The next train….
So… the biggest rail strike for 30 years is underway.
There’s going to be some amount of inconvenience today. We are going to see people complaining and calling the railway workers greedy and slagging off their right to strike.
Not least from Boris Johnson and his pals in the media. They would have you believe that this is all about greedy drivers earning their £50k+ a year and taking the piss. It isn’t. The majority of train drivers are members of Aslef, not RMT. The media doesn’t mention the cleaners, guards, admin staff. They want you to be angry that train drivers are paid more than you whilst shooing the others out of the door so they aren’t embarrassing with their low wages. Maintenance staff can earn as little as £18k – relying on overtime to keep the Wolf from the door and tax credits to top up wages.
The plan is to “modernise” the railway and I have no doubt this means thousands of job cuts – indeed the vacuous Grant Shapps has confirmed this. Whilst talking about restraint and the gratitude the staff should feel for covid investment which kept the trains running he tries to switch our attention from the redundancies and demotions which the RMT members are facing.
There’s a familiar rhetoric behind this however. It is around pay rises. We must tighten our belts. We must recognise that the highest inflation rates for years are being fuelled by greedy cleaners, admin staff, public sector workers like nurses and police officers. All those greedy people wanting more, more, more. How very dare they!!!!
Tighten your belts, show restraint – if costs rise then it’s the fault of the low paid, the poor, those on benefits. Jeezo, have we not learned this playbook yet?
And yet, whilst telling us to tighten our belts the Government is removing the restrictions on financial services which limit the amount that top execs and directors can get paid – it’s a Brexit benefit apparently.
They hope by allowing massive wages then they will attract companies to come here.
We see massive profits by energy companies whilst the rest of us copper up to pay our bills. Word is that the increases in bills are going to hit 50% again in October. It’s frankly terrifying for so many people. No wonder unions want pay rises.
Boris Johnson wants a fight. He wants to be seen as tough on unions. He wants us standing alone, isolated, cowed by greedy employers, multinational companies, venture capitalists, investment banks, faceless corporations. It’s like Thatcher on speed, (or maybe cocaine is more the choice of todays true blue Tory).
And where is the Labour Party? The party of the working class? Founded and funded by trade unionism, the party of wealth distribution and the welfare state? Well they aren’t on the picket lines that’s for sure. Their MPs banned from supporting the striking workers, unable even to say out loud that they support the RMT. “We are on the side of a deal” their hollow voice said on the news recently.
The inflation we are facing, the cost of living crisis is not caused by cleaners wanting a pay rise, by care workers wanting to afford the fuel they need to do their job, by nurses wanting better pay and conditions or janitors wanting to keep warm over the winter.
It’s a politically fuelled choice by ignorant, malevolent, manipulative bastards who do not give a shit about you and I.
The money that we are paying for all the increased prices is not going into our pockets is it? It’s going to big companies, speculators and the banks all of whom are making pretty colossal profits. I saw somewhere a post which said when your wages have gone up 5% and your bosses wages have gone up 500% and the companies profits have gone up 5000% is it really a strike by cleaners that is the problem here?
The market is broken, our society is broken and we are turning on the lowest paid, the working class and blaming them for this. Whilst those who really ARE to blame laugh into their champagne and hold parties at the V&A which cost £2000 a ticket. I’ve bought CARS that cost less than that.
But what can we do? We are stuck with it all. We let Thatcher decimate our unions, we adopted a fuck you Im okay attitude and we are stuck with it. People will freeze and starve over the winter and yet the UK will still have a Tory government. We are going to have to mobilise at a community level to keep people warm. We are going to have to look out for each other in our communities.
In the long term, join a union, join a community group, vote for independence but today, today don’t do the Tories’ work for them. Even in the midst of your inconvenience, remember that we might have to stand from Glasgow to Stirling on a packed and crowded train, but the Tories would have us all stand in a foodbank queue.
#RMT
#Indyref2
#YouYesYet
#RailwayStrike
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