I can see both sides tbh. I believe we have the technology where trains should be able to drive themselves, we don’t need conductors and most people can pre purchase tickets online or use the self service booths at stations. If we then didn’t have to pay drivers, conductors and booth operators you could in theory save a lot of expense. However as with all of these public sector or heavily unionised ex-public sector industries. The workers will strike for whatever is in their personal best interest and not what is in the interest of the service, which is a detriment to the customer.
The other side is of course that you’d make a lot of people redundant, and as nice of an idea as it is. “Dave the train driver can retrain as an ADAS software engineer and program self driving trains”. The reality is he can’t/won’t/is happy with his cushy job and will strike at a moments notice when it’s threatened.
Really they should develop the modernisation on the sly. When they threaten to go on strike just deploy the new technology and make them redundant. If they then reduce fares by say 10% and the service improves, let’s see which side the public is on.