Tube strike hits Essex commuters (From Thurrock Gazette)

yeh 50 min walk today for me.

but everyone in the office has man it in so great news there. just goes to show some people make the effort for work stil

Clearly politically motivated Bob Crow is a relic of the Scargill school of union leaders surely the membership cannot be so shortsighted in the current financial climate.

I'll be honest, if I was working in London, I'd still have made it into work one way or another. Bob Crow isn't going to stop me working...

Maybe a lot of people yesterday looking lost with maps but we did it. That the real England we not going let something like this stop us we going walk and keep working as always it made le proud
yesterday

Baker_Boy, Gt Wakering

Say again?

Time for Tory Essex to wipe the excrement from its eyes. The tube is already dangerous enough, what the hell will it be like if the Tories get their way? I have also had my morning commute affected by strikes recently, but I recognise that these bosses are not reasonable people whose minds can be persuaded by reason, they are merely motivated by greed and so have to be forced into thinking about the safety of staff and passengers.

gitreal wrote:
Baker_Boy, Gt Wakering Say again?

very polite ok i shall.

it make you proud to British when you see all the people walking to work. yes people were not sure which way to go.

but as true hard working people we battle on to find our way.

every one in my office made it in some people walked mile just to do. you got to feel proud of our people

do you know what I don't understand? these people are striking predominantly over safety issues, OUR safety, and yet there are scores of commuters lining up to parrot their sun, mail, times and telegraph brain washes into lambasting the underground staff.
Bob Crow does not wish to cause us (the workers) misery and regularly apologises for it. The problem being that most media never reprint those apologies, only the quotes to suit their agenda.
The suggestion that these people do not want to work is laughable too. Do some readers not realise you don't get paid a penny for going on strike, it aint exactly a laugh? These people are striking for the exact reason that they wish to SAVE THEIR JOBS and that such cuts will put commuters lives at risk.
tube drivers get 38k a year, and the station staff who are under threat CONSIDERABLY less, but you try supporting a family of four on 38k, especially when the ConDem cuts are aimed at children and family benefits!!
I am a city worker, but am able to see through the myths peddled about mr.crow and the union. In times like this workers should be standing together to beat back this threat and not be lining up to shoot each other down.
I solidly back the strike, especially as recent incidents as the man with the weapons on the underground and the scotland train crash, whereby train staff played major parts in ensuring no-one was harmed. Under these cuts no staff would've been present to act.

Wake up and smell the danger people!

100% Essex is clearly one of the most intelligent and sensible people to write on this thread.

I agree 100% with 100% Essex, and of course with Anna. Just as well that we still have a few people to represent the voice of common sense.

100%Essex wrote:
do you know what I don't understand? these people are striking predominantly over safety issues, OUR safety, and yet there are scores of commuters lining up to parrot their sun, mail, times and telegraph brain washes into lambasting the underground staff. Bob Crow does not wish to cause us (the workers) misery and regularly apologises for it. The problem being that most media never reprint those apologies, only the quotes to suit their agenda. The suggestion that these people do not want to work is laughable too. Do some readers not realise you don't get paid a penny for going on strike, it aint exactly a laugh? These people are striking for the exact reason that they wish to SAVE THEIR JOBS and that such cuts will put commuters lives at risk. tube drivers get 38k a year, and the station staff who are under threat CONSIDERABLY less, but you try supporting a family of four on 38k, especially when the ConDem cuts are aimed at children and family benefits!! I am a city worker, but am able to see through the myths peddled about mr.crow and the union. In times like this workers should be standing together to beat back this threat and not be lining up to shoot each other down. I solidly back the strike, especially as recent incidents as the man with the weapons on the underground and the scotland train crash, whereby train staff played major parts in ensuring no-one was harmed. Under these cuts no staff would've been present to act. Wake up and smell the danger people!

ok you mention money, but it there decision to work in such industry you know the amount of pay you will get, i believe they get a raise on rate with inflation so that fair enough. if they want more they have to show more and get promotion like most job really.

i work in an industry that make people reduandant every day its not a nice thing to do and would be the last thing anyone wants to do but it has to be done sometimes.

the incidents you mention are very limited to the million of train which go of with out problem.

we do not know the full picture as we do not work there.

however it is great to see that many people manage long walk bike ride and busses to get to work this should be looked a very highly

Where does this absurd notion about people having a choice as to where they work come from? Meanwhile those of us who live in the real world will notice the ever-lengthening dole queue. Can only assume BakerBoy is a high powered exec, his skills in demand from companies across the world. Well, well done to him. Does make him very out of touch from how the rest of us live though.

Ms Key people pick there careers, yes some people take job they want to move forward in life which is what i did.

I no it not easy to get a job from start i sent out over 100 CV to accountants and insolvency firm to get my first job but you get there in the end i picked my career then worked hard to get into which most people do

BakerBoy - I presume your CV was better written than the above! I really found that pretty difficult to understand, and I'm not the first on this thread to make the same point about your comments. I have a university degree but I'm still forced to survive as a cleaner. Hardly a 'career' I have 'chosen'. That's the real world mate. Congratulations that you have seemingly escaped it.

100%Essex wrote:
do you know what I don't understand? these people are striking predominantly over safety issues, OUR safety, and yet there are scores of commuters lining up to parrot their sun, mail, times and telegraph brain washes into lambasting the underground staff. Bob Crow does not wish to cause us (the workers) misery and regularly apologises for it. The problem being that most media never reprint those apologies, only the quotes to suit their agenda. The suggestion that these people do not want to work is laughable too. Do some readers not realise you don't get paid a penny for going on strike, it aint exactly a laugh? These people are striking for the exact reason that they wish to SAVE THEIR JOBS and that such cuts will put commuters lives at risk. tube drivers get 38k a year, and the station staff who are under threat CONSIDERABLY less, but you try supporting a family of four on 38k, especially when the ConDem cuts are aimed at children and family benefits!! I am a city worker, but am able to see through the myths peddled about mr.crow and the union. In times like this workers should be standing together to beat back this threat and not be lining up to shoot each other down. I solidly back the strike, especially as recent incidents as the man with the weapons on the underground and the scotland train crash, whereby train staff played major parts in ensuring no-one was harmed. Under these cuts no staff would've been present to act. Wake up and smell the danger people!

Talk about Rose Coloured spectacles. Bob Crow is only out for himself, no one else. He is a relic of a bye gone age and when the dinosaurs disappeared, somehow he got missed and here he is now causing all sorts of problems.
Having been a Railway/Tube worker; if you really believe your safety will be compromised by a number of Ticket Office personnel losing their jobs or being re-rolled, then those spectacles are really taking a beating.
Go and stand at a Tube Ticket office and see just how many people these days need to buy a ticket from the office. Majority, and its a large majority, they use either the oyster card or the ticket machines. So you think it is ok to have people sitting in the offices doing nothing apart from serving the odd customer. Thats what the issues are all about, nothing to do with safety, thats just an Bob Crows excuse to call a strike, because its the easiest issue.
Tell me how a ticket office worker will assist a problem three levels down when there is a H&S issue, a fight, a medical problem or whatever. There is usually sufficient staff on each station to ensure the Safety of its passengers without the ticket office worker, if he is re-roled then thats one more person on the station; LU clearly stated there will be no forced redundancies. So I have to ask, whats the problem, Answer, Bob Crow.
You state that a Train Driver earns £38k: you really are behind the times. The average pay for a train/tube driver is around the £60k mark. That is with the overtime needed to run the system and working rest days.
OK other grades get considerably less, but a family of four can live quite comfortably on £38k, as can someone earning half that amount when they cut their cloth accordingly.
As a city worker I expect your nose is so far and away above those that do not earn £38k pa, and therefore you have little or no understanding of what an actual living wage is, or put another way, 'how the other half lives'.
I wonder what cuts you are talking about as none have currently been finalised for Families and Children, just pure speculation in the press and media, and of course where ministers have hinted there will be benefit cuts, without being specific.
Wake up and fear the ---- will leave that up to you.

OK, people need to remember that Bob Crowe has repeatedly stated he wants to recreate the "Winter of Discontent", & proudly stated he was a memnber of the "Awkward Squad". As has been stated (& admitted by the Union), there are no compulsory redundancies as a result of TFL/LUL plans to cut the staffing levels at ticket offices.
Tuesday 7th September 2010 was the 70th anniversary of the first German bombing raids on the capital, & the City of London held a commemoration with a service at St Paul's. Like many other "veterans", I attended this event, & met many elderly people, some in wheelchairs who had to walk/wheel miles to get to the cathedral as a result of the strike. The unions involved knew that this event was taking place, & they could have easily held their strike on a different day, but chose to do it this day in order to cause the maximum disruption. I bet Bob Crowe is so proud!

Anna Key wrote:
BakerBoy - I presume your CV was better written than the above! I really found that pretty difficult to understand, and I'm not the first on this thread to make the same point about your comments. I have a university degree but I'm still forced to survive as a cleaner. Hardly a 'career' I have 'chosen'. That's the real world mate. Congratulations that you have seemingly escaped it.

MMs key is a usefully degree to the career you have are you actively trying find employment are u on agency cv out very week turn up at the place you wanna work to speak to some one

The real world rewards winner and people that show effort

to some one

Hugh.Janus wrote:

100%Essex wrote:
do you know what I don't understand? these people are striking predominantly over safety issues, OUR safety, and yet there are scores of commuters lining up to parrot their sun, mail, times and telegraph brain washes into lambasting the underground staff. Bob Crow does not wish to cause us (the workers) misery and regularly apologises for it. The problem being that most media never reprint those apologies, only the quotes to suit their agenda. The suggestion that these people do not want to work is laughable too. Do some readers not realise you don't get paid a penny for going on strike, it aint exactly a laugh? These people are striking for the exact reason that they wish to SAVE THEIR JOBS and that such cuts will put commuters lives at risk. tube drivers get 38k a year, and the station staff who are under threat CONSIDERABLY less, but you try supporting a family of four on 38k, especially when the ConDem cuts are aimed at children and family benefits!! I am a city worker, but am able to see through the myths peddled about mr.crow and the union. In times like this workers should be standing together to beat back this threat and not be lining up to shoot each other down. I solidly back the strike, especially as recent incidents as the man with the weapons on the underground and the scotland train crash, whereby train staff played major parts in ensuring no-one was harmed. Under these cuts no staff would've been present to act. Wake up and smell the danger people!

Talk about Rose Coloured spectacles. Bob Crow is only out for himself, no one else. He is a relic of a bye gone age and when the dinosaurs disappeared, somehow he got missed and here he is now causing all sorts of problems.
Having been a Railway/Tube worker; if you really believe your safety will be compromised by a number of Ticket Office personnel losing their jobs or being re-rolled, then those spectacles are really taking a beating.
Go and stand at a Tube Ticket office and see just how many people these days need to buy a ticket from the office. Majority, and its a large majority, they use either the oyster card or the ticket machines. So you think it is ok to have people sitting in the offices doing nothing apart from serving the odd customer. Thats what the issues are all about, nothing to do with safety, thats just an Bob Crows excuse to call a strike, because its the easiest issue.
Tell me how a ticket office worker will assist a problem three levels down when there is a H&S issue, a fight, a medical problem or whatever. There is usually sufficient staff on each station to ensure the Safety of its passengers without the ticket office worker, if he is re-roled then thats one more person on the station; LU clearly stated there will be no forced redundancies. So I have to ask, whats the problem, Answer, Bob Crow.
You state that a Train Driver earns £38k: you really are behind the times. The average pay for a train/tube driver is around the £60k mark. That is with the overtime needed to run the system and working rest days.
OK other grades get considerably less, but a family of four can live quite comfortably on £38k, as can someone earning half that amount when they cut their cloth accordingly.
As a city worker I expect your nose is so far and away above those that do not earn £38k pa, and therefore you have little or no understanding of what an actual living wage is, or put another way, 'how the other half lives'.
I wonder what cuts you are talking about as none have currently been finalised for Families and Children, just pure speculation in the press and media, and of course where ministers have hinted there will be benefit cuts, without being specific.
Wake up and fear the ---- will leave that up to you.

I like the cut if your words

Baker_Boy, say again in a language we understand.

gitreal wrote:
Baker_Boy, say again in a language we understand.

Of not if moblie fone error

hughjames you must be deluded if you even think that one person can live on a wage of 19k let alone a family of 4 on 19k. If you really believe that then you do not have the common sense to comment on this post you are clearly are too removed from real life. Rightly or wrongly tube workers are striking but do we really want to see more redundancies in that industry on a jobs market that is already reeling. Yes ticket office workers can be replaced by automoted services but we really are in danger of replacing all jobs with machines and computers.

Some very good points dealwiththeyobs, especially when you remember the additional costs of living in the capital. Baker Boy, you're getting worse! And don't blame mobile phones, everybody I know at least manages to make sure their texts make sense! Anyway, my reply may be irrelevant, depending on what you actually said in the first place! But yes I continue to look for graduate work, and I'm even undertaking post-grad studies part-time, so nobody can accuse me of a lack of activity. Have you not heard about the recession?!

dealwiththeyobs wrote:
hughjames you must be deluded if you even think that one person can live on a wage of 19k let alone a family of 4 on 19k. If you really believe that then you do not have the common sense to comment on this post you are clearly are too removed from real life. Rightly or wrongly tube workers are striking but do we really want to see more redundancies in that industry on a jobs market that is already reeling. Yes ticket office workers can be replaced by automoted services but we really are in danger of replacing all jobs with machines and computers.

Oh Dear, there is always one person willing to comment on a subject they obviously know nothing about, everyday living.
Are you so far removed from reality that you do not know that there are numerous people in this counrty living on a 19k income, and a goodly number living on less.
Currently I volunteer to work in an Advice Agency dispensing advice to people who come into the agency requesting money advice with incomes less that those stated above. So where do you get your wrong information from, perhaps its you that has no sense, no sense of reality, no sense of what is going on out there in the big wide world. Its pretty obvious from your comments you have not the faintest idea of what you are talking about. Still tongue and a wise head, methinks.

I don't 'live' on my take home of less than a thousand a month. I exist on it. And thank God I don't pay London rents.

Anna Key - in your circumstances I would like to commend you for working rather than taking benefits and hope you get a better position in due course.
As regards the wider debate, would these people be able to strike if they were printers, lorry drivers etc? No, because they know they would eventually lose their jobs as their firms would be affected etc. The tube strikers do it becuase they know they are responsible for a vital transport system which affects millions and can apply political leverage. I hope the Government stands firm. Because of Labour the country is bankrupt and tens of thousands will lose their job soon. Striking tube workers should join them.

BillBill - Thank you for your comments. But would you support me if I struck for better pay?

The smug face of Bob Crow in the Gazette did it for me. He is the face of Old Labour, in the mould of Mick Magahy?, Scargill, Red Robbo, etc. All a bunch of commies who would happily bring us all down. They certainly put paid to our mining and car industries and with the other bullyboys who destroyed our steel industries, etc. Now they complain that there are no jobs. Who in their right mind would employ union agitators like this? I guess that Anna can't find a job because of his commie views. There is a list of people like that, accessible to people like me. Perhaps London Underground should have consulted it and saved themselves a lot of trouble.

Sdapeze - As I think you know I most certainly do have a job. And come on, stop this bizarre nonsense about unions destroying manufacturing, your beloved Maggie and her neo-liberalism did that, the capitalist went to China for the slave wage conditions. As for your extraordinary revelation of the existence of a blacklist which you have access to, I thought this Macarthyism had died out following the exposure of the Economic League. The Gazette need to investigate you urgently, as do the police. I think you'll find you've just admitted involvement in an illegal practice.

Yes, come on Gazette, do some serious journalism for a change. It is no surprise that Sdapeze subscribes to a successor to the Economic League. Tell us about this shadowy organisation and how it operates.

Boris - Don't forget it's the police who really need to be looking into sdapeze's criminal conspiracy. Extraordinary he can claim: 'There is a list of people like that, available to people like me'; and then accuse anybody else of bully-boy tactics!

Trust me. Big Brother is watching us all. The commies are the masters at it.

Sdapeze - If only the bizarre picture of the world you paint were true. What sort of threat do you think us lefties pose any more? Nobody in their right mind is talking revolution or general strike these days. I'm a realist, I know the capitalist has got it all sewn up. The best the likes of Boris and me can do is make sure there's some voice of reason, a little bit of opposition to the seemingly unstoppable march of capital. Why are you so frightened by a little bit of democracy?
This does produce a serious problem of course. Irrespective of all its terrible injustices, capitalism is unsustainable. You can't have infinite growth (an essential prerequisite of capitalist economics) within a finite space (planet Earth). A sustainable future will only be achieved when we learn to cooperate with one another, but I'm at a loss to how we're going to achieve that.
Anyway, do you seriously think this blacklist's doing you any favours? The one operated by the Economic League managed to blacklist a member of the Conservative Party! And then it would completely manage to miss some leftie activist. Still, the Socialist Workers Party will certainly be buoyed by how seriously you take their sect. Though for you to believe this sect, and others like them, are a serious threat to capitalism must make you as mad as they are. Still, when the police come knocking you can always claim insanity.

Yes Anna, of course the police should be looking into Sdapeze's criminal conspiracy. But the police's principal job is to keep society safe for capitalism to flourish. So we need not expect them to investigate Sdapeze.

Couldn't disagree with that Boris, though something similar could be said of the capitalist press. Though these Macarthyite organisations seem even to embarrass the capitalist, especially when it traps one of their own. Indeed, the Consulting Association (construction blacklist) was raided only last year. Anyway, you have to have a laugh about Sdapeze, his fellow conspirators must be pretty angry with him right now. They of course want to keep their criminal conspiracy secret, and he goes blurting it out on a website!

You're right Anna, the capitalist press is not going to hold the police to account. And of course Sdapeze has his excuse ready made. He will just deny any involvement in a criminal conspiracy, saying he is well known as a delusional wind-up artist, and the police will write him off as a harmless crank.