(I would also mindfully say that there is a lot of subtle political propaganda in the UK around this issue- the powers that be want the public to blame train drivers for the failures of privatisation)
Companies may or may not handle strikes properly. If it were that easy, industrial interests (and their emissaries, like Reagan and Thatcher) would not have spent more than a century trying to break unions.
> train drivers became rarer due to shareholder reluctance to train and recruit them
In that case, there's no obstacle. This is exactly what happened with containerization, and guess what? The ports that did containerize, including some ports constructed from scratch specifically because existing unionized ports blocked containerization, replaced the ports that didn't.
So sure, there's no big deal, just pay the mob. People do argue for that.
Are you arguing that it's grown more powerful with that change?
They won't kill you or rough you up, but they will tell you what your assessment will find. And reiterate that they are at your house, where your family lives.
Not really sure why people like moaning about train drivers. Are they jealous a train driver is making more than them? While in the case of tech workers they sit quietly and watch their £65k jobs go to India.
This is much more like blackmail than doing right by the working man.
Did the train drivers somehow not have this power before privatization?