Comments by "Sar Jim" (@sarjim4381) on "British Rail | Rail Strikes | industrial action | Train Strikes | TV Eye | 1982" video.

  1. The eight hour day agreement of 1915 was supposed to be a maximum eight hour day, not that you got paid for eight hours if you didn't do eight hours work. BR management also demonstrated they were incapable of managing a company without the employees hating them. Parliament was never capable of managing a railway company. It was a bad deal all the way around.
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  2.  Katrina S  How so? Are British trains performing worse than they did in 1982? Are there still constant strikes? Do they still have engines that are 50 years old? Baggage rooms being flooded when it rains?
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  3.  Katrina S  I see. The old Tories vs Labour thing. What party was in power for almost 13 years after privatization (sorry for the yank spellings), could have reversed it at will, yet never did? Why did the former Associated Society of Locomotive Engineers and Firemen general secretary Lew Adams moved to work for Virgin Trains, and said on a 2004 radio phone-in programme: "All the time it was in the public sector, all we got were cuts, cuts, cuts. And today there are more members in the trade union, more train drivers, and more trains running. The reality is that it worked, we’ve protected jobs, and we got more jobs. Railroads in the US created their own problems with bad management and militant unions constantly at war, rather like we saw in the UK. The railroads got better management, unions became more realistic in their demands, and now mainline railroads are thriving. Yes, there are less employees than in 1948, but that's a natural byproduct of increased automation, longer trains, and less switch with containerized freight. Still, the numbers of railroad employees, once we factor out the years of recession,, especially 2008-2010, when the severe recession of those years drastically cut freight car loadings, has been steadily rising since 1999. 1997 was deepest trough of railroad employment, with 220,000 employees on the payroll. It had risen ever since, with 246,000 employees in 2018. Most of these are high paying jobs, and many are union..Employment has been rising due to increased demand, but revenue per employee continues to climb. they have better equipment, more effective computerization and automation, and improved track and grades, all paid for with revenue from railroad operations. Our railroads have never existed to provide jobs, They exist to provide service at a profit. We have the most productive railroad employees in the world. They are a positive benefit to the country, paying tens of billions in taxes to the federal state, and local goverments and spend tens of billions for supplies and capital improvements. We continue to have the lowest freight rates in the world while providing more jobs a better return to shareholders.A large portion of business lost to trucks in 70's and 89's has been won back, reducing the numbers of trucks on the road, decreasing accidents, decreasing fuel consumption, and decreasing air pollution. One of the reasons why Amazon and other companies can promise two day delivery to anywhere in a country about 37 times larger in area then the UK is the fast freight services the railroads provide. All this was accomplished without government ownership and without costing taxpayers a dime. I realize that, as a socialist, you want the utopia of government ownership of the means of production. Give me the performance records for British railroads between 1948 and 1995, when they were nationalized. If they are just as good, I'll sign up for your utopia.
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  4.  Katrina S  Ah, so the Labour during that 13 years wasn't real Labour. Kind of like Stalin. Mao, and Castro weren't doing communism right. Corbyn impresses me as pretty near a real communist, so maybe he'll do it right. However, my question was how have US railroads done so well compared to British railways. You seem to have ducked that whole part.
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  5.  @MokkaMatti  You seem to be living in a different country than me. Which would you rather be living in, the country today or the country in 1859, when we were about to fly apart? The dangers of thinking you live in a terminally unique time without any historical perspective.
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  6.  @MrThecarebear  And? We have GP7s and GP9s still in service that are now between 65 and 70 years old. What has this got to do with running a socialist or capitalist railroad?
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