The underground workers decided to strike for a while, and to be honest I can’t be bothered to find out why they are striking. They are always complaining anyway. The result is that a very large amount of transport capability is now not available and people are taking to the streets, using busses and taxis where available. With more people on the street, there is a massive overflow in road traffic. Roads are now much more crowded, thus less traffic speed and more emissions.

So how can we avoid a tube srike? One strategy might be to give the tube workers whatever they want. Let’s keep them apeased so things can just get along. It won’t work. They will just keep asking for more and more. When people have some leverage over you, only few would not use it. So what do we do?

I say take their power away from them. It could be difficult legally and operationally to just fire them all and train masses of new staff. Because then even if it costs more, the new staff would know not to mess around becuase they would be made redundant and they will gain nothing. But let us take a less extreme approach.

I suggest that TFL launches a new volounteer training program. Citizens can train on the different functions of running the tube, and be there in reserve. Once the tube workers go on strike, a call is made upon the trained volounteers and the wages that should have been going to the original workers should be diverted to the volounteers, who now have to stop going to their jobs.

This means that by sacrifising some productivity of those who replaced the tube workers, we still maintain a functional transport system and save the productvity of all the others. Should this volounteer system go in place, I doubt that there will be any strikes at all. This is because the tube workers would now realise that there is no point in striking and thus will not strike. Another expamle of the classical case where the action of preparing for something unwanted causses it not to occur.