From today's CityAM:
COMMUTERS returning to work today have been hit by yet another hike in rail fares, after the average ticket price rose by 5.9 per cent with the new year, sending season tickets rocketing...
The fare increase on Transport for London services levels out at an average of 5.6 per cent, lower than was expected due to an extra £136m secured by mayor Boris Johnson from the government. The Tube, which carried a record 1.1bn passengers last year, will see its fares climb by an average of six per cent...
Transport trade union RMT’s general secretary Bob Crow called the price hikes "daylight robbery on the tracks" with "fat profits for the train companies while the public pay through the nose."
From The Guardian, three months ago:
Tube drivers in the capital will see their pay go over the £50,000-a-year mark under a four-year wage deal negotiated between London Underground and union leaders... Under the deal, staff will get a 5% pay increase this year followed by RPI inflation plus 0.5% in the subsequent three years.
Industry sources said that if RPI inflation stays reasonably high, some tube staff will receive a pay rise approaching 20% by the end of the settlement period... The RMT said the issue of a payment for working during next year's Olympic Games in London was separate to the four-year wage deal.
General secretary Bob Crow said: "We saw major movement from LU and we now take this improved offer back to our local reps. In these days of austerity we have shown … trade unionism is the best defence from attacks on jobs and living standards. I doubt you will find a better offer than this anywhere else in the public sector."
A Rose By Any Other Name...
2 hours ago
19 comments:
Feck!
I'm going to have to get my BP medication increased!
The DLR shows that the whole thing can be computerised and drivers sacked. I read somewhere that when LU tried to run a pilot the drivers struck...
A number of lines in Malaysia are also completely driver free - and they work very well. Many airports round the world also run driverless wagons twixt the different terminals. So there is no reason why the technology currently running the automatic trains round east London cannot be extended.
Bobby
You asked for it.
http://www.smartplanet.com/blog/global-observer/paris-metro-makes-conversion-to-driverless-trains/432
"Public sector unions" is a synonym for rent-seeking.
AC1
Wait till we get conductorless too and enforcement teamless.
How much of the rise is attributable to increases in pay for the TFL staff and how much is attributable to the blackholes that are/were the Public Private Partnerships set-up to fund tube redevelopment and maintenance?
Be interested to see someone break that down. Bob Crow/RMT are an easy target. The average black cab driver takes home £60k+, why shouldnt tube drivers get paid a good wage?
Bill Bell, train drivers' wages are a certain percentage of total rail company income, both have gone up by 6% so they are the same fraction before and after. So Bob Crow can't really complain about the 6% increase, can he?
How greedy/wasteful/profitable the rail companies are*, I do not know, but sauce, goose, gander and all that.
* I don't think the PFI black holes in rail companies are particularly big, those are mainly with hospitals and roads where the government was flushing money down the toilet/giving it to its cronies.
Bill Bell,
The average black cab driver takes home £60k+, why shouldnt tube drivers get paid a good wage?
Black cab drivers have to steer.
I think its a pretty good deal. Its lower than everything else.
"Black cab drivers have to steer."
AFAIK, all the "drivers" have to do on the Circle Line is open and shut the doors.
@Bill Bell
"...why shouldnt tube drivers get paid a good wage?" Because they are already redundant, since the tube can be automated. But the union is actively preventing automation to preserve its monopoly/cushy numbers. The drivers are a cost that can be reduced, by a lot.
On the private sector market for rents and mortgages in London £ 1000 a week for a tube train driver is not wildly out of whack.
What the Homeownerists never get into their thick skulls . that House Price Inflation causes or ,at least, reinforces wage inflation.Also if you can get a job that will cover your housing cots and still allow you to live, you will not be competitive internationally with workers in countries with low housing costs i.e. land prices.Globalisation is often a scramble to find countries with low land prices plus a pliant workforce.
What is needed is LVT International so everywhere trades equally and former economic giants like the UK do not put a land price monkey on their workers; backs.
DBC: seems to me that this monkey is already on workers back (land costs+taxes pre-LVT = LVT post-LVT), so not net change after LVT. Except for post-LVT there would be no taxes on productivity, so there would be a net comparative advantage to countries with taxes on productivity don't you think?
-Kj
DBC: "House Price Inflation causes or, at least, reinforces wage inflation."
I think HPI reinforces wage inflation rather than causing it, but what it clearly does do is cause vacant housing and its flip side, unemployment (or does it cause unemployment and its flip side, vacant housing?).
Kj, agreed, but that's still ignoring dead weight costs. So even if [land rents + income tax] = [LVT] in £-s-d, gross incomes would still be higher. Whether that's the same number of workers with higher wages, or just fewer unemployed and wages the same I don't know.
"Whether that's the same number of workers with higher wages, or just fewer unemployed and wages the same I don't know."
The abolition of employers' NI will reduce the costs of employment, for sure, but there's still the huge regulatory burden (H&S, employment law etc). So I'd go for the former.
B: "there's still the huge regulatory burden (H&S, employment law etc)."
Ah yes, but this is my manifesto for government, and most of that burden will go as well. Remember: the best guarantee of workers' rights is full employment. People won't need to work for dodgy employers if there's a good employer across the road.
And we won't need to worry about unfair dismissal etc; instead of going to a Tribunal, people will just go and get themselves a new job, and if they can't get a new job, there's a strong suspicion they weren't up to the old one either.
@kj
I am in the unfortunate position /predicament of being a supporter of LVT but not(necessarily) the Georgist system which is most often advocated.
Under the earlier JS Mill system, you would only get taxed if prices went up.There would be no attempt to recoup existing land values.
DBC: That is unfortunate, but still, full-on LVT, JS Mill tax or the existing system, there is no more land price monkey on workers back with LVT, plus untaxing income and what MW said makes it competitive.
-Kj
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