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Comment by londons_explore | Hacker News Reader

Such automation will be banned in the UK. Painting things has to be done by hand. Union rules. No unauthorized mechanization! Spray cans are untested technology and are unsafe. Spray paint is worse for the environment and workers health. Besides, painting by hand is better for morale.

Painting will obviously have to happen at night (double pay), and is risky work (double pay again). Oh, and we can't do more than 3 hour shifts because it involves bending down. And we'll be needing a minimum crew of 8 - 1 painter, 1 safety expert, 1 signalling expert, 1 electrics expert, 1 spotter, 1 paint quality expert, a foreman to lead the team, and a union rep to check everything is done according to the book. Oh, and wherever the work is being done more than 15 minutes from a toilet, we'll need a mobile toilet booked and installed, as well as a break room. If any of those people are missing or late, we'll cancel the work and retry in 3 months.

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This has been downvoted, but in my experience of 10 years of working in the UK rail industry, this is pretty much spot on.

Railroad deaths and injuries per capita are much lower than in the USA. I'd say the unions and RAIB have done a pretty good job at improving safety standards.

Ah, but railroad workers in the US are also part of a union/unions, with arguably even more rules and regulations and very averse to technological advances, since it reduces the need for manual labor. So yeah USA would have more deaths because everything is manual and archaic, whereas in the UK you have things like the DLR, it could never happen in the US.

The DLR is only automated because it's brand new. It replaced nobodies job. And even that was a real fight to get and caused lots of strikes.

Of course, but try to add an automated line to the new york subway.

TfL brought level 2 GoA to a few Tube lines. In the US newer subway systems are already at that level. DLR is GoA 3, and a few smaller lines in the US (e.g. Las Vegas Monorail, Miami's thing, pretty much all airport people movers) are Level 4.

Yes, newer ones don’t have the same problem, since they are not held back by the rules of a union. Sadly those are few and far between, and I haven’t heard of a new railroad line since the yet to be finished CHSR, though can’t blame that one on the unions.

Dude. What the fuck are you on about?

BART and Muni are both union shops. I don't know if SMART is but it postdates the HSR proposals.

As someone who lived through Muni's transition to SelTrac (the system that underpins DLR and I think some of the Tube lines) I can say the union was not the problem. The technology was unreliable and eventually abandoned by Alcatel/Thales. GoA 4 stuff is only viable along small, low ridership stretches of track. If you knock the level of automation down a peg or two it's a lot easier to scale up to busier/larger systems.

That would free the people to do the job of "conductor", "nanny", security, and cleaner to make that mess a less icky experience. Morale boost!

while this isn't without merit, I consistently see that individual workers are much more concious of quality of their work and safety/reliability of the end user than the management is.

We've had many industrial accidents, from Bhopal's disaster to Boeing Max, thousands of people died, and all of them were caused by management meddling where they shouldn't. none of them were caused by unions

> we'll be needing a minimum crew of 8 - 1 painter, 1 safety expert, 1 signalling expert, 1 electrics expert, 1 spotter, 1 paint quality expert, a foreman to lead the team, and a union rep to check everything is done according to the book.

Hah! Typical free market libertarian approach that cuts corners. You can't just go out and start painting stuff matey! What about the viability study? Someone needs to build a model of the processes, and conduct a pilot time and motion study. People won't just accept white rails without consultation. Where's the perception management and transformation campaign to make sure the new white theme is on message and brand aligned for Railtrack? You'll have to add at least 1 lawyer, 1 community liaison officer, 2 PR people, an advertising account executive...

> we'll need a mobile toilet booked and installed

Toilet? Pfff. You can't just go out and stick up a toilet....

For all you doubters, this is how it works. And talking of breaks, if a manager says anything to the lads, even non-work related, they're allowed to start their break again.

Does not even matter that majority of the rail in the UK does not operate at night.

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