Brexit and the waning days of the United Kingdom

[Gups]

Doesn't discounted train travel for rail workers make sense?
I mean, most shops give their employees a discount.

The scheme was a 75% discount on all fares nationwide  for life plus for spouse and dependent children. No shop gives a discount like that. The current scheme allows 75% discount on leisure travel for the worker which seems more than reasonable.

[HVC]

@sheilbh AI

[Sheilbh]

@sheilbh AI

I'm unmoved

We'll see - the RMT is, I think, one of the most effective unions in the country and it's difficult to get a strike vote here due to our quite restrictive laws. From a negotiation perspective I think it's always helpful to have some big headline points that you suspect you won't get but can then move on "in the spirit of compromise" as you move forward in other areas. And you never know - if you don't ask, you don't get.

[garbon]

@sheilbh AI

I'm unmoved

We'll see - the RMT is, I think, one of the most effective unions in the country and it's difficult to get a strike vote here due to our quite restrictive laws. From a negotiation perspective I think it's always helpful to have some big headline points that you suspect you won't get but can then move on "in the spirit of compromise" as you move forward in other areas. And you never know - if you don't ask, you don't get.

Oh I get it. If you have the ability to grab as much as you can, why not?

As a member of the public though I'd love to see the RMT smashed and never hear of Mick Lynch ever again.

[HVC]

@sheilbh AI

I'm unmoved

Your intransigence will be your downfall!

I'm mostly joking about the AI thing ("mostly" ), but I still have a dislike of public service strikes.

[Admiral Yi]

From a negotiation perspective I think it's always helpful to have some big headline points that you suspect you won't get but can then move on "in the spirit of compromise" as you move forward in other areas.

So you make an unreasonable demand in the hopes that when you drop it you are perceived as reasonable.

[garbon]

From a negotiation perspective I think it's always helpful to have some big headline points that you suspect you won't get but can then move on "in the spirit of compromise" as you move forward in other areas.

So you make an unreasonable demand in the hopes that when you drop it you are perceived as reasonable.

I'm not sure who they are tricking though as at least from what I can find of polls early last year, more of the public is against striking railway workers than support.

[Jacob]

So you make an unreasonable demand in the hopes that when you drop it you are perceived as reasonable.

It is not uncommon in negotiations to stake out positions that you're willing to compromise on.

[Barrister]

So you make an unreasonable demand in the hopes that when you drop it you are perceived as reasonable.

It is not uncommon in negotiations to stake out positions that you're willing to compromise on.

The problem is if it is obvious that is a position inserted just for purpose of "conceding" later on.

But yes, it's very hard to negotiate if the position you put forward is your minimum acceptable position, and you refuse to budge from there.  You'd better have some pretty strong leverage if you expect to get a negotiated settlement.

I remember in one case, I offered a really generous position, which the other side refused.  As we proceeded in litigation and my position kept getting stronger and stronger, I kept changing the position to be less and less generous as we went.

Which was really fun, but also ultimately meant we had to go all the way to trial.  I won and got what I was asking for in the end (he really should have accepted any of my earlier offers!), but is a pretty aggressive way to negotiate.

[Admiral Yi]

It is not uncommon in negotiations to stake out positions that you're willing to compromise on.

And the public is free to judge the good faith and fairness of those positions however they wish.

[Jacob]

And the public is free to judge the good faith and fairness of those positions however they wish.

For sure.

[Admiral Yi]

The problem is if it is obvious that is a position inserted just for purpose of "conceding" later on.

But yes, it's very hard to negotiate if the position you put forward is your minimum acceptable position, and you refuse to budge from there.  You'd better have some pretty strong leverage if you expect to get a negotiated settlement.

I remember in one case, I offered a really generous position, which the other side refused.  As we proceeded in litigation and my position kept getting stronger and stronger, I kept changing the position to be less and less generous as we went.

Which was really fun, but also ultimately meant we had to go all the way to trial.  I won and got what I was asking for in the end (he really should have accepted any of my earlier offers!), but is a pretty aggressive way to negotiate.

This is the way I was taught it in my negotiation class at grad school.  There's a very strong tendency for any negotiation to move toward a 50/50 split of the opening positions (what could be fairer?).  The problem is when one party tries to game this tendency by opening with an outrageous position.  Then there is a chance the other party will walk and take no deal over playing that particular game.

[Sheilbh]

So you make an unreasonable demand in the hopes that when you drop it you are perceived as reasonable.

I don't think it's necessarily unreasonable.

It's something big that you genuinely want but in the context of a wider deal, depending on what you get elsewhere, it's something you know you can concede on. If you're not getting anywhere on your other points then it could be the one you have a big fight over.

The problem is when one party tries to game this tendency by opening with an outrageous position.  Then there is a chance the other party will walk and take no deal over playing that particular game.

Or as I often experience them at work, a vendor's "standard T&Cs" Particularly with American companies it has to be said.

Having said that - and I'm purely a commercial lawyer, I've very, very rarely seen anyone walk away and it's never over the negotiations. It's normally that there were other factors/underlying business concerns etc. The negotiations were maybe a little bit of a pretext.

In this context I think going to a strike is the walk away moment.

And the public is free to judge the good faith and fairness of those positions however they wish.

Sure. But they're not in the negotiating rooms and both sides will be briefing the media and trying to position it as best they can with the wider public (and I'd add that TfL will also have the government machinery briefing the media). We do not know either sides' positions - we know one negotiating point. I'd be interested to know where that originally came from because my suspicion is that was briefed by TfL or the government ("look how unreasonable they are!") and I wouldn't be surprised if it first appeared in the Evening Standard which is London's local paper and close to the government (endorsed Truss, previous editor was George Osborne).

So far every recent threatened Tube strike (and we have very strict laws so it's tougher to call a strike here than probably anywhere else in the free world - which Labour should change if they win) has actually been called off because there's been negotiating progress.

I'm not sure who they are tricking though as at least from what I can find of polls early last year, more of the public is against striking railway workers than support.

Last poll I saw - to an extent I think this is just a bit of a popularity contest of different professions/class/who is perceived as "worthy" But it is definitely lower than at the start of the strike season (with the mainline rail companies - and they've agreed a deal now) when there was pretty strong public support for all the strikes:


To be honest whenever I see stories like this about how unreasonable the unions are being, I always feel like the take away should be to join a union

[Gups]

Provided you are in a monopoly public service industry

[Josquius]

Can I strike for a pay reduction for driving examiners?