Yet another strike coming up this week — South Western Railway is in danger a falling to the level of Southern in terms of bad service. Whilst you can certainly blame the operators of the franchise for the high fares given the huge amounts of money they take out of the network you can't blame them for this disruption. It is perfectly reasonable for them to say that a train should still run even though a guard hasn't turned up. Given the high level of absenteeism among staff this happens all to often. The same trains operate perfectly safely without guards in other parts of the country. As with Southern the RMT is going to call strike after strike on South Western Railway. They are not representing the working man in doing this as most of the people travelling on the train get paid less than the driver. Why doesn't the government just say that what is being proposed by the operator is legal and safe and ban any strikes on the issue?

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