Public support for Mick Lynch’s crippling Christmas walkouts is draining away as Britain faces a lockdown by industrial action with the festive season in ruins for the third year running and businesses face losing billions.
Millions of employees must now work from home, some until 2023, due to union tycoons such as Mick Lynch shutting down essential services until January 10.
With the cold snap blasting the country, support for RMT union boss Mick Lynch on the picket lines seems to be decreasing, with a poll indicating support for the rail walkouts falling by eight points since October.
On day two of the RMT’s rail strikes, half of Britain’s rail lines are closed all day, as thousands of members at Network Rail and 14 train operating companies walk out in the long-running dispute over pay, jobs and conditions, with numerous regions of the country having no services, including most of Scotland and Wales.
Rail staff have been joined in strikes by Royal Mail workers, and nurses prepare to take unprecedented industrial action, which experts say puts lives at risk amid claims chemotherapy appointments have been axed as 100,000 medical staff remain at home.
Ministers will call an emergency Cobra meeting for the second time this week over the crisis that will last almost a month.
Britons had to sacrifice seeing loved ones over the holiday period in 2020 and 2021 due to the COVID pandemic but now face having to do the same due to union barons closing down essential services until January 10.
Businesses have said the continuous postal strikes are costing them more than during the pandemic, with one forecasting £1 million in losses at the peak of the festive trading period.
Thousands of Christmas cards and packages have started piling up as Royal Mail workers prepare to mount picket lines outside sorting and delivery offices.
Two further Royal Mail strikes are scheduled for December 23 and December 24, in an increasingly bitter dispute over pay, jobs and conditions.
Royal Mail has brought forward the final posting dates for Christmas cards because of the industrial action.
The wave of walkouts billed as the ‘December of discontent’ is bringing untold hell on hard-working Britons in the run-up to Christmas.
Business owners say that their festive trading period, one of the busiest throughout the year, is being hit badly by disruption to critical services.
Enough is enough now, they should get back to bleeding work – don’t like the pay and conditions, find another job! Because all they’re actually doing is destroying other people’s lives – forcing them to close their businesses and let their staff go which then puts them on welfare.
However, saying that. It looks like the people of the United Kingdom are rediscovering its mutinous streak, which we all knew would happen eventually because we have a self-absorbed and greedy government, and it won’t just stop at walkouts, ultimately people will be so disgruntled there will be riots as well.
It was claimed that the average rail worker makes £44,000.
This figure is the median salary for rail sector positions. It includes train drivers, few of whom are involved in the RMT walkout, and excludes other employees such as cleaners, who are. The RMT says the median salary of its rail members is £31,000.
MP Grant Shapps said on 20 June 2022 that the average train driver earns £59,000, the average rail worker earns £44,000, and the average nurse, £31,000.
His comments were made during discussions about the walkout presently underway by railway workers represented by the RMT union over pay, working conditions and job cuts.
The £44,000 figure has also been repeated by Conservative MPs Nick Fletcher, Jonathan Gullis and Chris Philp when talking about the strikes.
This figure is broadly correct as the median rail sector salary is described in official figures. However, it’s not representative of the average salary of the employees who are striking in this particular action.
However, during an appearance on Newsnight on 20 June, government minister Chris Philp said that the median salary of all railway workers was £44,000.
The Department for Transport told the BBC this figure came from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) which calculated that the median rail sector salary was £43,747 in 2021.
The Tories know they’re going to be out eventually, so they’ve executed a scorched earth policy. Destroy the workers, deregulate the bank’s et cetera, and therefore after every crisis, the rich have got richer and the poor have got poorer.
This government has lost its ability to govern to the benefit of the people. Its only beneficiaries are illegals in dinghies, why because they will work for less and longer hours, so as far as our government is concerned, they are our future because there’s nothing like a bit of slave labour!
And they say slavery had been abolished, not on your nelly!
THE MONTHLY MOSQUITO 