Re: Privatisation...
Why do folk trying to improve their lot, or at least not see a decline, by collective action get dissed by so many of their fellow wage slaves.
Because their demands are nonsense, completely alien to similar jobs in the same location. They have everything that they can think of (45 days holiday, £45k starting salary, 35 hr working week), and all they've had to do to get it is to repeatedly strike at the most opportune moments in order to force TFL to back down.
When the union has all the power, and the company has none, the end result is that the company goes bust in the wake of never ending strikes and wage demands. When the union has all the power, and it's a government body that has no power, the end result is that the public service is provided at an extraordinarily disproportionate cost, paid for by the end user.
Tube tickets have gone up almost 50% in less than 10 years, partly due to Ken running it into the ground during boom years (he signed off on ridiculous PFI, he didn't raise prices - even by inflation - and did raise wages, and so TFL ran out of funds to upgrade the network), and partly due to yearly strikes and threatened strikes over pay. In 2010, when everyone in the public sector got pay freezes, and those in the private sector got pay freezes and pay cuts, RMT were offered a 2% pay raise, and went on strike, saying they were "offended" - they wanted 5%.
tl;dr: if your job that involves holding a lever and not falling asleep for 35 hours a week makes you a higher rate tax payer, stop whining.