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Frankly they're often not - bosses want rail lines run as efficiently as possible because that creates more money for them, that's for the benefit of rail users. Trade Unions want them run to maximise the benefits for workers, that's often not the same as the benefits for passengers.
Don't get me wrong Trade Unions are an absolutely fundamental part of a working capatalist system and I'm a member of one. But they're not some disinterested party who look after the interest of the customers against the wicked bosses, but organisations designed to advance the interests of their members at times against both the bosses and the customer
Railway lines can be run just as efficiently with one driver instead of two in the cabin; or with weekly safety checks instead of daily ones. A private company is in fact obliged by the law to return the maximum amount of profits possible to its shareholders- a clear and incompatible conflict of interests when running a public service.
How ridiculous, one of the main (if not the main) role of TU's is to maximise their members wages, which means higher costs and higher charges for customers.
Maximising profits is not incompatible with providing a good service, quite obviously.......
Why do you need two drivers in a cab apart from giving them someone to talk to (and the extra risk of them being distracted and crashing). Private companies by law are also made to follow health and safety and this takes precedence over profit.
Unions aim is to maximise the benefits for their members. As I say there's nothing wrong with that but not for a second do unions have the public's interest at heart (and thank God or else my union wouldn't be recommending we reject the pay offer)
That's not really true.
The interests of customers is for fares to be as cheap as possible; the interests of the drivers is to earn as much as possible. They are mutually exclusive- higher wages means higher costs means higher ticket prices. This is the same regardless of who owns and manages the operating company.
They can be run just as safely, too.
Trade unions are not averse to insisting on high staffing levels on superficial grounds of safety, because that is in the interests of their members.
The only people trade unions are responsible to are their members- not anyone else. Sometimes the needs of provider and consumer meet, but when they don't, it is the member who gets the support. Otherwise the TGWU would be sending a nice big cheque to all Stagecoach customers who couldn't get to work, couldn't get home from work, or got left in the rain for hours.
Exactly the kind of human error that cost 31 lives in the Paddington Disaster a few years ago, and which would most probably have been prevented had there been two drivers in the cabin- specially the one with the inexperienced driver.
To a degree only. The companies will do the minimum they can get away with, instead of the proper.
Perhaps not too much but they're still a lot closer and more related to the needs and interests of Joe Bloggs than CEOs and boardroom members will ever be.
More ridiculous generalisations, does the company you work for do everything they can to get round laws that might reduce their profits, do you personally?
Railway prices since privatisation have rocketed to an extent that makes a trip to the International Space Station look reasonable.
Humans will make errors. That is a fact of life.
Two drivers wouldn't solve anything, unless the driver was committing an act that was in breach of his training, such as at Southall.
It does mean that the RMT has twice as many members, though. But they're impartial and unbiased, of course.
And the staff who implement the companies plans are union members who only care when the pay review comes round.
I also thing your opinion of companies is wrong- many companies go far and beyond the absolute minimum. For instance 85% of all Stagecoach buses in Newcastle are brand new low-floor buses, that's going far beyond what they need to do. They could still use the old x-reg buses- some of the smaller operators still do.
Yes, I felt that when I had to fork out an extra tenner to get to work on Monday. I could see how much they cared about the customers when they abandoned everyone at the bus stop.
Railway prices have rocketed for many reasons, and it isn't just (or even mostly) because of profits earned by the TOCs. The ROSCOs have their massive slice of the pie, so does National Rail, and railway staff wages have rocketed too because of competition for staff between TOCs.
But with my bus pass, about 85% of the fare is costs- the excessive cost of petrol, the cost of the insurance, the maintenance, and now the significantly increased cost of the striking drivers. Sure I'd like to see my fare come down by 10%, but my fare isn't high because of the evil profiteering Stagecoach.
In the case of Hatfield, the Railtrack executive discussed the need of replacing cracking rails and decided 'no, fuck it'. Put it back by ten months, it'll be alright'.
In the case of Potters Bar, the dismal Balfour Beatty, on a cheap subcontract from Railtrack, carried out only a fraction of the safety checks old British Rail used to do (because it costs more money to do more checks obviously) and did a pisspoor job of it too, costing the lives of yet more passengers and then having the cheek to suggest it had been vandals who'd sabotaged the points.
About two years ago in the newly part-privatised London Underground, bosses insisted on running trains with faulty secondary brakes until the union raised the issue and went on strike until the defective trains were repaired.
And many more horror stories like the above are to be found.
Sorry to break it to you, but companies' only aim and goal is to make the maximum amount of profit possible by any means necessary, and in the immense majority of cases bosses won't give a toss about certain issues if they can get away with it.
BR were not averse to cost-cutting, either, and you know they weren't. And before you even mention Thatcher, the worst cuts were under a left-wing Union-ruled Labour administration.
Nothing is as black and white as you try to make out. And the railways balls up is certainly atypical of private companies.
Yes you just highlight my point, certainly there are some examples (i am sure I could find similar in the publi sector) but that doesn't take away from the fact that your generalisations are ridiculous, does it?
Sorry, it'd be in anyone's interest apart from the bosses and shareholders of the business that is running the service for profit. Heaven forbid we make them do anything that might eat into their precious profits.
Paddington is one example that contradicts that.
The new driver was confused with the array of lights in front of him. A second pair of eyes would and most probably could have told him the light regulating his line was in fact red.
You are not a great fan of taxes are you? I'm sorry but you cannot have it both ways. If you don't like high fares and yet want a good service, taxes will have to pay for it, because privately own services sure as hell ain't going to cough up for it as they should.
No public service, be trains, water, buses, health or others can ever be justified to be run by private businesses, because the interests and goals of the latter are always going to mean a detriment in the service if it is going to cost money otherwise.
Fact.
Why not supermarkets for example?
There has to be a cost/benefit analysis of it- some of the suggestions are ridiculous. Private or public that needs to be done- two drivers would make little difference to most incidents.
So you think that running an unsafe service is in the interests of a company?
Are you going to prove that?
Are you going to prove that it wouldn't happen in a private company- because I'd point out Clapham to prove otherwise.
What on earth are you wittering on about now?
Things cost money regardless of who runs them- that's my point. Bus fares are not high because these nasty evil private companies bump up prices to a stupid level.
I don't mind paying for a service, but I don't get a service because the monkeys were all stood outside the depot throwing things at police cars.
Privatisation made that happen.
Oh hold on... many other countries in Europe don't have their railways run for profit only.
So long as they get away with it, they save precious profits.
It is, simply, a gamble. Which disgracefully many greed-obsessed CEOs are more than happy to take. No doubt because they get to their office in a chauffer-driven car rather than in a packed train like their long suffering "customers".
I thought I already did?
Hatfield.
Lots of accidents happen for lots of different reasons.
Some accidents can be prevented by having an extra driver in the cabin. Just as many others can be prevented by doing daily checks on the lines rather than bi-weekly ones by poorly trained sub-sub-subcontractors.
They could've fooled me.
That's a price we all have to pay from time to time, and which indeed some of us monkeys might be doing one day.
And that'd be why it makes little difference to nearly all incidents.
Though I'd like to see you prove that all other countries use two drivers.
Can you explain to me, please, how paying a moronic monkey £3 an hour more will suddenly make him a talented and courteous driver, instead of the abusive monosyllabic cretin that he is now?
Lets get back to the real point here- the greedy striking scum are holding the people of this city to ransom simply to line their own back pockets. Why is this acceptable simply because Stagecoach dare to make a profit? If Stagecoach made a loss would it be acceptable? If the council ran the buses would it be acceptable? If not, why not?
The operator of the service is irrelevant- the issue is whether strikers should be liable to the public that they fuck over up the arse repeatedly in the cause of selfishness.
Do you think that the Stagecoach drivers are right to strike for an increase on a 16% pay deal?
Do you think that it is right that the poorest people in the city were abandoned at the bus stop with no warning?
Do you think that it is right that the poorest people should take a huge hit on their finances so that someone else can earn more? Would you expect the drivers to take a hit if I went on strike?
My answer to all those is a resounding no- and the drivers should be made to pay. Their "solidarity" stretches no further than their wallet- everyone else in this city can go fuck themselves. And we had to.
Well, i have heard it what with studying history and business and politics over the past many years. I am a worker now and all you do is say what they did, you havnt, unlike aladdin and everyone else made a single point about what they actual do now or could do in the future or any suggestions to improve the situation, its pretty obvious by just reading your posts thats all you have to say.
Would you advocate getting rid of the copilot in commercial aircraft? At the end of the day they don't make much different in most accidents...
I've read it in a newspaper in the past but I'll try to dig it up.
I wonder what could have made him abusive and cretin in the first place... :chin:
I was saying that I'm not too prepared to insult and boo people who strike, because we are all on the same boat and one day it could be you or me striking.
As I said I'm not against on principle to agree with you on this particular instance- if they are indeed being greedy.
How much were they being paid beforehand, out of curiosity?
Well I don't know about trains, but in cars you're statistically more likely to be in a crash if they're are two people as you're often also having a chat with them as well as concentrating on driving.
Bollocks, most companies do far and away more than they legally have too. There are exceptions, that's true.
http://scotlandonsunday.scotsman.com/uk.cfm?id=260052003
Yes, because the average worker can quite happily tuck into an £800 meal. The top dogs in the unions are probably nearer to the bosses than you'd like to admit.
You obviously didn't learn very much in all that studying.
Boom! Another helpful and insightful post.
Well, he's being a prat. I'm wondering what he thinks would happen without unions? Maybe looking at what happened in the past might give us a clue. All of the rights we have today were not given willingly - they were fought for.
It makes me wonder what exactly Bullseye was learning in those history lessons.
Could be he studied World War Two (when people were literally dying to protect those rights)
http://www.unionhistory.info/timeline/1939_1945.php
The 4606 members of the merchant navy who died that year probably fully supported the dockers action to protect their rights.
Oh and they refused to load ships before D-day. Ah, yes fighting for the right for proper pay whilst over the other side of the channel people fought and died for a lot more than that.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/ww2peopleswar/stories/98/a1324298.shtml
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2005/07/04/ndeedes04.xml&sSheet=/news/2005/07/04/ixhome.html