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[Lord Shonus]

I know a lot of people who work those kinds of hours for significantly less. Even assuming that they're basing the yearly pay in the ads on the acutal workweek (AFAIK, it is an hourly position).

[Frumple]

I mean, I do too, and they're generally being fucked over in jobs they're not exactly fond of and wouldn't be working if they felt they had a choice (and often enough, retention is shit for whatever position they're working, because functionally goddamn no one wants to work like that for any length of time). It's not the kind of numbers you see if you're trying to make a position attractive by dint of wage alone, not with hours and conditions like they're talking about.

[Lord Shonus]

Point is, you aren't going to get much sympathy with a "You don't have a job anymore because people making five times as much as you do got mad and broke the economy". Nobody is going to have "class solidarity" with the rail workers of they go on strike and cause a Black Thursday scenario (which is entirely possible). At least, not in any significant numbers. They're going to blame the workers for it.

[Rolan7]

They already had my sympathy from working almost literally impossible hours regardless of pay, despite me assuming that their hourly rate was fantastic.  Frumple's analysis has me questioning that.

Regardless, the fact that people are also being overworked for less money does not make this okay.  A cynic might say that the "collectivism" McTraveller wishes for:

I guess some of us believe that, while the individual is indeed important, the individual is not the most important thing.

I can't advocate focusing on any single goal "to the exclusion of everything else", not even "the rights of the working man."  What about the rights of those who cannot work, as a trivial example?

Leads inevitably to your point of "some people are working harder for less so suck it up"

People DO band together for common good, but it's a harder sale when the profits of their labor are being so heavily leeched.

Anyway I don't see the government forcing strikers to work at gunpoint (THIS time.  Battle of Blair Mountain, anyone?) so I'm not sure what we're even talking about.  If capitalism is so magically good, then provide the wages to meet demand (about 3-5 years ago, encouraging people to enter this specialized field).  Oh, that didn't happen?  Weird.  It's almost like the invisible hand of the market is short-sighted as hell.  But I thought capitalism was all about mechanically rewarding investment in the future /s

Since the railroad capitalists fucked us all, yet again, obviously they should receive somewhat less profit from this fiasco than they're used to.

[Frumple]

Point is, you aren't going to get much sympathy with a "You don't have a job anymore because people making five times as much as you do got mad and broke the economy". Nobody is going to have "class solidarity" with the rail workers of they go on strike and cause a Black Thursday scenario (which is entirely possible). At least, not in any significant numbers. They're going to blame the workers for it.

Probably. Crab in a bucket and all that rot

[JoshuaFH]

And what if all those workers just... quit? Not striking for their rights, just up and decided that some other job, like Garbage picking or ditch digging or youtubing or whatever, was just infinitely better for them and moved on to other vocations? Nothing can tie them to those positions, they're not slaves tied to their lord's land, they don't have a moral obligation to keep getting fucked in the ass, they can just up and move on to greener pasture whenever they'd like. And they can let the world burn in their wake. No matter how badly anyone wants to blame the workers, ultimately it would be the companies and the politicians taking the responsibility, because it WAS their responsibility, and they'll have to make things right or burn down along with the rest of the country.

[MrRoboto75]

And tbh if you do force the strike to break, the workers will just find a different way to voice their opinion.  Either they quit or possibly sabotage.

[hector13]

Contracts probably.

Then again there is a type of strike I forget the name of that is working precisely to the terms of the contract, no more and no less, so if there are any holes in it that would be fun.

[Micro102]

You seem to think this is purely a money issue - that they aren't offering sick leave because they're greedy and want to keep all their cash. Except that they've agreed to massive pay raises. They're quite open about the core problem being that if they have too many unscheduled call-offs, they will be unable to run trains at all. They literally face a potential "we have nobody to run this route this week, don't know when we will, all these carloads of perishables have to be thrown out" scenario. You can't chalk it down to deliberate understaffing either - there's dozens of job postings at $67K+/year with essentially now requirements. It is a matter of not enough applicants and an extremely lengthy training period required.

There are many problems with this comment. Agreeing to pay raises doesn't mean that it would be cheaper than the original demands of the unions (especially when those pay raises are over time and could very well in part have already been planned). I don't know what the original demands were, but they could have very well already demanded some form of pay increase.

Saying that too many unscheduled call-offs will cause a disaster is a nonsense claim. Not only was their request for paid sick leave, meaning unpaid sick days was still a thing (and having all your workers coming in sick is a great way to wreck your labor pool), but Europe also has rail workers, and waaay more labor rights when it comes to days off. Unsurprisingly, their rail system doesn't come to a halt, because paying people for sick days shouldn't do that if you have enough staff and competent managers. If the railroad company is scared of not having enough workers, hire more workers, which is also more $$$. And I will call it a staffing problem. All their unions aren't striking in solidarity because they have great pay and working conditions. They obviously don't have an attractive offer to pull people in. And I would need to see some data on these 67k/year job offers with low requirements, because it would not be the first time that companies just put up job listings with no intent of hiring, and I don't even know if these jobs would be in the sections that require people on call all week. When the source of information of all these problems comes solely from the people who benefit from claiming these problems, I have a right to be skeptical.

[Starver]

Then again there is a type of strike I forget the name of that is working precisely to the terms of the contract, no more and no less, so if there are any holes in it that would be fun.

Well, there's work-to-rule, and related, which is often the alternative to those for whom an outright strike is not possible, even though grievences are getting to that level.

(We're having a spate of strike-actions/-threats over here in the UK, probably the most ostensibly separate ones in the same period since the 1970s, though there was quite a bit of knock-on disruption and widespread inconvenience for the 1980s' Miners Strike in some areas. We have people from driving examiners to nurses currently announcing action. The nursing union, in particular, is famously the union created for those who do not like the idea of strikes, and hadn't ever tried to for a century or so. Oh, and we've got rail disruption ourselves, across and around various unions and regions and companies, but whether that (or the corporate mismanagement) is better or worse than the situation when it was basically a single monolithic nationalised industry (with government mismanagement) is an open question. )

[dragdeler]

Driving examiners striking? What's next princess strike, judge strike, influencer strike, hangman strike, lottery winner strike?

Poor guys did a have a new guideline introduced, but when are they going to manage that between all the arbitrary vengeance plots they have to keep in mind.

They should make sure to tell everybody the location of their strike.

[McTraveller]

I think what bothers me about these conversations is they always devolve into the assertions that just because some people have more than others, it's either A) because those that have more are intentionally and maliciously taking more from the others or B) because those that have less are lazy and just want to leech off those that are "really doing the work."  Both of these are generally incorrect and never universally correct.

Somehow we have to get to the point where "labor and management" realize that they really are part of the same team, rather than working against each other.  If we keep reinforcing the idea that these groups are inherently opposed (which I don't believe) then people will act that way, when there's no reason they have to be.

I mean if you are moderately well off, and all you hear are people not well-off saying that you're that way only because you oppress people, that's got to feel terrible.  And if you are not well off and all you hear is people telling you it's because you don't work hard enough, that's got to feel terrible.

I want to see a "new" union, which is entrepreneurs and workers together, fighting against polarization...

[dragdeler]

  I mean if you are moderately well off, and all you hear are people not well-off saying that you're that way only because you oppress people, that's got to feel terrible.   

  I'd like to live i a world where words have that much power


Si voter changeait quelquechose ce serait interdit. That's why strikes are enshrined into law. If you wanna hurt them do your job but stop billing people.

[Starver]

Driving examiners striking? [...]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-63800593

...in searching for that one day old article, I also found that they were voting for strikes (or about, not sure if they actually did in each case) in January 2004, June 2006, June 2012 (alongside coastguards(!)) and definitely protested with a walkout in December 2017 over changes to the tests that were being imposed.

Having only knowingly been in the presence of such a person just the once (for a time somewhat less than two hours, probably(/surely?) well under one, in 19mumbletymump), I had no idea that they were so militant.

However, my biggest concern at that time was whether I was too cautious on taking the 'right'-turn[1] off the busy-both-ways left-bending road, which was on the route from the gates of the test-centre to their favourite quiet housing estate in which to subject me to the reversing, hill-start, emergency stop, 3-point-turn, etc...) These days I'd have also have had to do the Theory test, in a different session[2], but no idea if that'd be a deskbound full-blooded Examiner (perhaps on light duties after a prior experience with a perpetual Learner/test-taker) or just any old administrator.


[1] Left-hand driving, from the right-hand seat, FYI to all native Ameripolers! ...and perhaps most of everyone here who is a fellow foreigner but not in the same way as me... Anyway, waiting for a sucficient gap in the opposing traffic to move forward out of the centre refuge, without missing an obvious one, was surely a sadistic "straight in at the deep end" aspect to taking the test during rush hour that George (my instructor) never warned me about.

[2] Rather than a brief flip-book fun through traffic-sign recognition ("man opening umbrella... No! Sorry, I mean roadworks ahead!), stopping distance recital ("...so it's so many yards thinking time, at that speed, and square that for the braking time, which means...") and distant numberplate reading ("I T ' S T H E B L U E Y O U ' R E L O O K I N G F O R... No, wait, that's a cigarette billboard!") before I was asked to turn the engine on (and then, as advised by my examiner, reached to conspicuously readjust the already nicely adjusted mirror).

[dragdeler]

Oh we have one employee from autosecurite.be who is tolerated by my colleagues (one hand washes the other), he keeps taking scrap iron shit but not to sell, his house is filled to the brim with oily old car shit. I get along with him but everything he tells me disgusts me, how he burns half his garbage and hides the other shit in public bins. And how he tells me all proud how he fails people who dont switch off their engines in a nanosecond.

Just the other day a friend of mine told me how she went for the technical checkup, now it's common knowlledge over here that you should send your mecanician, but she had a new car was close by and thought oh well how bad can it be. Shows up for her appointment, they direct her into the trucklane, she is flustered and doesn't know the sacrosanct unspoken code of conduct, dude yelled at her because she didn't hear him the first time for like 5minutes straight, one of his colleagues took it upon himself to bill her because the other one was still yelling, must have been really bad for one of his colleagues to discover his sense of shame.

Yeah I made the experience once myself, they failed my car after it had been to a checkup, then my mecanician went and managed to pass the very same car in the same state.


And the folks over there who check the cars they're still the more professional branch. The testing center is way past that. Since they introduced the new theoretical test they have 33% success chance, the learning material in german is litterally unusable, you know how germans call a redlight? Ampel, Verkehrsampel if you feel really nerdy and like wasting a few syllabees. The newest edition of the official 27€ book says: zwei-farben-verkehrlichtzeichen (two color luminescent traffic sign, that's a whole lot of words to omit the existence of the orange light). I wouldn't be that surprised if they go further than that and actively manipulate the test, just too convenient to have 33% success rate when people need to book courses after faiing two times... I didn't check my expensive book out of fear I might not actually find how fast you're allowed to go on a speed bump in vlanderen, because I fear that if I don't find that information in there I might actually go postal.

When you call them for an appointement some really condescending robot makes you loose a whole quarterhour easily (SPAM EITHER 1 OR 2 UNTILL youre in the waiting line in the correct language, you will be quicker bruteforcing  every possible combination). Then you still wait 10 minutes on the line only to be greeted with a moody "yeah...?", as you fumble to transmit all the relevant info going by this little, they will wait a minute just for shits and giggles until finally they request it in a military tone "national ID number!" "adress". Then they ask you which language you would like to take your test in, when you show up in person they ask a second time, only to give you your test in another language, as if they needed to manipulate the outcome am I right....



Back in the day I aced my theory but had to try the practical exam twice, I failed my first one because they insisted I do my park manouever at the same spot than the girl being tested also... She fucked it up royally, it was super awkward, I waited excrutiating minutes long, put myself as much on the side as I could to make room for normal traffic, well by the time it was my turn I was in an extremly awkward position, completly devoid of the reference points my instructor had taught me to park by...Should something similar happen in a driving exam now I'd tell him "no I am the driver of this vehicle and I deem that manouever unsafe, you will have to find another spot" and knowing they're all pocket tyrants who picked their job for the opportunity to abuse power he'd most likely fail me on the spot, in whicb case I would most definitly jump him on the rear bench, I might even do something funky with the car so the guy in the front ia too distracted to stop me from attacking the other.


So yeah I'm never dealing with them again and I'm never driving again because I am afraid of just how much they might enrage me. And this same week there was a thread on reddit with one of the top comments being more of these awesome tales.

I dare them to go strike and crowd alltogether in the same space, I hope they do it far away from here and when I have to work. It's not a threat, I just know myself well enough to be able to predict that I will waste precious thought power running all the possible attack tactics in my head, it's inevitable I hate them too much.


What a colossal waste of effort. Have mercy and forcefully turn me back into a lurker I guess, the rest of the web is usually more difficult to look at.