No one wants to see the rail network close down next week, least of all the workers who will lose half a week’s pay and more as they strike over their frozen salaries and the threat of job losses.
Not everyone will lose out. The bosses are offering strike-breakers double pay and another day off if they cross the picket lines and keep the network running.
This is a low act of industrial relations sabotage, which actually lessens the prospects of the dispute being resolved before the walkouts take place.
It is also a measure of the risks that Network Rail is prepared to go to now, and in the future, to cut costs.
The RMT staff are taking action for more than pay – they are striking over safety as well.
If £2billion of cuts go ahead it means stations will be unstaffed and that track inspections will be less frequent.
Network Rail, the state-owned company that runs the infrastructure, wants to save at least £100million a year of that through “workplace reform”, which the RMT says will mean widespread job cuts.
The UK had a lesson in what cuts for profits meant at the beginning of railway privatisation when avoidable accidents and fatalities happened with increasing frequency.
It would be a grave error to repeat the mistake after the rail network has come back into public ownership.
Network rail would be better placed by putting their money on the negotiating table to solve this dispute instead of trying to bribe staff to work through an avoidable strike.
Call out hate crime
ANY reduction in hate crime is really welcome.
But a drop of 0.2 per cent is hardly worth a celebration.
The figures we report today show there are still too many people guilty of the appalling abuse of others.
Discrimination against anyone on the grounds of race, gender, sexuality and religion – or anything else for that matter – does not belong in modern Scotland.
It shames the perpetrators andcan leave victims damaged by the experience. How must little Rio Brown and her family feel after she was abused at school?
The eight-year-old was allegedly called “monkey girl” and “chocolate girl”.
No wonder her grandmother now wants to remove Rio from school after such hideous racism.
The Lord Advocate says the Scottish courts will tackle hate crime “robustly”. That’s the very least we should expect.
But it also falls on all of us to call out hate crime when it occurs and help make Scotland a better place.
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