Break out the bunting, hand out the paper hats and let joy be unconfined. For, tonight begins the latest installment of a festive tradition as old as London itself: the 24 hour tube strike.
At 6.30pm tonight, members of four trade unions – Aslef, RMT, TSSA and Unite – will walk out, in protest at the staffing of the new “Night tube” services being introduced next month. Spokespeople claim that the changes in pay and conditions on offer are inadequate to make up for the introduction of night shifts. This is the second such strike in a month.
Until Friday (mystifyingly, 24 hour strikes seem to extend into three days), Londoners are likely to react with their traditional stoicism. They’ll bear their mild inconvenience with a shrug, only occasionally turning to social media to suggest anyone on strike should be fired or, if you’re a fan of Jeremy Clarkson, shot.
Whatever your views on the strike, though, here are six reasons you should think before Tweeting.
Your inconvenience is not a side effect
Yes, the tube staff do know that you’re trying to get to work. Making it a pain in the arse is the entire point of the exercise.
By taking to the internet to register your displeasure, all you’re doing is helping to highlight how much disruption the transport unions can bring about if they feel the need, and strengthening their hand in negotiations. If you really want to beat them, pretend it doesn’t bother you. Tweet about what a lovely walk to work you’re having, and how fragrant the man you found yourself crushed against on the number 73 bus this evening was.
If you claim to be left-wing, you should probably shut up
If you believe in the right to strike, right up until the point when it makes your life slightly more difficult, you don’t believe in the right to strike at all. Either rethink your views on industrial relations or just sodding deal with it.
If you believe in free markets, you should probably shut up too
There’s a strain of thinking on the right that says that pay, like prices, is set by the interaction of supply and demand, and that any attempt by the state to interfere in such matters is only going to make things worse. That applies in every case except public sector pay disputes, when suddenly the state knows exactly how much people’s labour is worth, and everyone employed by it should just take what they’re given and shut the hell up.
There is a very obvious logical inconsistency here: either pay is set by workers’ ability to demand more money for their labour, or it isn’t. If you truly believe in free markets, then whether or not it’s the taxpayer who’s picking up the tab is pretty much irrelevant. Throwing a tantrum and howling, “But I don’t want them to have more money!” doesn’t change the fact that tube staff have the power to bring one of the world’s richest cities grinding to a halt, and that’s why their pay has risen faster than yours.
Don’t like it? Become a tube driver.
“Tube driver” is a senior role
Actually, you can’t, at least not instantly: since 2008, driving a tube train has effectively been a sort of senior post, somewhere junior staff work up to after years of training and toil in the ranks.
Whether this is the best way of managing the network’s staff is perhaps open to question, but nonetheless, it makes it a nonsense to compare tube driver’s £50k pay packet with the £22k starting salary of a nurse or the £18k one for a soldier. That £50k isn’t a starting salary at all – it’s a reward for seniority.
Driving the tube is bloody horrible
It’s also a reward for the fact that it’s a pretty miserable job. Not as miserable as being a soldier, admittedly – but certainly more miserable than being, say, a newspaper columnist.
Think about what driving a tube train actually involves. It’s shift work, so sometimes you’ll start at 5am and others you’re working til gone midnight. Whatever time you start, you’ll be spending approximately eight hours in a small box on your own, doing a series of mind numbingly repetitive tasks, but unable to lose concentration for even a moment.
In that time, you can’t read a newspaper. You can’t waste 20 minutes chatting with a colleague. You certainly can’t tweet about how bored you are. On certain lines, you’ll barely see daylight. And there’s a not insignificant chance that, one day, someone will jump in front of your train, and you’ll have to live with the guilt.
Lord knows there are some terrible jobs out there that don’t come with £50k pay packets, but… I’m kind of okay with paying people well to do that job. A lot of the people who’ll be spending today whining, “Well I don’t earn that much” also don’t have jobs that are quite that shitty.
They’re not the only ones on strike anyway
The last two points are a bit of a red herring, actually, because – it isn’t only the tube drivers who are actually striking. Every grade of tube staff voted for industrial action. Their concern is that, by adding to the hours in which the tube is open without significantly increasing staff numbers – by introducing the Night Tube on the cheap – the existing staff will be over-stretched and passenger safety could end up compromised.
Today’s strike isn’t about that £50k pay packet at all.
All that said, it’s about time the tube did offer all night services, and TfL would be negligent if it wasn’t trying to make it happen as cost effectively as possible. I’m not saying that the unions are entirely in the right, and management entirely in the wrong on this one. I don’t actually think I know.
But my point is – neither do you.
