9.6% pay rise turned down? What exactly do these drivers want? No other industry is anywhere close to getting that. My missus is a specialist cancer nurse and got 1% last year yet she and her colleagues never went on strike!
Because inflation is now at 10.1%, and even a 9.6% increase is actually a pay cut.
With regards to nurses not getting the pay rise they deserve-the first point here is not that the bus drivers demanding too much of an increase, but that nurses get too little. Everybody's wages should keep up with inflation at least.
The other point is that for some industries, going on strike is easier than others. Ideally, a strike hits those that make money from a business in the pocket, while causing little harm to others. That's why large-scale production industries (like miners and steel workers) find it easiest to walk out - and why their striker were met with such repression. When the conveyer belt stops, the business makes no money, but there isn't much direct impact on others.
Transport industries also have mass employment of people on similar terms, and when they walk out, it is immediatly noticable. But here the impact is on everyone (people who can't get to work, go about their normal lives), so a great deal of solidarity is needed (which seems to be there at the moment, amazingly). But still, transport industry workers are in a strong position to demand what they want.
Nurses are in a bad position to go on strike. There are high costs when they do - people might die. So proper strikes in that sector are seen as immoral, and the best they can do is work to contract, don't do any overtime, etc. As they are all massively understaffed anyway, that isn't much of an option either. But as a consequence, nurse strikes aren't a threat, so they are in a bad position to demand better pay or working conditions.
However, if other sectors with more power to strike get better conditions, they also increase pressure on those sectors where workers can't strike, because if those don't increase what they offer, they will find it hard to keep their staff. At least that is what would happen between other industries. The NHS is in a unique position, in that the government is trying to starve it to death, so they can privatise it.
What makes a bus driver warrant 9 times more than my missus? They knew what the pay was when they signed up go do the job.
Also, this bit is just wrong - bus drivers don't want to earn 9x as much as nurses. This is about pay increases, not total pay.
