Train Spotting

It won't make me stereotype trades unionists as I am sure it will only be a minority who will behave like that!

All this talk about work has made me need to tell you all something, I got my contract signed today and am now a permanent employee, no longer on trial! I`m off to the pub to celebrate! ;D ;D ;D ;D

A 10 per cent absence from work costs the UK economy around £600 million per day ( loss of earnings, no train fares, money spent at work etc... ) and that was the estimated percentage of employees who failed to make it to work during the strike. I belive the snow fall during January cost the economy 1.2 billion pounds because 20% failed to make it to work.

Who do I blame? well one could have been avoided and the other could not. So it's mother nature for one and excessive snowfall for the other the trade union for the other.

And there really was no need to thank me Rags.

Oh dear, you really need to sharpen up on your research.

While it is widely accepted that £600m is the standard cost of a train strike day, the figures are spurious at best.

On the 29th March 2010, the Telegraph quoted Stephen Alambritis, from the Federation of Small Businesses, as saying:
“A 10 per cent absence from work will cost the UK around £600 million. A lot of people might be able to get to work, but a lot won’t".

John Stepek, Editor of MoneyWeek expands on this figure in an MSN Money article:
"If you accept the rough calculation that a bank holiday costs the economy around £6 billion, then the Federation of Small Businesses reckons that a rail strike could cost around £600 million a day, based on the assumption that 10% of workers are kept at home."

So you see, the FSB are simply presuming that the "rough cost" of a Bank Holiday is equally distributed across the workforce, so multiply the total cost by the number of workers who they assume fail to get into work (10%).

I can't find any calculation to support this £600bn but even if its true there is no correlation between that number and the cost of a spurious estimate of workers unable to travel to work.

If I am the CEO of a small company which employs 100 workers, I'm positive that it can continue functioning happily if 10 of my workforce fail to to turn up, unless one is the Safety Officer who has to be there to turn on all the machinery.

Britain is no longer the manufacturing powerhouse it once was and dependence on employees being present in the factory is no longer as great as 20+ years ago. With modern technology, many workers can log-on to systems from home to keep the economy working. Industry and workforce are more flexible and can catch up with productivity in the weeks to follow.

Small businesses (hence the interest of the FSB) like coffee shops and newsagents will suffer. But larger high companies won't.

This £600m is a figure of complete guesswork with no evidence to support it.

However, its amazing what status of individual can be persuaded to believe such figments of the imagination: on Thursday 1st April, "Judge Mrs Justice Sharp made an interim order against the RMT at the High Court after being told by Network Rail's QC that "unlawful" strike action would cause "immense damage to the economy"." (from The Independant).

The RMT Easter strike didn't happen.

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Congratulations and I can appreciate that must be a weight off your shoulders.

Let's hope your new employer treats you with more respect than those of the London Firemen, Underground workers and the old London Forest Bus Co!

that would be the beautiful TORNADO, first steam train to be built in Merse donkeys years. better than those smelly, ugly diesels ;D