Yesterday at 9pm, London Underground train (Tube) drivers and other staff will go in strike refusing to work for nearly two days. As usual this will chaos for millions of London commuters and travellers/tourists who rely on the Tube to get to work or travel in London. Many of us sympathise that Transport For London (TFL) and the London Mayor Boris Johnson want to close the majority of Tube station ticket offices affecting the jobs of 950 Tube station staff, many will be deployed to other duties. We have been promised in any event that more staff will be on platforms and around stations to assist the public. We hope so!
The strike is meaningless and will alienate any sympathy we had for the staff TFL bosses and The Mayor Johnson wont take any action,
Today I tried to get into work however the unions sabotaged the strike timetable that stopped promised minimal service trains running & the buses were so crowded. Only the commuter Tube traveller suffers and our jobs too as many will not be able to get into work or have hell of a battle to get in being stressed and worrying about getting home in the evening!
Station staff are important, the majority are friendly and helpful. Some like to add a personal touch at their stations such as Golders Green station, where Chris, one of the duty staff, writes up entertaining ‘Thoughts/Quotes of the Day’ on a station noticeboard. Also classical music is played to soothe the wearied traveller.
However for years, the running of our Underground train system has been held to ransom by militant unions such as the RMT. The union leader Bob Crowe is like the remaining dinosaur from up to the 1970s, when unions generally held much sway over workers. union strikes could and have paralysed the country during those times.
As the London Underground is a monopoly transport system in London, with no real alternative. One billion passengers a year use it three million journeys a day. The London buses could not cope with that volume.
Therefore us the commuter and traveller have to endure the highest city public transport fares in Europe and have to cope with strikes, which disrupt our work and business costing £millions per day.
Bob Crow & Boris Johnson
Bob Crowe is an interesting & decisive character, he earns £145,000 per year as Union leader, he lives in a council house part subsidised by us the tax payer, when he could afford to buy a multi million pound abode and let a poorer deserving family have his house for the low rent he pays! This could only happen in the UK!
Crowe and his ‘Praetorian Guard’ of hard core of militant union drivers rule by a measure of intimidation and a belief that theirs is just cause.
He is either liked by his few & loathed by many Londoners relying on the Tube.
He is forthright, I have yet to see him bested when interviewed and interrogated by radio/TV journalists or London Mayors who run scared of him!
With this bullish attitude, Bob Crowe has won substantive wage increases, particularly for his Tube train drivers, who have much higher than average wages and longer holidays not really comparable or commensurate to their duties, than most other workers, who have more onerous work in London.
While many in London worked normally or with some overtime and others were unpaid volunteers to support the London 2012 Olympics. A year before, the transport unions threatened about possible train disruption during the Olympics and for want of a better word ‘blackmailed’ TFL bosses for a bonus for drivers etc., working so called ‘extra duties’?
Puzzling as others may suggest that the extra passengers forecast to be carried during the games will put staff under extra pressure so they should be rewarded. Another view could be that trains, tubes and buses are already full in peak hours so what is the difference if transporting sporting fans, tourists or commuters? Overtime would be paid anyway, if extra hours were accrued?
As expected, TFL bosses and Mayor Boris capitulated, panicking at the thought of adverse news coverage if key transport was not available during the Games.
The Tube train drivers were each given a £600 ‘bonus’, while the rest of those who worked extra to support the Games received nothing, not expecting to either We did it for the experience and pleasure of seeing London holding the Games.
The previous London Mayor, Ken Livingstone (Red Ken as he is known) was politically far left wing and cosied up to and was friendly to unions, so Bob Crow and his crew got any pay rise/perk they demanded. Also Ken like Boris does not have the balls to take on Bob and the unions when London was disrupted by train strikes.
Boris Johnson despite the seemingly breath of fresh air and expectation he brought with him during his first term as Mayor, now in his second term he has ‘bottled it’ with Bob C and as usual we have to cope battling our way into work and home over the next two days and possibly the same again next week 🙁
The age of the driver-less automatic computer controlled Tube train on all networks draws near but not fast enough!