Should railway wage negotiations be conducted in public

[philthetube]

If the pay negotiations over the last few months had been conducted in public view would these disputes have been resolved.

The advantages to this, (as I see it) are as follows.

The Government, or TOC's, would not be able to blame the unions for the dispute if the unions were being reasonable.

Union members could be sure that they were not being used as political pawns by their leaders, (I am not saying that they are).

The risk would be that people would play to the cameras but I think that they would end up looking like idiots if they did that.

This could be the case for all essential services, not just the railway.

 

[zwk500]

No, because nobody would be able to talk about concessions in good faith in public. You'd be deadlocked. There's a good argument for a neutral press pool to be granted moderated access to the negotiations at times, but fundamentally what needs to happen is get to a resolution quickly, which requires no theatrics.

They already look like idiots playing to the cameras between sessions (both sides, at various times). They would be more worried about looking weak to their supporters than looking like idiots to everybody else.

 

[philthetube]

No, because nobody would be able to talk about concessions in good faith in public. You'd be deadlocked. There's a good argument for a neutral press pool to be granted moderated access to the negotiations at times, but fundamentally what needs to happen is get to a resolution quickly, which requires no theatrics.

They already look like idiots playing to the cameras between sessions (both sides, at various times). They would be more worried about looking weak to their supporters than looking like idiots to everybody else.

No change there then.

We currently don't know if one or both sides are the idiots.

If they are seen to be idiots, both sides can forget about their jobs when the next elections come up.

I will quote Yorkie here, hope he does not mind, in my experience what he says is a not uncommon view amongst members of unions.

I quit my union because I realised that the union was not really interested in what members such as myself wanted; they constantly went on about how we should not be going to work and other nonsense when that was inconsistent with what my colleagues were telling me they wanted.

My union was demanding restrictions on our freedoms and also seeking to deny people such as myself from doing the job that we signed up to do.

I tried having a conversation with my union about my concerns; they didn't want to know and refused to have anyone speak to me except for a junior admin person.

Unions can indeed appear to have political agendas and they can put their own agendas before the views of ordinary members.

 

[zwk500]

No change there then.

We currently don't know if one or both sides are the idiots.

I think it can safely be said at this point that both sides have behaved sensibly at times and like absolute idiots at others. It should also be borne in mind that this dispute has 2.5 or 3 sides, depending on how you look at it, because of the involvement-but-not-quite of the DfT.

If they are seen to be idiots, both sides can forget about their jobs when the next elections come up.

You hold a lot of faith (I would say too much faith) in both sides' respective electoral processes.

I will quote Yorkie here, hope he does not mind, in my experience what he says is a not uncommon view amongst members of unions.

I am well aware of the issues with national leadership of unions, and I certainly had my share of personal disagreements with the union I was a member of when working in the rail industry (not the RMT, for the record). However I decided it wasn't worth my while to make a fuss that wouldn't get anywhere and remained a member in case I needed union support on a local level (a job many unions do excellently).

But the question here is not whether one or the other side has played silly buggers, it's whether or not public access would help the negotiations to be concluded quicker, and in my opinion it would not because neither side would be willing to discuss sensitive financial and technical points in an environment where every argument would be live-tweeted without the sufficient context of the previous 2/3 hours of talks leading up to it.

Perhaps a better strategy would be that a joint press release has to be given by a certain deadline each day, summarising the progress made in the previous 24 hours. Then there is public accountability of sorts but not the intense glare of public access. There's plenty of government decisions made behind closed doors where the public are never informed of the minutiae of the discussion, only what the final proposals were. Think Cabinet discussions.

 

[Thirteen]

I'm not sure if either side would want open negotiations and I suspect others like TfL wouldn't want them either.

They already look like idiots playing to the cameras between sessions (both sides, at various times). They would be more worried about looking weak to their supporters than looking like idiots to everybody else.

I think Mick Lynch has at times has made himself look a bit foolish by accusing the media of being on the side of the employer and Government. I know he has support but I do think he should tone it down a bit, his counterparts in other unions come off better because they're focused on their issues and not playing politics.

 

[yorksrob]

Interestingly, I read in Modern Railways that Scotrail published its offer to the RMT (which I believe was accepted) so that there was no smoke and mirrors as to what was actually being offered.

One wonders who's stopping the offers being published in England and Wales and why.

 

[SynthD]

The Government, or TOC's, would not be able to blame the unions for the dispute if the unions were being reasonable.

They would continue with that, and some media would continue to report it. Some social media users would repeat their favourite version of events. People have to want to be informed. This isn’t specific to industry relations or transport.

 

[Snow1964]

I would support offers that are being put to membership published in full, so everyone relevant can digest it properly, but negotiations to be secret otherwise bold solutions will never be offered, and everyone will be watching their back.

I am not a fan of the media approach. Tuesdays TV news with Mick Lynch standing up saying rail side needed to revise offer, rather than both sides could move a bit and try and meet between the two extremes was cringeworthy. It came across as we won’t move 1% even if other side closed gap 99%. A don’t want to end strikes because I like my TV appearances approach than than I care about the members.

 

[[.n]]

I think another issue with the everything in public approach is the potential lack of understanding what the issues really are are how they working in reality, the history behind them and their actual impact on employer/employee. It'd just be about the headline X% increase in salary aspect. Other (potentially) equally important things won't necessarily be given the weight they ought to.

A very crude example would perhaps be around at I believe is a current issue that is a part of the negotiation around route knowledge - as an outsider I've no real idea what this means in reality, as a RailUK Forum user I may have a better idea than the average person, but in reality, I don't understand the relative importance of this (for example there was a thread/post recently that noted route knowledge cards(?) weren't transferable between TOCs - on a simplistic level that seems silly to me - but there there did seem to be some valid reasons for it)

 

[Thirteen]

I would support offers that are being put to membership published in full, so everyone relevant can digest it properly, but negotiations to be secret otherwise bold solutions will never be offered, and everyone will be watching their back.

I am not a fan of the media approach. Tuesdays TV news with Mick Lynch standing up saying rail side needed to revise offer, rather than both sides could move a bit and try and meet between the two extremes was cringeworthy. It came across as we won’t move 1% even if other side closed gap 99%. A don’t want to end strikes because I like my TV appearances approach than than I care about the members.

I do sort of think the whole 'unions, yay!' and 'government, boo!' is a bit silly and it doesn't work when they try with the likes of TfL and the Mayor of London who are aren't exactly in bed with the Government but are accused by the RMT of leaving them out.

 

[Bald Rick]

One wonders who's stopping the offers being published in England and Wales and why.

The Network Rail offer has been published.

 

[Dai Corner]

The Network Rail offer has been published.

As has the (accepted) offer from TfW which is 4.5%, plus an extra 2.1% contingent on meeting some apparently minimal productivity improvements.