Well all it says to me is that as an organisation (workers and management) Iarnrod Eireann doesn't give a toss about the travelling public it's paying customers and the tax payers who bankroll its modernisation. Any organisation that could cause that amount of disruption over a petty squabble really ought to be considering why it shouldn't be disbanded.
I also think this walking off the job over fairly minor issues is actually undermining the ability of the real trade unions to use strike action as a last resort in a genuinely abusive situation. There are many other ways of resolving such disputes without resorting to removing people from the payroll and without shutting down half the country!
It seems to me both the drivers and managers are fond of fighting and confrontation.
Frankly, I think that if a manager does something that confrontational he/she ought to be fired and if a worker goes out of their way to cause a massively disruptive strike and won't use normal industrial relations machinery they ought to be fired too!
This whole dispute has cost a fortune to the tax payer, to businesses and caused a huge amount of distruption.
I think it's time for a root and branch reform of CIE from the top down and the bottom up.
It's clearly a dysfunctional organisation ! Something needs to be done to cure this illness!
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