AS I SEE IT: Governments get the trade unions they deserve, says TERRY MURDEN
Those of a certain age will recall that it used to be every boy’s dream to be a train driver. It was the romantic allure of the railways, the wide-eyed excitement of seeing those huge mechanical dragons getting up steam and thundering across the country, all noise and power. No young loco enthusiast aspiring to one day don a boiler suit and grab an oily rag allowed themselves to be distracted by tedious matters such as pay, or rest days.
It seems many of those youngsters grew up to realise that driving a train, a modern one in which they could go to work in a Huge Boss suit without any danger of getting dirty, have become more secular about their job. Even without achieving their current 9% pay demand, they could also afford that Hugo Boss suit.
The average £50k salary now makes train drivers among the best paid manual workers in Britain. Better paid than newly qualified teachers, and twice the national average. So, is their current demand justified or just plain greed?
The unions argue that we’ve relied on train drivers to work during the pandemic. But there were plenty of others, too numerous to mention, who also kept the country going these past two years and are not being rewarded with pay rises higher than even the highest inflation we’ve seen for 40 years.
We are now locked into what could become a protracted dispute because both sides are claiming the other will not come to the table to find a solution.
For those who clamoured for nationalising ScotRail it has been a quick reminder that merely taking an industry into public ownership does not guarantee a better operating service. Ironically, previous operator Abellio is a subsidiary of the state-owned Dutch rail company Nederlandse Spoorwegen.
Abellio’s opponents got what they wanted and ScotRail is now run as an arm-length business from a Scottish government with a less than admirable record of intervention.
Knowing the history of disruption on the rail service – including the demands for retaining guards – the government should have made it a priority to tie-up a long term pay and conditions deal as a foundation on which to build a better railway that ministers promised. They failed to do this and with inflation now devouring pay packets there should be no surprise that the train drivers are demanding more.
Nor will they be alone. Other public sector workers will also be calling for higher rewards, particularly if the drivers succeed in their aims. There is now talk of a summer of discontent, with implications for its cost to the economy.
Like most pay disputes, the issue extends beyond the cost of living and even government competence. It is deeply rooted in the ‘us and them’ culture which even years of attempting to roll back the state and create an enterprise culture has failed to eradicate. It characterised industrial relations for most of the 20th century, bringing down the Heath government and pitching the trade unions into a long struggle with Margaret Thatcher as big industries disappeared or shrank.
The economy may have evolved, but the gap between the ‘haves’ and ‘have nots’ remains. Working people still resent being told by the governor of the Bank of England and government ministers to accept miserly pay rises when they see company bosses helping themselves to six-figure bonuses and senior public servants being handed double-digit pay hikes.
NatWest (RBS) has just agreed a deal that could see its CEO earn more than £5m. The new chairman of Scottish Enterprise will be handed a remuneration package 10.2% more than the current incumbent for a job that requires a commitment of just 1.75 days a month and pays £49,049 – about the same as a train driver who has to work unsociable hours, is responsible for the safety of thousands of passengers, gives up rest days, and deals with suicides on the track. Think about it.
The cost of living may have prompted the train drivers’ dispute, but a failure to implement the ‘fairer society’ that ministers are fond of talking about means governments get the trade unions they deserve.
tmurden@dailybusinessgroup.co.uk
Terry Murden held senior positions at The Sunday Times, The Scotsman, Scotland on Sunday and The Northern Echo and is now editor of Daily Business
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