Protest

Living in London and working in Surrey (mainly), I have the dubious honour of getting stuffed by both the train and tube strikes. As a hangover from my 'radical' youth, I default to unfettered support for anyone sticking it to The Man, even when they are making my life measurably more shit in the process. However, after several months of this fun and games, I am still not entirely sure what it is all about. I mean I understand the fundamental beef is about doing away with certain roles: manned ticket offices in the case of the tube and guards on trains opening and closing doors in the case of the trains. I think in both cases, the unions see these changes as the start of the process of getting rid of the staff associated with those jobs entirely. They're probably right: the companies involved will swear blind that they want to keep all the jobs, but if they make the job so meaningless that no one wants to do it, they will probably be able to get rid of the staff without firing most of them. This is a variation of the approach to privatising public services, where you starve it of cash, then complain that it's failing before selling it off to a company who can miraculously make a profit out of it with increased investment. However in this context the company are already making a profit, they just want to make more of a profit by getting rid of costly people. Helpfully, in the case of Southern Rail, they don't even need to risk their profits, as the government underwrites the franchise and pays all their fines. Fundamentally, the rail companies' mates in the government are using taxpayer money to break the unions on the this 'test case' so that when it happens on other franchises that they don't bankroll, the precedent has already been set and the unions have no support. Next time a Tory tells you they're all about competition and free markets, maybe explain this little bit of government intervention to prop up monopolies at the expense of the taxpayer.
However, whilst the process is unquestionably wrong and indefensible (unless you think that the purpose of government is to siphon taxpayers money straight to shareholders), I am less sure about the rectitude or otherwise of the outcome. In this instance probably only a little uncertain: having more human beings on trains and in stations is clearly preferable, as people are helpful in a range of situations. Also removing people from the service will not result in a cost saving to the consumer, as nothing ever does: train fares seem to be the one product that have an automatic increase built in, so cost savings are simply passed on to the shareholders as profits, along with a whole bunch of your taxes. So as a commuter, there is clearly no benefit to me in the changes that the unions are resisting.  Of course the train operators will argue that the changes are merely a result of progress, of new technology etc. That may be so, but it doesn't necessarily equate to something better. It is not like there is a clear environmental impact of sacking railway workers. It's not like there being job losses in North Sea oil because the energy companies had finally decided to take renewables seriously. It would be hard to argue against that, although doubtless some unions would. The problem for the left is that increasingly  workers' rights to remain in their jobs might well conflict with other concerns that impact humanity.
The labour movement was built on the assumption that, whilst the power structures that ruled heavy industry were wrong, the existence of that industry itself was unquestionable. Now that there is so much more to question about the industrial process and its impact on our world, a movement that defends employment at all costs no longer rules the moral high-ground. The automation of increasing numbers of jobs raises questions about labour as a concept, let alone as a movement. The left must think about how it protects workers' rights when traditional concepts of work are being deconstructed. Our value as data points in the information system will gradually overtake our value as more physical cogs in the machine. As companies look to exploit our data instead of our labour, we need to consider how we take back ownership of that means of production. At the moment there is no union defending those rights.