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Hello and welcome to Coffee How Shots, the spectators' daily politics podcast.

I'm Max Jeffery and I'm joined by James Hill and Kate Andrews.

It's been nearly a year now since train strikes first begun.

And Mick Wheelan, General Secretary of Asclef, said this morning that the union has made zero

progress in negotiations over pay. Kate, why haven't they made any progress?

Well, you could come up with a host of answers to that question, Max.

My answer would be that the demands had been unreasonable from the start,

but I'm sure there are others who would disagree.

You know, we're talking about this in the wake of yet another rail strike.

And it's something that, as you say, has affected people for about a part of a year now.

So listeners may be listening to this trying to get home or, indeed, staying at home,

working from home because they haven't been able to get into work today.

And, you know, it is certainly taking its toll.

It's taking its toll on the economy, too.

It's interesting to note that in some of these monthly economic growth updates,

the strikes are very often referenced as something that we're taking a little bit of a hit from.

But I think the main problem for the rail unions is that compared to the average British worker,

a lot of their workers are paid more generously.

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