RMT Extends Strike Action on Network Rail to Dec 24-27

[O L Leigh]

The terms & conditions relate to improving staff flexibility of a kind that I had throughout 48 years of very varied working in both public & private sector Eg Lloyds Bank redeployed to another branch at a few days notice. Expecting to work every other Sunday in nursing.

Presumably that was as a consequence of reaching a negotiated settlement with your employers rather than by imposition, or at least that they were the de facto conditions at the time you joined these organisations and therefore weighed as part of your consideration about whether or not to seek/accept employment. This is the situation that rail workers are in at the moment, except that the proposals do not meet their aspirations.

I would also presume that you were fully aware of exactly what the proposals would entail at the point at which they were accepted. This is very different to what is happening, particularly with RMT members. They're being asked to accept concepts of employment that are at present undefined and may result in a worsening of their positions, or even future redundancy, and agreeing at the same time not to take industrial action as a consequence. With respect, I would suggest that this really isn't a parallel situation to your experience.

Bear in mind that they only qualify after 3 years & are also paying off student loans of 35-50K which our wonderful railway servants do not have.

Not necessarily. The railway is no longer predominantly a school-leavers career option, but rather a second career for those who come from many and varied backgrounds. To suggest that railstaff are not paying off student loans is a fairly wild assumption.

 

[DanBlanchflowe]

Oh Lord, the BBC....

I'm very rusty on stats but why the ONS chosen to use the median rather than the mean or any other average?

The most fairest way to average out a large group which might have 2,000 on 25K, 100,000 on 35K & 5,000 on 1M.
Just an extreme example

 

[Islineclear3_1]

So that is close to the average university qualified public service worker (nurses, Social workers, teachers etc) who are also offered around 3%. A fair offer in this economic climate.
Bear in mind that they only qualify after 3 years & are also paying off student loans of 35-50K which our wonderful railway servants do not have.

Yes, but the 3% offered to nurses, social workers and teachers doesn't have changes to T & C's attached including compulsary redundancies

 

[Need2]

Was the inclusion of DOO in the last pay offer t&c’s a new thing or has it been on the table for a while?

 

[DanBlanchflowe]

Honestly, I'd personally accept the 4+4, IF the subject of DOO is removed or at least clarified. Compulsory redundancies could be changed to voluntary and would (I suspect) be over subscribed.
Those advocating for DOO do realise that ticket prices wouldn't decrease if the second member of staff was removed don't they?

From my view as a passenger Driver Only Operation is safe except in a very few rural platform layouts.
What we want is always a 2nd member of staff on board who checks tickets, talks to passengers & relays info clearly to us & makes us feel safer.

 

[O L Leigh]

From my view as a passenger Driver Only Operation is safe except in a very few rural platform layouts.

That view is not shared by all those who work in the industry, but this is neither the time nor the place for that discussion.

What we want is always a 2nd member of staff on board who checks tickets, talks to passengers & relays info clearly to us & makes us feel safer.

Then you will not unlock the savings that DOO is supposed to realise, and there is no guarantee that you will even get your wish.

 

[DanBlanchflowe]

Yes, but the 3% offered to nurses, social workers and teachers doesn't have changes to T & C's attached including compulsary redundancies

Sadly the railways have not gradually modernised their terms & conditions over the last 50 years.
For example then Sunday was a 'rest day', fewer people worked or travelled on it. Now it must be in the top 3 for passenger numbers.
Passengers deserve the same level of Sunday service from 10am as a weekday.

 

[Railwayowl80]

Well always pop in and have a read here even more so with what’s going on but never made account but felt I had to when hearing 44k average salary I’m a cleaner and my salary is 18k and before I get bashed I get it it’s not a skilled job and would never expect to get paid what a guard, driver, or shunter gets paid.

for me I’d just be happy for anything that’s an improvement of what I’m getting but also appreciate you don’t want to sign away what could be potentially your job in 2 years time when they make you redundant or your T&Cs are torn up to the point the job is of little value for you personally.

 

[Mike Machin]

I'm not going to take sides but just say it is such a shame it has all come to this. Virtually everyone I know has given-up on travelling by train completely. Both sides need to open their eyes and take notice that when rail services are disrupted the country no longer comes to a standstill, unlike the 1970s.

In the late 1970s, the NUM had around 240,000 members and today it has fewer than 100. Everyone in the Rail Industry needs to recognise that we will never return to pre-pandemic patterns of travelling and harnessing technology and efficiency is the only way the industry will be able to survive. All the strikes can achieve will be the hastening of the permanent demise of passenger rail travel in Britain.

 

[HSTEd]

There's no doubt that there are many stations that, based on their recorded usage, aren't likely to be leaking much in the way of lost revenue; places like Shippea Hill and Spooner Row, for example. But the services that call at locations such as these are not merely beetling up and down between flyblown hamlets and road crossings, but also serve some of the 919 locations that account for the 95% of usage (I presume that Norwich, Ely, Cambridge and Stansted Airport appear somewhere on that list if not among the 660).

(For the record, Norwich would be 127, Ely is 249, Cambridge is 34 and Stansted Airport is 50th)

If there are trains that are travelling to very high usage and very low usage stations, it seems highly likely that the most cost effective way to conduct revenue protection is to try and catch the ticketless travel people at those few hundred locations, rather than spread the staff out across thousands of trains.

If you want to stop leakage of revenue from people entering at unbarriered stations and claiming to have entered the railway at an unbarriered station nearer their destination - there are considerably cheaper ways to do so effectively than employing thousands of people to sit around on trains looking for people travelling without tickets.

[One obvious example would extremely simple machines that printed time-stamped QR codes onto till roll, and you must present it at the barrier when attempting to purchase a ticket]

 

[O L Leigh]

Sadly the railways have not gradually modernised their terms & conditions over the last 50 years.
For example then Sunday was a 'rest day', fewer people worked or travelled on it. Now it must be in the top 3 for passenger numbers.
Passengers deserve the same level of Sunday service from 10am as a weekday.

It may not be visible from the outside, and certainly isn't reflected in media reporting, but T&Cs have changed over the years.

 

[pt_mad]

Those who use the arguement that the railways are used less than pre-covid, how does current combined footfall compare to that of say 2010 or 2012 or 2015 etc?

If it's the case that today's passenger levels still exceed the levels of say 2010, and in some cases staffing levels were actually higher in some areas then than they are now, then how can a 15% (example) reduction in footfall be used as an argument to reduce staffing levels?

Let's be honest, passenger numbers are likely to exceed pre covid levels at some point. Might be next year, might be in 3 years, or 5, but they are likely to rise and keep rising imo. Hence HS2 hasn't been scrapped.

 

[LAX54]

Please share the source of £44,000 as a median RMT salary! With cleaners and low paid employees part of RMT, I can’t see how you can reach that figure.

I work in the private sector in Rail and got a 9% increase with no debates and no changes to our terms.

The current offer to rail members would hardly be acceptable without wanting to change tandC’s too!

I was thnking the same, Signallers in the ROCS may get that, but mostly they are are on 29/32K and many track staff are on less !

 

[O L Leigh]

If there are trains that are travelling to very high usage and very low usage stations, it seems highly likely that the best way to conduct revenue protection is to try and catch the ticketless travel people at those few hundred locations - rather than spread the staff out across thousands.

But you're not spreading staff across thousands of locations. This is the point. They are travelling on the train services so that an entire line can be covered all day by a few people and are present at those locations only when they are needed.

 

[HSTEd]

But you're not spreading staff across thousands of locations.

Well you are, given that there are 16,000 carriages in service on the railway and the average train length is probably a lot shorter than 16 carriages!

Even allowing for maintenance you will need many more than 660 staff on-duty to get ~90% of the possible passengers into contact with them.
I don't think, even travelling on fully guarded services, I get ticket checked 90% of the time!

You also probably won't need such a high cover ratio since a station can operate with no staff present at low demand times.



Given that many of the busiest stations are barriered anyway, the number of additional staff to compensate for a total withdrawal of onboard revenue protection is probably less than a few hundred.

With a few hundred staff on duty you can capture a very large fraction of total rail journeys, and the service won't immediately collapse if, for some reason, you can't provide complete cover.

 

[DanBlanchflowe]

I was thnking the same, Signallers in the ROCS may get that, but mostly they are are on 29/32K and many track staff are on less !

Pay in the rail industry:

Train strike: How much are rail workers paid?

There have been different claims made about how much rail workers get paid.

www.bbc.co.uk

 

[skyhigh]

Pay in the rail industry:

Train strike: How much are rail workers paid?

There have been different claims made about how much rail workers get paid.

www.bbc.co.uk

Why are we going round in circles?? You've posted that once, it's been commented on and barely a page later you're posting it again!

Posted by BBC in summer & reposted revision today, backs up the pay rates I quoted

Train strike: How much are rail workers paid?

There have been different claims made about how much rail workers get paid.

www.bbc.co.uk

The RMT say that the median salary of their members is £31k

https://fullfact.org/economy/RMT-strike-salary/



And subsequently disproved

Right, so the median figure for RMT members according to the BBC is £36,800, not £44,000. The higher figure included train drivers who are not represented by RMT.

Sadly the railways have not gradually modernised their terms & conditions over the last 50 years.
For example then Sunday was a 'rest day', fewer people worked or travelled on it. Now it must be in the top 3 for passenger numbers.
Passengers deserve the same level of Sunday service from 10am as a weekday.

Funny then that Sunday is a normal working day for me...

So that is close to the average university qualified public service worker (nurses, Social workers, teachers etc) who are also offered around 3%. A fair offer in this economic climate.
Bear in mind that they only qualify after 3 years & are also paying off student loans of 35-50K which our wonderful railway servants do not have.

Excuse me...? I actually have a degree it took 4 full years of teaching and research to achieve and I'm still paying off the student loan. It's clear you really don't know what you're talking about.

 

[DanBlanchflowe]

Well always pop in and have a read here even more so with what’s going on but never made account but felt I had to when hearing 44k average salary I’m a cleaner and my salary is 18k and before I get bashed I get it it’s not a skilled job and would never expect to get paid what a guard, driver, or shunter gets paid.

for me I’d just be happy for anything that’s an improvement of what I’m getting but also appreciate you don’t want to sign away what could be potentially your job in 2 years time when they make you redundant or your T&Cs are torn up to the point the job is of little value for you personally.

Cleaners are one of the most underpaid jobs. With Covid we saw how they should be much more they should be valued.
Spent 10 mins talking to a wonderful cleaner at Stevenage Stn recently. He got good RMT support.

 

[gazzaa2]

Those who use the arguement that the railways are used less than pre-covid, how does current combined footfall compare to that of say 2010 or 2012 or 2015 etc?

If it's the case that today's passenger levels still exceed the levels of say 2010, and in some cases staffing levels were actually higher in some areas then than they are now, then how can a 15% (example) reduction in footfall be used as an argument to reduce staffing levels?

Let's be honest, passenger numbers are likely to exceed pre covid levels at some point. Might be next year, might be in 3 years, or 5, but they are likely to rise and keep rising imo. Hence HS2 hasn't been scrapped.

Can you really compare footfall though when services have been slashed massively post-Covid, masses of cancellations from a reduced timetable on many TOC's, short-formed carriages everywhere and they're out on strike all the time?

 

[Bletchleyite]

From my view as a passenger Driver Only Operation is safe except in a very few rural platform layouts.
What we want is always a 2nd member of staff on board who checks tickets, talks to passengers & relays info clearly to us & makes us feel safer.

There really could do with being different official but concise terms for:

1. "Pure" DOO i.e. only one member of staff on the train, with other members of staff exceptional e.g. RPIs
2. DOO but with an OBS type non safety critical, customer service only member of staff normally rostered but not mandatory
3. DOO but with a second member of staff who is mandatory and safety critical but is not involved in dispatch
4. DOO but with a second member of staff who is mandatory and safety critical but is involved in dispatch (Merseyrail model)
5. Variant of 3. or 4. with only basic general safety training, i.e. no route learning but can be involved in evacuation
Any others? Is Lumo's steward model (2) but with Kitkat sale, or is it different again?

Because their implications (and potential cost savings) are rather different.

Rather than using DOO and DCO interchangeably, I guess (1) would be DOO, and (2)-(5) versions of DCO.

Can you really compare footfall though when services have been slashed massively post-Covid, masses of cancellations from a reduced timetable on many TOC's, short-formed carriages everywhere and they're out on strike all the time?

Certainly Avanti West Coast probably has significant suppressed demand at present, and XC has had for years. Any figures should take this into account. Are we just talking a slightly faster, slightly more modern version of the 1997 railway, for instance? It wasn't terrible.

 

[kkong]

No but that'll happen anyway. Plus Scotland has relatively few booking offices compared to England.

I'd take that out too. It's another battle for another time which mostly doesn't involve the RMT.

It's already happening.

ScotRail Ticket Office Consultation

The consultation has now ended. ScotRail currently operates more than 2,000 train services through 359 stations, of which 143 have staffed ticket offices across the country.

www.scotrail.co.uk

ScotRail Ticket Office Consultation - RMT Response

www.rmt.org.uk

 

[Bletchleyite]

Thanks. So there's no need for it to be mentioned in any way in this deal. Thus it's just another poisoning element, like DOO.

 

[gazzaa2]

Certainly Avanti West Coast probably has significant suppressed demand at present, and XC has had for years. Any figures should take this into account. Are we just talking a slightly faster, slightly more modern version of the 1997 railway, for instance? It wasn't terrible.

There's 10 million more people in the country than in 1997. If you're going to increase the population to a large extent per annum you have to build the infrastructure and constantly up the capacity, but you've got a Conservative Party ideologically opposed to public services or public spending in general.

 

[bramling]

Passengers deserve the same level of Sunday service from 10am as a weekday.

Out of interest, why do passengers deserve such a service?

Many places still don’t function on a Sunday at all, meanwhile in some cases one can expect to pay some form of premium for “out of hours” service.

 

[KGX]

There's 10 million more people in the country than in 1997. If you're going to increase the population to a large extent per annum you have to build the infrastructure and constantly up the capacity, but you've got a Conservative Party ideologically opposed to public services or public spending in general.

High Speed 2.

 

[Railwayowl80]

Cleaners are one of the most underpaid jobs. With Covid we saw how they should be much more they should be valued.
Spent 10 mins talking to a wonderful cleaner at Stevenage Stn recently. He got good RMT support.

They are and to a point I get why as as pretty much anyone can do it but you just want to earn a good living in a job you enjoy I like what I do and I appreciate your comment it was a tough time covid but like many have said here short memories we were all called key workers back then now it’s work longer for less

 

[O L Leigh]

Well you are, given that there are 16,000 carriages in service on the railway and the average train length is probably a lot shorter than 16 carriages!

It would be better to try and get a handle on this by using real traincrew duty numbers rather than guesstimating using numbers of rail vehicles. I'm unsure what the number of currently operational rail passenger vehicles is, although I guess it's been slowly reducing given the amount of stock coming off-lease, nor what proportion of those are in service on any given day.

 

[pt_mad]

Can you really compare footfall though when services have been slashed massively post-Covid, masses of cancellations from a reduced timetable on many TOC's, short-formed carriages everywhere and they're out on strike all the time?

Although some operators still have a shortage of available train crew or run on overtime. So that would mean there are very few jobs to lose on the train crew side without advocating for DOO without a guard present. Unless today's timetable was to be reduced further.

 

[class ep-09]

P

I think it would probably rapidly become cheaper just to stump up for the capital cost of level boarding whole lines than maintaining the second onboard member of train crew if their only purpose was to unstow and stow ramps.

Sure the capital cost of level boarding would be high, but the staffing cost of thousands of train crew, with full cover requirements, is enormous. And the latter cost will continue forever.

Considering rolling stock variations ….

No .

 

[pt_mad]

Can you really compare footfall though when services have been slashed massively post-Covid, masses of cancellations from a reduced timetable on many TOC's, short-formed carriages everywhere and they're out on strike all the time?

On further thought, I would say your points there actually probably point to current demand being suppressed, as if the service was as good as it was, potentially passengers who aren't sure would return?