We popped down to Paisley Gilmour Street station on Thursday afternoon, the day after the new RMT strike day was announced to assess the public’s mood regarding the industrial action.
Most people we spoke to were supporting the strikers, saying that the cost of living crisis is affecting everyone and that drivers were within their rights to seek a pay rise that kept pace with inflation.
There were one or two voices that didn’t support the strikes, branding the workers as greedy and saying that the inconvenience to others was too great.
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Support worker Daisy Crump said: “I use the train every single day pretty much. My office is in Paisley but I have to move all over Glasgow and I don’t drive, I take the train.
“I do support the strikes even though they make my life so much more difficult. I fully back it, I think it’s important. And it’s mad because even when there’s not strike action going on, there’s so few drivers at the moment that I can’t get a ten minute train home. They’ve stopped that service, pretty much from 7pm to 11pm. Like it goes like once an hour or something, whereas it should go like every 20 minutes or whatever. And that's just because they don’t have the staff.
“Clearly the bosses just need to meet the demands, and we can all get on with it.”
Stewart Corrigan said that the cost-of-living crisis was hitting him hard and he can appreciate the workers’ desire to ensure their wages keep up with inflation. He said: “I can understand where they’re coming from, it’s scary.
“I know maybe it might annoy a lot of people, but there’s going to be a lot more strikes.”
Up on the platform, Rosie was about to board a train to Glasgow, she told us: “I do agree with striking in principle. If people need to strike to get what they need then that’s a good thing.”
Alex Robb was on his way to a job interview, he stopped to tell us how the strikes would affect him. He said: “I can't drive, there’s been strikes before and it has kind of had an effect on me, the only other option for me is taxis which are obviously more expensive.
“Hopefully it won’t make too much of a difference but yes it definitely has an impact I'm sure on a lot of other people.”
He continued: “I do and I don’t agree with the strikes because I don’t see them going anywhere because it's been happening for ages.
“I totally understand why they're doing it, but it's obviously something that's having such an impact on other people.”
Lovelace Bedzo, a student at UWS is not looking forward to the upcoming strikes, she travels into Paisley from Glasgow everyday and is reliant on the train. She said: “It’s very frustrating. I don’t know why they’re striking, I can’t figure the whole thing out. These people here are working hard, it’s affecting us. It didn’t used to be like that before, we used to be able to get a train every 10 minutes but now no, it’s quite frustrating.”
Ryan Shields, a banking advisor who works in Paisley thinks that the rail workers are paid enough already and does not agree with the strikes. He said: “If you look at the wages everybody else is on. Care workers are paid £15,000 a year and they work no matter what their pay is. For me the train strikes, it’s greedy, it’s pure greed.”
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