Labour repealed it as one of its first acts. In doing so it has created an enormous rod for its own back.
At some point a government is going to have to take on the rail unions just as Margaret Thatcher took on the National Union of Mineworkers – by setting out required employment reforms, drawing a line and refusing to budge. That might mean no trains for months on end – or at least until a Union of Democratic Railworkers emerges to represent employees who do want to work. Would we be unable to cope with a long-term rail strike? Railways have already become less important to the economy as more people work from home – a process which Keir Starmer says he wants to encourage. During the one- and two-day rail strikes over the past couple of years the economy hardly crumbled.
If I were in government I would be preparing for a showdown with the rail industry now by buying up and stockpiling secondhand motor coaches on airfields off the M25, ready for them to be sprung into action. Such a strike would be disruptive at first, but we would soon get used to it. It would give time and space to implement automation of rail services on metro and commuter routes – which as a result would never be troubled by train drivers’ strikes ever again.
Of course this will be a pipe dream for as long as the current government is in power. But the way things are going the conditions will, within a few years, be right for the election of a government which, like Mrs Thatcher’s, is prepared to face down the excesses of the unions.
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