Off the rails...

Those train strikes were annoying, weren’t they? I mean, what an inconvenience!I If you can’t detect the sarcasm in my writing by the way, let me point it out to you explicitly... Career Garage has full solidarity with the rail strikers & here’s why... Three years ago, rail workers accepted a 0% pay rise & then again, a year later. That was during a time (as ever) of rising inflation. I guess you could say, they felt relieved to still have jobs, especially throughout the pandemic. This year, they were presented with yet another 0% pay rise, as well as over 2500 redundancies. Oh & there were unprecedented changes to terms & conditions too. Questions & suggestions like this were put to them... “Fancy an increase from 28 weeks of nights to 39 weeks of nights a year?” (For no extra pay?) “No?” “How about an increase from 32 weekends worked a year to 39 weekends worked a year?” (Again, for nothing extra) “Still not sound appealing?” Well, have no fear, because instead of getting time & a quarter for a night shift & time & a half for weekends, you can now hope to get time & a tenth for both. I mean, how can these rail workers be so ungrateful?! Those suggestions & changes equate to a 15% pay cut on every night shift & a 40% pay cut on every weekend shift. Two fingers would be the politest response I think... Remember what P&O wanted to do? Firing people & bringing in replacements on lower pay... Well, some rail workers were informed that they would be fired & invited back into ‘renamed’ roles for ￡9,000 a year less. This isn’t the stuff of a dystopian future, or tales from the miners’ strikes of the past, this is happening right now in 2022. Why does it bother us at Career Garage so much? Because jobs are so much more than jobs, they are opportunities for people to lead the lives they want to lead, to provide for their families & believe it or not, to facilitate the vital services that the rest of us rely on! We’re supposed to be going green, aren’t we? So, why aren’t we investing in our rail workers? Upskilling them, retraining them, developing the people behind a key industry. If you know someone who has been directly affected by the rail strikes (& we mean a worker, not someone who missed a train...) then Career Garage wants to speak to them. Their broad range of easily transferable & highly desirable skills are in demand from other industries & sometimes you just need someone else to point that out for you. We can do that for them & more. The next time you find yourself inconvenienced by some kind of industrial action, make sure you read between the lines of biased media rhetoric & even speak to the people concerned if you possibly can.In 99.9% of cases, they’re not greedy, they’re not after more of this or more of that, they’re just standing up for themselves & trying to protect the careers they have worked hard to build. If that means you have to plan an alternative mode of transport for a week or two, so bloody be it.