My son trained engineer for network rail, started as an apprentice 12yrs ago, he was basically bullied in to joining the union in his first week as apprentice, he asked my opinion, I'm not a fan of unions so told to make his own mind up, he joined with reluctance. Came out after a year, at 19 years old he said he couldn't believe how backward looking the union is and wasn't prepared to fund them. He now runs a small rail engineering company in the private sector mainly in Europe. If he stayed with network rail he would be on £60k+ a year for his job, same job in the EU would be around £35k.
He thinks Network Rail could shed 40% of their workforce if they fully modernised to todays standards. One example Mick is fighting for even though he 'accepts modernisation' - Network Rail still do the majority of fault checking with 'walkers' chaps who walk the lines checking and identifying faults. 95% of this could be done with camera trains, but Mick won't accept any redundancies, he wants these 'walkers' of which around 80% could be replaced with technology to be guaranteed jobs elsewhere. It the same across the whole network, modernisation is welcomed by the union but there can't be any redundancies just natural wastage. Mick's a very good politicain and dodges most of the meaningful questions, and turns on the public sympathy taps, his poor vastly overpaid union members are suffering like everyone else.
Guess we will continue to pay stupidly high rail fares, for a generally a sub standard service, just to Mick and his union happy.
www.spectator.co.uk
