Another strike bringing the London Underground to a near halt. More complaints about the “militant” RMT trade union and its leader, Bob Crow; another two days of gridlock in the capital; and more dark threats from the Conservative Party about another round of union-busting legislation.
However, the 48-hour strike by the RMT and the TSSA that is inconveniencing London is not the run-of-the-mill tube strike over pay. This is about fighting 950 job cuts that threaten to remove vital support for passengers. This is about resisting the creeping automation of London’s public transport and all the consequences that entails. This is about peoples’ livelihoods. For those of you unfamiliar with the dispute, trade union members are opposing plans to close all ticket offices on the Underground and fire the 950 staff who man them between other duties such as assisting disabled people onto trains. Transport for London (TfL), the arm of the city government which owns the Tube, says that only 2% of ticket sales are through the offices- the rest are made through ticket machines and Oyster smartcards.
Faced with that statistic, I too would say that the ticket offices must be an inefficiency. But that’s not true. Who are the 2 percent of customers who use the ticket offices? Tourists who don’t understand the equally complex route network and fares system, the “technology illiterate” who can’t use the ticket machines, including the elderly in particular. So what if it costs £50 million a year to provide an accessible service to these people, and a safe environment in the rest of the stations? If transport is a public service, it should be open to all, even if that means a few unprofitable decisions.
If Boris Johnson is prepared to condemn the RMT members who voted to strike as “bad workers” then he is only showing how skewed his outlook is. The workers who are forgoing two days’ wages and enduring massive unpopularity are not doing it because they fancy a day off. It’s because they value the service they provide, and value their jobs, or their colleagues, enough to fight to protect them. It might not make them soulless, exploitable units of labour, but it makes them exactly the right people defend our public service of transport. They deserve every success.
The Political Idealist 
Technology is a wonderful thing but can be a nightmare for all. using machines to make a business “efficient” is good for the balance books but often is an anti-social move as well.
where humans are replaced with a computer controlled device.
This technology is growing ever more into all aspects of life and serves ONLY profit margines. it is NOT for the benefit of any end users nor will it help employment, quite the opposite, It WILL decrease the need for personnel.
Warehousing using computer controlled stacking systems, manufacturers using computer controlled assemblers, shops using “self service” tills, Universal Credit using “on-line” systems, this list grows and grows and although i may seem a luddite it IS the future.
The answer to it all is something that has yet to be considered as it is, as yet, not percieved as a problem.
You’re quite right: labour displacement can only continue for so long until its implications become impossible to ignore. We need to think of radical means to ensure that full employment remains an attainable goal.
I completely understand the imperative for human interaction in a place such as the London Underground. No matter how ‘smart’ software may be, it can never match the subtle qualities and abilities of a friendly human to assist another human in some matter, such as in navigating a rapid transit system. The people in these sorts of occupations should be paid well and should be able to continue to provide their services to the public, as these services are highly valuable.
However, the response of some, particularly on the left, to the decision to close down ticket offices resembles a disconcerting undercurrent of Luddism. In the modern world, as technology progresses rapidly, we must come to terms with the fact that automation threatens to permanently erode a considerable swathe of the labour market. Our conceptualisation of what it means to ‘work’ and have a ‘job’ needs undergo a radical transformation. We need to accept that full employment is not possible, and that as a result, we need to pursue an ample basic income. Ultimately, when combined with compassionate social policy, automation is hugely beneficial to the health and wellbeing of all in society.
I wonder whether we should move towards a thinner spread of working hours as a means of mitigating labour displacement. It would be difficult to sustain a job-fee minority from disgruntled workers.
You want a socialist point of view?… ok….Shares for everyone, everyone gets shares in all Corporations whether they work or not, shares in Government too, why not? the government is progressively becoming corporate property as more and more “work” is outsourced…No need for a welfare state as everyone will get there dividends from the shares they own and no one needs to work, just let the automation take control….can’t beat that for a radical idea can you?
Otherwise just consider the above my insane contribution to a possible solution.
Modern technology is destructive to labour in a way the Luddites of old feared but could never imagine, the industrial revolution was, in the end, a boost to labour with an increased need for workers to handle the output and maintenance of the machines, peoples earnings eventually increased and the workforce could afford things they never could before thus demand for the goods being produced by the industrial revolution increased. socially it was genius.
The modern technological revolution is far more destructive to labour and in turn is destructive to itself. It is becoming more and more able (by design) to handle it’s own output, maintenance is reduced by adding “redundant” systems as back ups (it sounds contradictory to call them redundant but it refers to devices running in parallel to the primary systems but only activate and take over if a failure occurs in the primary systems) even transport is being designed to negate the need for a driver as attempts are made to automate road vehicles.
Packing and stacking of goods produced is already automated. “Picking” and dispatching orders can already be done by machine inculding loading of vehicles without the need for human intervention.
Modern technology has the potential to remove the need for labour from the warehouse and workshop floor to the highest levels of the office and administration.
So we need to adapt to this revolution, get used to more and more advances and less and less need for labour whether it be manual or intellectual. thereby less people working and earning with the inevitable decline in demand as less and less can afford the goods being produced.
you end up with a system whereby more can be done by less people for more people….
Eutopia…. more people leading a leisurely life on er…..what?…..what do they do? all the people not needed to watch the systems doing the production and trasnsport….how do they afford the output of these systems? and if they cannot afford the output then what point the output?.
Labour, the “workforce” are the consumers, the greater the number the greater the consumption, reduce the INCOME of the workforce and you reduce the consumption, reduce the NUMBER of the workforce and again you reduce consumption.
Simply put after all that?…. people with spare cash beyond surviving buy, people who can only or barely survive DON’T. Economics boiled down to one sentence.
I think the process will balance itself in time, but the current trend amounts to the further concentration of production in the hands of a few entities. If there ever was a situation in which the vast majority of people were unemployed, the economy could not sustain itself. You could say that socialism is almost as much about protecting Capital from itself as controlling it.
What i was really trying to say is Business NEEDS employees. it is a self serving and mutually beneficial system. business needs buyers and buyers need sellers (business) it pays a business to have buyers with spare cash, buyers are predominantly employees therefore paying a “minimum wage” ,one that atleast allows people to survive, is self destructive in that it leaves the employee (potential buyer) with too little to buy. Spare cash though entices people to buy, the truth is we ALL possess much more than we need in the way of goods and as far as business is concerned this is GOOD, if we just stuck to what we need only, business would be buggered, so it pays to put temptation in an employees way by making sure they have the “spare” cash to be tempted with.
If we all did more to be self sufficient then we’d buy less food because we grow more of our own, we’d buy less furniture because we would build our own, we don’t need to work therefore do we need the car, the telephone, the internet, the television or radio? not wotking we have more time on our hands so time saving devices are not needed, washing machines, dishwasher, microwaves, those damned silly sandwich toasters cluttering up the cupboards, a miriad of devices considered essential for a working lifestyle but are not needed for an unemployed person. if your looking after yourself why care about the outside world, that’s someone elses problem. granted energy and water would be a problem but not insurmountable. the point i’m making is remove the temptation of spare cash and people won’t spend and business NEEDS people to spend and people need WAGES to spend. remove wages or people and business has no purpose.
I’ve hogged this space enough so shutting up for now…:)……unless…………………