Stranded by strikes
I lIve in rural Wiltshire with few amenities. I am elderly and rely on trains to be able see my family.
I need three connections to get to South Yorkshire for Christmas. This looks a remote possibility with the planned strikes, so I face either a difficult journey or Christmas on my own.
What are our ministers doing about this farce, dominated by the rail unions? very little, I imagine, forgetting the students and numerous other people who have almost no chance of a journey over the Christmas and New Year period.
Mrs K. hawKiNS, Malmesbury, wilts. TradeS unions are the only voice and the only leverage ordinary working people have.
In ordinary times negotiations between employers and unions can usually be resolved without industrial action, but these are not ordinary times. Having been responsible for runaway inflation and now a recession, this government is making those who were not responsible pay for the huge hole in our economy.
One way of doing this is by applying pressure on employers (particularly those in public service) to refuse wage increases in line with the inflation they themselves created. With one hand tied behind their back, employers cannot negotiate with workers to resolve pay claims and industrial action is the sole remaining argument left to trades unions. lawReNCe FoRReSteR,
Dorchester, Dorset. HOW things have changed! reading the list of strikes in your newspaper, I remember my mother, who was a teacher, telling me how she and most other government workers took a voluntary 10 per cent pay cut during the 1930s to help the country during the depression.
What a contrast with today.
JuDith howaRD, london Sw11. I WOrked for the old British rail Company for 44 years and my union, TSSa, never once called for a strike.
It would seem that the present trades union leaders do not care about the harm they are doing to small businesses at the most lucrative time of the year when it is a rare chance for such businesses to make up the lost revenue after Covid.
a.P. CoX, york.