Jamesb1974
Member
- Joined
- 20 Mar 2006
- Messages
- 596
. There is also not really anywhere much to go in professional terms, i.e. most drivers stay drivers, rather as used to be the case with coal miners, who also earned well in the UK. So, whilst teachers and doctors may well train for longer and start on a lower salary, there is the potential to be a deputy head or a consultant, who do earn more. There needs, therefore, to be more of a retention element to the drivers' pay as there is much less that can be offered to meet any desire for progression.
You do know that the head guy in the UK arm of DBS started out life as a shunter, then progressed to driver? Now he's the CEO of the UK outfit. A lot of the managers also followed similar paths. So there are places to go. Training, mentoring, instructing. Management posts etc etc. There are plenty of places to go upwards from driving.
What I'm trying to say is that SOME drivers choose to stay drivers, just as SOME teachers decide to stay as classroom teachers and not progress up the career ladder. A lot of drivers have been on the railway a long long time and are not used to the idea of promotion or leaving the grade, but that is not to say that there is no where to go from driving.
It is a fallacy to think that because promotion is available, you are somehow being small minded or unambitious by not taking it. Often promotion just isn't worth the trouble that it brings.
Case in point 1. A family member (a teacher, one of six in my extended family) took a promotion to become deputy head at a private school. After nearly two years of constant pressure, she cracked and voluntarily asked to leave the post. She went back to being a class teacher the following month with her family life almost in tatters. She never saw her kids or her husband as the deputy post consumed all her free time. Weekday evenings, weekends etc.
Case in point 2. A good friend of mine in my former career. Took promotion and moved up the rank structure. Result? Almost unimaginable pressure, phone never stopped ringing, massive workload, projects, side projects and back burner projects to deal with. I have never seen a man so destroyed by his workload.
That is (can be) the cost of promotion. More responsibility brings more pressure. Sometimes you have to ask yourself, is it really worth it? Who am I doing it for? Am I going for promotion to fit in with some outdated social view that ambitious people go for promotion and lazy ones stay as they are, or am I happy where I am?
Slightly straying from the point you were making perhaps, but there ARE places to go from driving. The thing is that not a lot of people consider them in the first place or just consider them too much trouble!
Last edited: