Back on supply-side

A teacher's annual salary is £................ A signalman with the railways earns £................. Apart from the fact that I love teaching you, and I do hate trains, fill in the gaps and you may see why there is a growing recruitment problem in the teaching profession:

Network Rail’s lavish gravy train has to be halted

The Times 19th May 2015

More than 150 of the strikers earned over £80,000 last year

Ross Clark

 

When I worked for British Rail in the 1980s I quickly learnt the value of a train that got into Derby at 18.03. If I was on business and returned to my designated “home station” after 6pm I could put supper on expenses and claim time off in lieu — of which I had by the end of the year amassed enough for an extra fortnight’s holiday.

When the railways were privatised a decade later I presumed the Spanish practices would end. Instead, they got worse. Recently it emerged that 154 of the Network Rail staff who plan to strike this weekend over pay and conditions earned more than £80,000 last year. One signalman received £111,066.


How wonderfully third way it sounded when in 2002 the defunct Railtrack was replaced by “not for profit” Network Rail. True, it hasn’t been profitable for shareholders — i.e. taxpayers — as no dividends are paid. But it has certainly proved profitable for staff. Last year, three executives each received total remuneration of more than £800,000. When awarding pay rises Network Rail likes to think of itself as in the private sector. Yet it is definitely in the public sector when it comes to claiming subsidies — £3.4 billion in 2013-14.


Public or private, it is always the same on the railways: unionised staff driving up their pay by holding their equally overpaid bosses to ransom. And the taxpayer ends up paying the bill. Not content with £52,000 salaries, Tube drivers demanded an extra £1,000 just to turn up to work during the Olympics. Disgracefully, Transport for London caved in.


Including payments to train operating companies, taxpayers propped up the rail industry to the tune of £5.28 billion in 2013-14 — far more than the £3.55 billion subsidy to British Rail (at today’s prices) in 1994-95, the last year before privatisation.


It wasn’t just privatisation that the railways needed, but competition, automation and strike bans. If two or three train companies operated on every line they wouldn’t be able to exploit passengers with huge fare rises. Tube drivers should have been replaced with computers years ago — as on many other metro systems.


The government’s proposal that 40 per cent of all eligible workers must vote in favour of a strike before a walk out does not go far enough. The unions like to call railways an essential public service. Let’s take them at their word and treat railway workers like soldiers and the police — make it illegal for them to strike.