sorry for quoting many people here, but I need to set the record straight.
My major frustration with the company is that there are maintenance people who have been with the company for decades that are now having new contracts with new Ts&Cs imposed upon them.
Who is telling them that they are having new contracts / T&Cs imposed? Because it is not Network Rail. The company has been clear that nobody is going to be forced to move to a new contract, it is entirely voluntary.
Please do read carefully what is proposed on the company’s internal website. You can of course choose not to believe it.
vious that RDG and Network Rail are acting in bad faith by putting in conditions that they know fine well will be unacceptable to the unions and their members.
In the case of NR, what are those conditions please?
Indeed. Also happened at the ROC at Didcot, I believe, last year with signallers striking independent of the national dispute.
I‘m glad you raised that. I assume you don’t know what this dispute was about. It was about a signaller being dismissed after a proven case of racial abuse. The signaller in question was an RMT rep. Quite why a majority of those in the local branch initially voted to strike on that basis is beyond me, perhaps they weren’t fully aware of the case, perhaps they believed what they were being told by the union. I don’t know. Regardless, at the second ballot, with no change in the position, they voted to end the dispute, and the individual has not been reinstated.
From a NR standpoint - The previous offer was put to a vote and rejected 2 to 1.
This offer was so similar that they asked the membership if they felt it justified another referendum. I couldn't make the short notice branch meeting but did email my local rep with my thoughts.
It seems the overwhelming feedback delivered from the membership was that the offer was too similar to the previous deal and should be rejected. Which is what has happened.
And yet the overwhelming feedback I am hearing is that people in NR want to settle on this deal. Sure there are some people unhappy, and that tends to be concentrated in certain parts of the country, but as more people understand the offer in front of them, the most common response is “what are we striking for?”.
For example don’t know a single signaller or MOM or controller or member of NR stations team who wants to carry on with the strikes. Perhaps they should be allowed to settle, and let maintenance carry on with their dispute?
The unions need to be asked about what their solution is to this dilemma so the industry is protected and thus the roles of its members within it.
They have been, Repeatedly. The answer is, in brief ‘we don’t want any changes’.
I'm not entirely convinced by the narrative that everyone has deserted the railway and there's no money.
That is clearly not the narrative. The narrative is that the industry is about £2b -£3bn down compared to pre-Covid, and down further when compared to income forecasts had Covid not intervened. Meanwhile costs have continued to rise, partly due to inflation, and partly due to commitmenrs made some time ago Pre covid (eg new rolling stock, some longer term projects).
Commuter routes were, even before Covid, some of the most heavily subsidised services due to annual season tickets
That’s not true for the clear majority of commuter routes. Not least because annual season tickets were a relatively small part of the market By passenger numbers.
The most heavily subsidised services are, I’m afraid, the regional and rural railway, of which Scotland, Wales, the North and South West have a large share.
Of course if the RMT did put it to the vote they’d be pilloried on here if they didn’t recommend acceptance.
I don’t think they would be pilloried. Certainly not by me. I’d like to see all votes for deals like this have no recommendations, so that members feel under no pressure either way (and some do, whatever people say). Then it would be, you know, a free and fair vote.
I see the Torygraph is getting involved today by peddling more nonsense about the RMT 'seeking to bring down Capitalism'. Do its readers really believe this tripe?
I have no sympathy with the Telegraph, do not read it, and I am certainly not a Tory. However in this case isn‘t the paper just reporting on the contents of documents it has been sent? I think it’s reasonable to assume there are people in the higher echelons of the RMT who think like this (although Mick isn’t one of them). It’s interesting that the Telegraph has got these documents. They could only be for RMT internal briefing, and probably at senior level, so somebody in the RMT has felt strongly enough to send them to the paper, or been careless.
This is exactly the problem. And let's not even think about different roles such as Ticket Offices or Catering - lets just look at Traincrew in isolation.
@Monty and
@RPI think it's not bad - either because they have already sold those conditions in the past in exchange for something, or they never had them in the first place.
And if I was in their shoes I would probably think the same.
But I'm not. At my TOC we are comparatively low paid for our grade, but we have quite good ts and cs. And speaking as traincrew I do think it is absolutely awful. If I were to accept this offer then I would literally be giving up everything for very little in return, yet colleagues in the same grade at other TOCS will get the same pay rise but give up nothing or very little as they sold those conditions and got something (more money, less hours) in exchange in the past. And at the end of the day we will be both be on nearly identical Ts and Cs, but they will get paid a lot more than me for doing the same job.
You cannot Harmonise Ts & Cs and not Harmonise Pay at the same time. Aside from the fact that it is simply unfair on those who have to give up so much to get so little in return whilst others get the same pay rise but give up virtually nothing, it doesn't actually solve all the disparities and fragmentation in the industry - if anything it makes things worse. You can understand why everyone doing the same job may get different rates of pay if they have different ts and cs, but if everyone doing the same job has the same ts and cs, how can you justify them getting different rates of pay (aside from enhancements to reflect where things are materially different, such as local train work v Intercity work where you are managing catering staff too, for example).
And that is why it will be almost impossible to settle this dispute as long as the Government are trying to impose Productivity Changes in line with a pay rise.
And that's before you get in to the moral arguments of staff at TOCS which have no ticket offices voting on things which affect Ticket Office staff, or staff at fully DOO TOCS voting on things which affect on train Conductors, for example.
Can people please read
@Solent&Wessex 's post above carefully and try to understand it, as it explains rather well a fundamental flaw of the industry/RDG/state's current position.
I agree, a great post. Perhaps if the deal had been put to a ballot then those who work for TOCs where there is little impact could have voted to accept, and those where the impact is greater could have voted to continue, perhsps enabling the latter group to have a better deal and get closer to parity?
That's just not true and the evidence for it is already in the public domain.
Mick Lynch actually wrote to the members with a letter he sent to NR stating that the previous offer had been rejected by members and that the company could not simply re-offer the same proposals again and expect a vote on it. They would have to offer something new.
What Mick and his negotiators say in public, and what they say in negotiation, are proving to be quite different things. To be fair, it seems he’s told what to say in public by those that control the union.
