London feels very expensive by comparison to the States. It’s a direct dollar/pound translation thing. Typically it’s about $4 a pint in America. Last night I went to as bar in Covent Garden, The Maple Leaf where it was a little over £4 a pint. I’ll be honest, it was a bloody nice pint (Sleeman’s Honey Brown), but it would have to be considering the fact that it’s almost twice the price of a pint of Alpine in any Sam Smith’s Pub. Now admittedly Sam Smith’s is super cheap and doesn’t actually serve up London’s finest brew, but, in these times of financial strife (caused by bankers in a general sense and, specifically to me, my recent excursion to the America) a cut price lager really does have to be worth considering. Then again, another reason why you get what you pay for at the Maple Leaf is the service. More often than not, you’ll be served by a friendly Canadian barmaid with a glowing set of gnashers proudly displayed every time she smiles (which is quite frequently). As I’ve said before, good service really is worth it because it leaves you with a little warm glow inside (though, in fairness, drinking copious amounts of alcohol will eventually do the same thing anyway, regardless of whether it’s a bottle of Bollinger or a can of White Lightning).
London is fantastic for so many reasons. It’s full of brilliant bars, magnificent museums, great galleries and amazing people (sorry, I ran out of appropriate alliteration). London has a brilliant, interconnected, transport infrastructure; that should, theoretically, put to shame the public transport in virtually any other big city that I’ve visited. I say theoretically because London Transport is let down somewhat by the chimpanzees they allow to work on it.
Strikes on the tube are one of my pet peeves, manly because I think that, for the most part, they’re totally unwarranted. Tube drivers earn an average salary of £40,000 for a job that, let’s face it, isn’t very hard and, as the DLR has proved, could easily be done by a computer. For this financial compensation, they only have to turn up 4 days a week during which they’ll only have to work for 35 hours. Tube workers are also, for some reason, getting an extra £500 to work during the Olympics. Do they have to work extra hours for this endowment? No. Are they being forced to work more anti-social hours or more weekends. No. Do they actually have to do anything more than their job would, under usual circumstances, have required? No.
Whilst other people are having their pay and benefits cut, Tube workers were offered a 4.5% pay increase for the year. Amazingly they rejected it. Incredibly, the greedy sods want more! Teachers from a couple of the unions are striking at the end of the month because they’re having their benefits and pensions taken away from them. That strikes me (if you’ll pardon the pun) as being an entirely justifiable action. Anyone who strikes because things, be they benefit or pay, are being stripped from them has my support. On the other hand, because of the typical reasons why tube drivers tend to strike, they have nothing but my disgust. Tube workers tend to strike not because they’re losing out, but because they want an ever increasing slice of the pie. As a result, fares will go up and cost will have to be cut elsewhere. Would you like a nice air conditioned train? Tough, because the money that they could have spent on that has ended up in the drivers pocket. Wouldn’t it be nice to have wi-fi access on the tube? Well, if you want it, you’re out of luck because nobody can afford it now that the unions have earmarked the funds for their members. Prices will continue to rise whilst the service continues to get worse. The problem is, there’s no alternative. It’s not like commuters and passengers can chose to take their journey into London with a different train company. We’re stuck with it, and things are only going to get worse as long as the unions are clearly in the driving seat.
The current tube dispute centres around the sacking of tube worker who was dismissed on the grounds that he displayed “abusive behaviour”. The matter has gone to an independent employment tribunal who have, as yet, rendered no verdict. None the less, the RMT feels that it has cause to strike. Was this man unfairly dismissed? Well, it’s up to the tribunal to decide, so why can’t the RMT simply wait for their verdict. If the tribunal were to decide that there were no grounds for sacking the man and he was not then reinstated by TFL, then perhaps there may be grounds to strike. However, given that the tribunal is yet to make up their mind about the matter, isn’t a strike somewhat premature? You might even say that it’s only been called in an attempt to force TFL into re-hiring this man, irrespective of the tribunal’s decision. One might even argue that the RMT have decided to strike now only because they expect the tribunal to not rule in their member’s favour. Not only that, by striking just as Wimbledon opens, it allows them to get maximum publicity and, perhaps cause the most embarrassment to TFL. Thankfully it doesn’t seem to have worked as there seems to have been very little, if any, disruption to tube services in the capital. In fact, as far as the tennis at Wimbledon goes, the greatest annoyance has been the inclement weather, and even that hasn’t dampened proceedings on centre court due to the new roof.
In the interest of full disclosure, I should say that this rant’s been sponsored by my dodgy tube ride on Saturday. I got on the train at my regular stop. It travelled to the next station where it sat for an inordinately long time. Then, the driver announced that the train would be stopping long before its scheduled destination.
From that, I’m going to infer that the train driver simply refused to work whilst the other one declined to go any further than Wembley Park. So, I had to change trains there and wait for a Jubilee line train to come along. The Jubilee Line goes to Baker Street, but it stops at about 6 more stations before it gets there. As a result it takes far longer and that meant that I turned up about 30 minutes late. Tube workers, you work shy bastards are literally stealing my time, so I want compensation from you. I want better conditions too. You can afford it after all since your union has blackmailed its way to such extravagant pay rises by threatening to cripple Londoner’s routes into the city during critical times like the royal wedding, New Years Eve and now, Wimbledon.
It does make you realise why tube workers are getting the extra £500 for working during the Olympics; it’s a bribe not to strike. Seriously, we’ve reached a point where tube workers are having to be bribed just so that they’ll definitely turn up for work. The time has come to sack the lot of them and replace them with robots. In the meantime, we can hire people who actual want to work and pay them a reasonable wage, not one that exceeds the salary paid to teachers, police, nurses and other important, skilled workers.
Let’s face it, if you’re going to pay tube workers so much money then nobody’s going to bother going to university at all. Why come out with a debt that equals £27K for tuition alone when you can fail all your GCSEs and earn a packet by pushing a few buttons and fiddling with a leaver all day.
The crux of my argument is, Tube workers do not provide a good level of service and are most certainly not good value for money. So, I implore the government, if you want to make cuts anywhere, then the place to look is directly beneath your feet.
So you turned up 30 minutes late because you had to get a Jubilee line train instead of the Met for your information it only takes 4 minutes longer on the Jubilee than it does on the Met to Baker Street so instead of bashing hard Working Tube workers and for your information Train Drivers are not the only people that work on the tube get your facts right first.
Thank you very much for pretty much making my point for me. I’ll disassemble your argument for you now.
Firstly, if you’d have read everything that I wrote in this post you would have realised that my delay was caused not only by having to switch to the Jubilee line at Wembley Park, but also because I my initial Metropolitan Line train was held up at Harrow on the Hill for, as I said “an inordinately long time”. Then, once I got to Wembley Park, I had to wait for the Jubilee Line train to turn up, wasting further time. All in all, I arrived about 30 minutes later than I would have done if the tube service had been working as it should.
Secondly, read the post again and you’ll note that, whilst much of my ire is aimed at the drivers, I have mentioned general tube workers as well, so I’m fully aware that other people do different jobs on the Tube network.
Simply put, my facts are completely accurate. It’s a shame that the same can’t be said for yours. I stand by everything I’ve said and, in fact, over the weeks since I wrote this post I’ve had to suffer even more incompetence from Tube workers, both drivers and platform staff alike. Perhaps it’s time for a new post about all that?
I’m going to assume that you work on the Tube and, from what you’ve said, I suspect that you’re not a driver. I’ve probably asserted that people who work on the tube are ill-educated, incompetent oafs who are incapable of coherent thought. Well, given that you couldn’t adequately absorb the information in my post and that led you to your clearly baseless counter-point, I can certainly see that you meet the criteria for my latter assertion. Your lack of any punctuation, save for the final, solo, full stop at the end of your rant, suggests to me that you couldn’t have paid too much attention in English classes from primary school level and upwards. Thus you conform to my former observation regarding the educational standards of the average tube worker.
In other words, all I really needed to write under your comment was Q.E.D.
Anyway, thanks for playing.
As a London Underground employee, who went to university, I have to agree with your point regarding the usefulness of university. However, It is unfair to imply that all employees on the tube are stupid.
I do worry that the activity of the union often undermines public opinion, particularly in a time when jobs are under threat. However, my point I suppose is that anyone else in the same position, with a strong union that can be relied on to protect workers interests, would do the same. At the end of the day, any pay increase below the RPI is a pay cut.
I think, while the unions tactics are excessive at times, public focus should be on getting these benefits for all employees, not chastising the ones who do.
The simple fact is, no union should have that much power. Unions are, effectively, the machines of socialism. The point of them is to ensure that their workers are paid fairly. I have no truck with that concept, but that’s not what’s happening with the various train unions. We can all see that they’re not looking for fair pay, they do, after all, already receive that ten times over. What they’re looking for is more pay. They’re greedy and they want the biggest slice of the pie that they can possibly get. Who gives a damn if Londoners are forced to pay ever increasing fares to pay their vastly inflated wages. Who cares if the London Underground is the most expensive in the world? Who cares if money that’s going on exorbitant wages could be used to improve a service that’s in severe decline and falling well below the excellent standards of rail lines in other major cities.
Frankly, if you’re being paid £45K a year for working 35 hours a week with 43 days of annual leave for pushing a button every couple of minutes, then you’re overpaid and it’s only right that your salary be cut and I don’t mean by simply not having a rise above RPI. Slash £20k from a tube driver’s salary and I’d still say that they’re overpaid. After all, £25k is about what a newly qualified teacher would get for working in the outer London area, and out of those wages they’d still have to pay for their travel expenses. Unlike you guys they don’t get a free travel card. Not only that, Teachers have to work a damn site harder for their money and they have to be far more qualified than a train driver. I mention teachers, but the same goes for nurses, the police, fire fighters and countless other professions of varying difficulty and risk.
OK, it’s possibly unfair to imply that tube workers are all stupid, but they certainly don’t need to have brains to do their job either. Driving a train is a comparatively easy job, yet I’ve still observed drivers make an alarming number cock ups. Drivers make incorrect announcements about train destinations, they close doors on passengers as their trying to board the train (having given all of a few seconds to allow people to get on), doors aren’t opened quickly enough; the list can go on and on. Quite frequently, when drivers do have to make announcements to, inevitably, inform passengers about delays and changes in the service, they speak so unclearly that their utterances are completely unintelligible. Is it too much to ask for a train driver, who is expected to make the odd announcement, to have a clear and easy to understand speaking voice? Apparently so. How many people have been stranded in the wrong place after services have been changed and they’ve been unable to tell, just because the driver can’t speak in a coherent manner? And let’s face it, I’ve got problems understanding what train drivers are saying, what chance do foreign visitors, whose ears are less attuned to the guttural sounds made by many drivers, have to comprehend them?
Perhaps the only hardship tube workers might have to endure is working the occasional public holiday. Of course, they want to be rid of that responsibility too, or at least be paid stupid money for doing it. So ASLEF wants their drivers to have TRIPLE PAY and a day off in lieu for working on Boxing Day. You’ve got to be kidding me. Most reasonable people would be happy with one or the other. Most people would feel privileged to get double pay or happy with just a day off in lieu, but not the tube drivers. No, as ever, they want, more and more and more and then, once they get it they’d like to come back for another helping.
The public sector is having undeserved cuts made to their pay and benefits whist tube workers moan that their increases aren’t high enough. It’s no wonder that nobody sane would have the slightest bit of sympathy for them. The jobs they do are comparatively easy. A while ago, when the subject of train automation was brought up, I discovered that on the Victoria Line, the drivers don’t even drive the trains. All they do is open the doors. One could certainly make a fairly good case for getting rid of the “driver” altogether. I’m all for automation the whole damn tube network. Obviously, seeing an end to the cash cow that the tube has become for their members, the unions aren’t happy. On the subject of cutting drivers out of the equation, an RMT rep had this to say “Driverless trains are a lethal and unworkable option for London Underground and any move in that direction will meet the fiercest union resistance.” It’s an interesting point of view isn’t it? Certainly nobody would want safety to be compromised (and, lets face it, the safety angle is how the PR departments of train drivers unions usually try to counter any suggestion of jobs cuts), so surely we can’t do away with drivers. Well, it would be a convincing argument were it not for the fact that it’s completely untrue. The Copenhagen Metro runs trains without drivers and they do that 24 hours a day (unlike London), 7 days a week. No doubt the unions would say that their system, as well as not working, is unsafe and inefficient. On the contrary, in April 2008, the Copenhagen Metro won the award at MetroRail 2008 for the world’s best metro where they were praised in particular for network’s high regularity, safety and passenger satisfaction. If only London Transport could make such a claim. Maybe, one day, once all the detritus is cleared from the rails (and by that I don’t mean leaves on the line) we’ll have a tube network of which we could be equally proud. When that day comes (and it can’t come too soon), perhaps then Londoners will finally get the tube service they deserve and not one that’s been compromised by the greedy sods who work on it.
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