(16 Nov 2023, 11:15 am)xpm wrote A bit of an overreaction there perhaps, and stupid, really?
Cost of living excluding everything you mention above has caused outgoings for everyone to go up, but GNEs stance is we're not making enough profit (asides the £85 million we made in group). Things which employees have little control over like gas, electric, petrol/diesel prices, food, etc has all gone up massively - these are essentials - not optional.
Staff buses run from high density driver areas - a lot of drivers areas have no service at all - so that is an essential cost to them.
Employment in an ideal world should be based on mutual respect - not a one way transaction where the employer throws you some bones at the end of the week grudgingly and tries its best to get out of doing so, and tries to find ways to make you work longer for the same pay, and lambast and degrade you at every possible opportunity.
An employer has a responsibility to ensure that none of it's employees are forced to work overtime just to meet their day to day needs. When overtime does dry up GNE are quite happy to cut off employees like junkies needing their fix with no thought for the help they have given the company, either at short notice, or the fact they rely on the extra to make ends meet (and any manager who says they don't know who those people are, are lying). I'm not going to even enter into the discussion about children - it's quite clear from what you've written you do not have any, or appreciate any of the ups and downs of family life in that regard.
The guy’s a Tory. Reactionary, stupid and frankly callous opinions are in their DNA, these days. But to deal with the points, GNE may not be to blame for the economic conditions in which we are all living, but any business that will soon be reliant on winning franchises needs to be very careful about alienating most of its staff, without whom they would cease to exist. We’ve seen similar issues play out with the likes of Avanti, who treated its employees with such distain (predating the nationwide industrial disputes) that a huge proportion of their drivers took early retirement and they were left with major shortages and consequently more reliant on drivers making themselves available for rest day working, which many didn’t due to the breakdown of relations between management and staff. This never ending race to the bottom in terms of working conditions has become entrenched in modern economies. Thankfully we have pockets of unionisation helping to keep it in check in certain industries and it needs to expand across more sectors.