End the strikes so we can get to work
I WISH to appeal to RMT leader Mick Lynch and his fellow trades unionists on behalf of passengers who rely on public transport.
They are running the economy into the ground due to their sheer greed. We are being held to ransom: patients unable to make it to hospital appointments, students who can’t get to school or college, families unable to visit each other and employees who risk losing their jobs because they can’t get to work on time. Yet rail workers keep moaning and striking.
Don’t they realise the longer the industrial action continues the more likely there will be no train services to strike about and they will all be out of work? Who do they expect will pay for the huge pay rises they are demanding? The passengers, of course!
Rail employees should try working in the private sector where overtime isn’t paid and there are no yearly bonuses, inflated pension contributions or annual incremental payments. Some of us haven’t had a pay rise for years, yet we put up with that for the sake of keeping our jobs so our employers can continue to operate. It’s time to do the decent thing and accept the offer on the table so we can get Britain moving again. If the economy can improve, eventually we will all benefit from it.
PAULA IRELAND, Newhaven, E. Sussex.
I’M ONE of the thousands of hardpressed rail commuters trying to earn a living. I commute daily to Manchester by train, so during the strikes I have to drive to work. The petrol costs the equivalent of the train fare plus I have to pay £24 a day to park in the city centre. There is no 10 to 15 per cent pay rise coming for people like me in the private sector.
Let me tell you what it’s like using the railways. The day after the last wave of strikes ended, my normal train, the 06.46, was cancelled, the 07.10 disappeared from the timetable without explanation and I knew the 07.30 often has only two carriages so I would have to stand all the way.
So I got up early to catch the 06.30 — which was delayed. Going home was a similar game of roulette.
If the unions get their 10 to 15 per cent pay rise, will services improve? I’ve resolved to get a job nearer home that won’t require me using a rail service. I wonder how many stressed commuters will do the same?
SIMON OWEN, Crewe.
HOWEVER much people rail against Mick ‘the Grinch’ Lynch, we’ll risk fatalities if corporate profit is given priority over passenger safety.
One day when I was running late, I rushed along the platform and stuck my arm into the gap between the just closing train doors. I expected them to spring open immediately, but my right hand, clutching my handbag, was firmly stuck inside the train while the rest of me was on the platform. Passengers on the train were staring at their phones, oblivious to my plight. I knew when the train pulled away, it would take me with it. And then one of the platform staff saw me, signalled to the driver, the doors opened and I staggered inside. If the station hadn’t been staffed, I might not be here.
JENNY GROVE, Kew, Surrey.