Re: 2 EL's on Patrick's

[pcc@ocean.com.au (Les Brown)]

"Exnarc" <gwrly@netspace.net.au> wrote in aus.rail:

I just know I'm gonna regret posting this. Normally I wait until the
next day before I send something just to be sure that what I've
written is what I meant to say. I have made an exception on this
occasion.

>Look Les,
>
>I was pointing out the position of on train staff, if you knew anything at
>all you would know that GSR. don't employ Drivers and I don't work for them.
>However I get a little heated up when people who were employed by (AN) who
>have homes and families to keep are exploited by companies who take them on
>knowing they can get them to sign anything to get a job rather than end up
>on the dole and people like you who sit back passing judgement about the
>workers being subsidised by shareholders.
>
Funny comments about me passing judgements. My reply to you initially
was because I believed you were totally one-sided about the judgements
your were passing on others. All I was after was more information
before I made up my mind. You seem to have gone straight for the
jugular of the nearest throat you could find.

>Get real where do you come from???

The real world, Bob, not the sheltered workshops that once masqueraded
for government railways.

>What are you???

Human being. More or less.

>I guess you've already told me that by your reply to my last posting.
>
Stick around pal, there is a lot more I can tell you that should
dispell once and for all any remaining doubts you may have about me.

>If GSR. are half the businessmen they claim to be why did they buy into a
>industry that is loosing so much money???
>
Why? Because they're people who can probably run a railway better than
a government can,  because they can take risks that no politician
would dare do. And if they don't do their job well, they're out.
Welcome to the real world Bob, sink or swim. It's a world based more
on merit and talent than seniority and brown-nosing the boss that
gained you a promotion on a government railway. GSR are probably the
kind of people prepared to take a risk and put their money on
something they believe in. Could you ever imagine any government doing
that, Labour or Liberal?

I believe that if GSR can't do it, then certainly no government can
(with perhaps QR excepted, but I reserve the right to change my mind
on them at short notice). Politicians don't take risks.

>Stiff luck to Serco and its shareholders, they've done no favours to anyone.
>Personally I'd like to see them go under, however as always it would be the
>workers who loose out in the end.
>
Yeh, it'll be the workers, and the shareholders, who are probably one
and the same in many cases, but not the government - they couldn't
give a rat's...

>Serco (GER.) have taken the AWA's to there legal limits, they are a credit
>to Peter Rieth and his screw the worker phylosophy.
>
As I said, where was the union? And as I also said, you aren't telling
the full story either.
>
Listen sunshine, I tell you a couple of things. Any boss that wants to
screw the worker is asking for real trouble. If I was a shareholder in
a company that had that mentality I'd sell my shares as fast as I
could. The best, most profitable companies rely on stability of their
workers, and the more skilled the worker is, the greater the
importance on stability. It costs too much if the workers go on strike
or if they leave. To replace and retrain a skilled worker can cost an
organisation anywhere between 1 - 2 years salary IN ADDITION to the
cost of paying the worker to be trained. It's just not worth having
disgruntled employees, to say nothing about pissed off customers. I've
been there, I know the facts.

If you are going to foster a "them and us" mentality instead of trying
to encourage an attitude of getting along and making the railways of
Australia actually work as they should, then you're either
contemplating retirement, or if the railways of this country were
closed down tomorrow, you wouldn't give stuff as long as you got paid
what you think you're entitled to. 

There are those of us who care more for the railway industry than you
obviously do. What a shame you don't work for the road-lobby.

Look, I don't argue with someone about how well or otherwise they do
their job, but don't pick an argument with me 'cause you reckon
railway management sucks and how the worker is the poor down-trodden
bastard that management is always trying to screw. I've heard it for
as long as I've been hanging around railway yards for over 35 years,
and I was told it existed long, long before that. I can find too many
examples of workers screwing management to take you seriously.

Les Brown