Steal this journey

[danohu]

Tube strikes make the unions pretty unpopular.

What if the unions instead had a (publicised) day of turning a blind eye to fare-dodgers? That would still cost their employers plenty of money, but would presumably fill the public with enthusiasm rather than hatred.

The main problem would be that while there's plenty of legal protection for strikes, there's much less for employees refusing to perform some part of their job. Doubly so since London Underground undoubtedly already has disciplinary procedures in place for staff who help fare-dodgers. Also I'd imagine many tube employees not being too keen on people who don't pay.

Still, it'd be a nice change from strikes. Have any transport unions tried this kind of thing, elsewhere in the world? What was the result?

Comments

[gerald_duck]

Fare dodging is a criminal offence, I thought? Assuming that's the case, specifically stating they were going to ignore it might be regarded as incitement.

Also, nobody could complain if PCSOs were making sure nobody broke the law that day…

[oedipamaas49.livejournal.com]

I did wonder if they could recoup the lost fares simply by having lots of scabs handing out on-the-spot fines.

[gerald_duck]

Well, presumably they could. And they could probably short-circuit the protest even by threatening to have enough people to check fares.

I don't think PCSOs can give out penalty fares, however. The penalty fares legislation is what gives someone the option of paying the operator some money in exchange for not getting the police involved. The police can only choose between a Stern Talking-To, a caution and charges.

This is in large part irrelevant, however, because there are barriers to stop people getting to the platform without a ticket and machines never go on strike.