The Theresa May General Election thread (edited)

ToneControl

I met a chap whose Dad and brother work for London underground - quite a famous unionised workforce.
The brother was on £40k at 18, with a basic engineering role, and the Dad was on £60k, working on fixing engineering too.

Underground train drivers average salary?
"a newly-qualified tube driver starts on a salary of £49,673 a year. This can rise after five years to anything between £50,000 to £60,000"
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/03/15/how-well-off-are-londons-tube-drivers-and-why-are-they-striking/


a few averages:
http://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/news/article-2868911/Best-paid-UK-jobs-2014-Compare-pay-national-average.html

Train and tram drivers

£47,101

Solicitors

£46,576

Chartered and certified accountants

£38,692

Veterinarians

£37,763

Managers and directors in retail and wholesale

£29,710

Bar staff

£7,404

Jalapeno

capo4th said:

VimFuego said:

people have the right to withdraw their labour if the pay conditions offered them are not suitable, when pay conditions are imposed by a monopoly upon a collective that collective have the right to collectively withdraw their labour. I suggest if it is a major inconvienience to you that you find a job where you will not be affected by it.

Who actually agrees with this?

I do. However ....

capo4th said:
Can you imagine if all nurses did what southern rail employees did and just did not turn up for a couple of days holding the country/employers/general public to ransom. In my opinion a train driver in London makes a sensible well above average wage. Why do they always feel the need to go on strike ? I could understand if they were on £15 an hour and on the breadline.

Only the Southern strikes have nothing to do with pay - it's all about who pushes a button ... which to me rightly invites severe criticism of the union involved for the level of misery incurred by the passengers over such a prolonged period. When the railways were publicly operated, the old Southern Region was still the worst run and still had the most strikes.

capo4th

Heartfeltdawn said:

capo4th said:

Who actually agrees with this? Can you imagine if all nurses did what southern rail employees did and just did not turn up for a couple of days holding the country/employers/general public to ransom. In my opinion a train driver in London makes a sensible well above average wage. Why do they always feel the need to go on strike ? I could understand if they were on £15 an hour and on the breadline.

£15 an hour is on the breadline? Fucking hell, I'm in the wrong thread. Maybe the wrong forum. 

*holds cap in hand and looks at the ground*

£15 an hour equates to £32-35000 a year you would struggle to run a house and support a family in London 

capo4th

Myranda said:

ICBM said:

capo4th said:
Who actually agrees with this? Can you imagine if all nurses did what southern rail employees did and just did not turn up for a couple of days holding the country/employers/general public to ransom. In my opinion a train driver in London makes a sensible well above average wage. Why do they always feel the need to go on strike ? I could understand if they were on £15 an hour and on the breadline.

I agree with it.

I'm not sure I agree with this particular case because I don't know the details, but the principle is correct - the only leverage employees have over an employer imposing unfair conditions on them is to withdraw their labour.

One of the reasons nurses are so poorly paid in this country is precisely because their belief in the duty of care ensures they will never take strike action - this has been ruthlessly exploited by their employers.

Tube drivers asked to work shifts for crazy money (£40k for sitting down and making sure to stop when lights are red, and go when they're green...) STRIKE

Swapping who pushes the button for closing the doors STRIKE... for almost a whole year on and off!

When conditions are poor and/or pay is poor then collective industrial action is the only bargaining tool left to workers, I stand by that right and think it's important that people have the power - I'd support strikes by nurses and teachers over pay a lot faster than say a On Board Supervisor who is jealous of the button privileges... but when the STRIKE option is used at the drop of a hat, the only logical outcome is governments clamping down on strike action, removing rights and trampling over the collective bargaining power of unions. Workers at Sports Direct were treated little better than cattle - they should have been talking strikes... from what I understand Amazon were crappy to the point where Victorians might say "that's jolly unfair" before being seen to do so and reacting by making life 10% less crappy - but their staff were prime strikers ... Rail and Tube staff are paid fantastically for what they do, work cushy jobs and still feel that they're the most hard done-by people on earth - not realising that they're likely only a few pay rises from being more expensive than automating the whole system.

Also... Capo - if you think £15 an hour is the breadline you should know that the minimum wage is what an awful lot of people are on, and it's £7.50

Great points people who earn huge wages going on strike over who,pushes the buttons ! This is what infuriates the commuters in London these people are well,paid.

capo4th

ToneControl said:

I met a chap whose Dad and brother work for London underground - quite a famous unionised workforce.
The brother was on £40k at 18, with a basic engineering role, and the Dad was on £60k, working on fixing engineering too.

Underground train drivers average salary?
"a newly-qualified tube driver starts on a salary of £49,673 a year. This can rise after five years to anything between £50,000 to £60,000"
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/03/15/how-well-off-are-londons-tube-drivers-and-why-are-they-striking/


a few averages:
http://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/news/article-2868911/Best-paid-UK-jobs-2014-Compare-pay-national-average.html

Train and tram drivers

£47,101

Solicitors

£46,576

Chartered and certified accountants

£38,692

Veterinarians

£37,763

Managers and directors in retail and wholesale

£29,710

Bar staff

£7,404

Thank you ! These strikers are well paid and should be thankful 

capo4th

Don't forget their double time extra shifts on a bank holiday and a few hours extra here and there where their unions have negotiated a special deal. Like I said earlier if they don't like their well paid button pressing jobs maybe they should look elsewhere.

The guy in charge of the unions a good friend of Jeremy Corbyn (I won't mention his name) Mugwumper2 is on £150 an hour to all those people moaning about wages. 

Corbyn is a union puppet and supports these well paid button pressers strike action.

ToneControl

capo4th said:

Heartfeltdawn said:

capo4th said:

Who actually agrees with this? Can you imagine if all nurses did what southern rail employees did and just did not turn up for a couple of days holding the country/employers/general public to ransom. In my opinion a train driver in London makes a sensible well above average wage. Why do they always feel the need to go on strike ? I could understand if they were on £15 an hour and on the breadline.

£15 an hour is on the breadline? Fucking hell, I'm in the wrong thread. Maybe the wrong forum. 

*holds cap in hand and looks at the ground*

£15 an hour equates to £32-35000 a year you would struggle to run a house and support a family in London 

average wage is £28k

Moe_Zambeek

Out of interest, how much do nurses actually earn?

ThePrettyDamned

Moe_Zambeek said:

Out of interest, how much do nurses actually earn?

Most are band 5 - between 21k and 28k generally. 

ThePrettyDamned

@capo4th I'd love a £15 an hour job. That's not breadline, even in London. 

There are plenty of people on £7.50 an hour. Christ, on graduation my friend went back to London and worked for £7.50 an hour in a bar. I was recently recommended to apply for a job that was £6.50 an hour (I didn't, because it was an insult to my experience, education and abilities). Not in London, but still. 

I don't know enough about the train driver strikes to comment on them specifically, but it surprises me what you think a poorly paid job is, where the breadline is and I'd be interested to know what you think the average wage is in the UK. 

Heartfeltdawn

Moe_Zambeek said:

Out of interest, how much do nurses actually earn?

Payscale has a median Registered Nurse income of just under £25k. 

VimFuego

Heartfeltdawn said:

Moe_Zambeek said:

Out of interest, how much do nurses actually earn?

Payscale has a median Registered Nurse income of just under £25k. 

my last corporate job paid a fair bit more than that. I used to sit in an office for 8 hours a day shuffling bits of paper around, and to get the job I had to attend evening classes for a few years and the biggest stress I had was staving off the boredom. When you compare that to the academic and educational requirements of a nurse, the hours of work they do and the amount of stress they are under, and couple that the fact that if they fuck up people die, don't really seem fair or right to me.

Heartfeltdawn

capo4th said:

£15 an hour equates to £32-35000 a year you would struggle to run a house and support a family in London 

I'll be sure to tell the folk I know in London that. Perhaps you'd struggle on £35k per annum as that'd mean having to sack the butler. 

ThePrettyDamned

VimFuego said:

Heartfeltdawn said:

Moe_Zambeek said:

Out of interest, how much do nurses actually earn?

Payscale has a median Registered Nurse income of just under £25k. 

my last corporate job paid a fair bit more than that. I used to sit in an office for 8 hours a day shuffling bits of paper around, and to get the job I had to attend evening classes for a few years and the biggest stress I had was staving off the boredom. When you compare that to the academic and educational requirements of a nurse, the hours of work they do and the amount of stress they are under, and couple that the fact that if they fuck up people die, don't really seem fair or right to me.

I feel similarly. 

To get up the payscale you head into management. So less patient contact, but you have to handle the constant stream of negative press. 

Example - the 4 year wait for discharge discussed as a failure. It's not - it's proof that the NHS won't just turf people out unless they have somewhere to go. Obviously no one wanted to look after the patient and the spaces in homes that were equipped to handle a patient like that were all taken. 

This negative press amounts to a huge amount of stress. For, often, under £40k per year. 

I actually had a bit of a strop one morning because, just before work, I heard the end of life care was being reformed due to catastrophic failures. This was a couple of weeks after a Canadian healthcare authority concluded the UK NHS had the best end of life care in the world. It's utterly demoralising, to be told daily that the system you have given up so much time for is a failure and that you don't care, it's not good enough etc. 

Meanwhile, NHS staff receive an effective pay cut through inflation. Mp's got a pay rise - and a not insignificant one at that. Doctors who strike were targeted by the press, but I've seen people break under the pressure. Greatest job in the world? Bollocks. I opted out of med school having spent my life aimed squarely at it because I knew it would break me, too. It won't get better. 

Emp_Fab

Just be grateful we're not living in Africa.  We'd all be on 20p a year whilst Teresa May would be in a general's uniform with a thousand medals, have her own personal 747 with gold taps and declare herself President for Life.

TheBigDipper

capo4th said:

<snip>
Thank you ! These strikers are well paid and should be thankful 

I was born and lived in Central London for 55 years. One of the noticeable characteristics of many (definitely not all) people from other parts of the UK who come to my birth city as young adults, is they spend so much time chasing their fortune and getting sucked into the well-paid corporate world that they lose some compassion for their fellow human beings. They can forget (or never learn) that living in a big city is a team game which requires cooperation, tolerance and respect for the other persons view and their personal situation. 

Phrases like "should be thankful" should be returned to the Victorian age where they belong. I guess we've been spared things like "they should know their place" or "respect their betters".

The tube and Southern both have huge management and staffing issues to address and resolve. The DLR works fine without train drivers. I'm sure tube drivers understand that driverless tube trains will replace them and their well paid jobs in due course. Southern, being a "for profit" company, rather than a public service, will continue to deliver value to its shareholders if it can and only worry about public safety and public service when it's forced to. But I don't blame them any more than I'd blame a tiger for hunting game. It's what they do. 

Heartfeltdawn

Emp_Fab said:

Just be grateful we're not living in Africa.  We'd all be on 20p a year whilst Teresa May would be in a general's uniform with a thousand medals, have her own personal 747 with gold taps and declare herself President for Life.

Plus the daily struggle for life as you and Capo don pith helmets and cruise the streets looking for poor people living under the £35k breadline to shoot. The ones that survive get trapped and then brought back to your country pile where Jeeves loads them into a oversized clay pigeon machine, upon which point you scream PULL and another feckless workshy reprobate is launched into the air, awaiting the blissful moment when buckshot meets body and their torment is over.



*this post contain a large amount of irreverence. 

VimFuego

ofcourse, a good way to reduce the impact of train drivers industrial action would be to create and nurture an economy that spreads the wealth and jobs around the country and doesn't concentrate it in one small area, somethng that governments over the last 40 odd years have actively discouraged. The rail unions are strong in London due the number of people who live and work there.

I don't blame the unions for doing the best they can for their members, it's called self interest, something that has become very much a byword in the last few decades

Sporky

VimFuego said:

if they fuck up people die

Which one could argue also applies to tube and train drivers.

I am not, though, disputing that nurses ought to be better paid.

VimFuego

Sporky said:

VimFuego said:

if they fuck up people die

Which one could argue also applies to tube and train drivers.

I am not, though, disputing that nurses ought to be better paid.

I totally agree. Oddly enuff, when I fuck up in my work people rarely die (not gonna say what happens when I do my job well...).