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

[TT-ONR-NRN]

Compare that with the conductors on Greater Anglia who no longer need to do the doors 99% of the time & spend nearly all the time within the train assisting passengers & protecting revenue.

Well, yes, I mean as soon as you board a 755 they're practically running over before the doors have even closed, which seems a bit desperate, but they must save so much revenue that way.

 

[XAM2175]

Key off driver, stroll back 8/12 coaches, get the ramp, put it down, help user on/off, put ramp back, stroll another 8/12 coaches, key on and set the train up again... possible? Yes. Practical? Absolutely not. That's easily 15+ minutes lost, now imagine that happens at 4 stations, your train is now 1 hour late. Behave

Okay, ten or so minutes to call the Bobby shut the cab down, walk back, assist, walk back to the cab, key on, call signaller, continue etc.

I can categorically assure you this won’t work on most parts of the UK network where DOO currently operates (ie London and southeast). Thanks for the laugh, though!

It works in Melbourne because the wheelchair space is immediately adjoining the cab, and there is a ramp kept in a locker at both of the doors that serve each area, so the walking back and forward is not part of the equation. There is a also a simplified procedure for temporarily leaving the cab to assist a passenger which avoids having to completely close-up and then re-open the cab. Over the past decade they've also started putting out Harrington humps that allow level boarding with a gap of 20 mm at most, negating the need for the ramp at all in a number of cases.

It's also helped by the fact that the DOO conversion started in 1993 and was completed in late 1995, so the matter is completely settled now.

(some older models of train have one ramp kept in each cab instead of a locker in the saloon, but the principle is the same)

Obviously there are a number of divergences here with GB practice that would make a copy-cat implementation exceptionally difficult, but not outright impossible.

 

[dk1]

Well, yes, I mean as soon as you board a 755 they're practically running over before the doors have even closed, which seems a bit desperate, but they must save so much revenue that way.

It’s very good to see & good for their commission too.

 

[ic31420]

Most people in the private sector will get nothing at all this year, and probably next too. If averages are that high it's because of a few silly-high settlements.

I'm public sector, we got 2.2% in July. Closed negotiations for 18months now. I'm not quite sure how it pans out with the various NI changes. But about at least £100 of that will be gobbled up each year as the LA is announcing an at least 5% council Tax rise.


My cousin is private he got an award of 2% + £600 in September.


I'm really starting to despise council tax. It has gone in a little over a decade from being about 75% of a month's take home wage to being almost 120% next year

 

[30907]

I don’t share your confidence. Given that DOO is the dominant method of working on Southern, I would be worried that the OBS role is vulnerable to redundancy.

According to RMT it is 100% DOO
https://www.rmt.org.uk/news/rmt-reject-rail-delivery-group-offer/

Driver-Only Operation of trains in all companies and on all passenger services;

along with 100% booking office closures

Closure of all ticket offices and displacement of all retail staff;

Obviously no specific timescale on either.

Are those the RDG's word?

 

[dk1]

I'm public sector, we got 2.2% in July. Closed negotiations for 18months now. I'm not quite sure how it pans out with the various NI changes. But about at least £100 of that will be gobbled up each year as the LA is announcing an at least 5% council Tax rise.


My cousin is private he got an award of 2% + £600 in September

It’s all very well getting the bonus payment but that’s not pensionable.

 

[TUC]

Is there ny assessment of how many people are actually reliant on rail to get to and from where they are going for Chiristmas on 24 and 27 December? I'm not ware of anyone who is both reliant upon rail as their only option and who is absolutely fixed on those dates.

 

[Bletchleyite]

According to RMT it is 100% DOO
https://www.rmt.org.uk/news/rmt-reject-rail-delivery-group-offer/

along with 100% booking office closures

Obviously no specific timescale on either.

Are those the RDG's word?

100% DOO immediately is impossible. This would just be to make things easier to transition to it.

 

[O L Leigh]

According to RMT it is 100% DOO
https://www.rmt.org.uk/news/rmt-reject-rail-delivery-group-offer/

Only in the sense that it will be all companies and all passenger services.

My point is that it should not be assumed that this will follow any particular model. That a second person has been preserved on Southern in the past few years is not any guarantee that this will be the case going forward.

 

[Bald Rick]

You keep saying that. Are you actually going to tell us what 'this dispute is really about'?

In Network Rail, it is purely about changing the working arrangements for maintenance staff, and AIUI the dispute is now only about one part of that change. And that change is happening. And, incidentally, it simply brings maintenance staff onto the same arrangements as signallers.

The dispute is not about redundancies (indeed more than twice as many people have applied for redundancy than are needed).

neither is it about pensions (No changes proposed)

nor is it about pay, if you believe the reps. (and many comments on this thread).

When you explain this to people outside maintenance, they are quite clear that they don’t understand why the RMT is in dispute. Many in maintenance don’t either. However the union tells them to vote a certain way, so they do.

 

[Starmill]

The Southern OBS approach has supposedly been quite successful

Successful for whom though?

Drivers at Southern were given a larger pay rise to compensation for taking full control of the twelve cars and non-BML routes. Former Conductors at Southern were given a payment and a larger rise for becoming OBSs.

There was no meaningful improvement in customer care. Costs rose because additional road-based staff were needed. Reliability may have been a very small benefit - in that trains may now run without OBSs onboard occasionally. But the dispute lasted for so long and caused so much disruption on non-strike days for nearly two years, this will have more than wiped out any gains. In exchange for a service which is more expensive to run and a huge hit to the reputation of the industry?

 

[geoffk]

It works in Melbourne because the wheelchair space is immediately adjoining the cab, and there is a ramp kept in a locker at both of the doors that serve each area, so the walking back and forward is not part of the equation. There is a also a simplified procedure for temporarily leaving the cab to assist a passenger which avoids having to completely close-up and then re-open the cab. Over the past decade they've also started putting out Harrington humps that allow level boarding with a gap of 20 mm at most, negating the need for the ramp at all in a number of cases.

It's also helped by the fact that the DOO conversion started in 1993 and was completed in late 1995, so the matter is completely settled now.

(some older models of train have one ramp kept in each cab instead of a locker in the saloon, but the principle is the same)

Obviously there are a number of divergences here with GB practice that would make a copy-cat implementation exceptionally difficult, but not outright impossible.

I've seen this done in Ireland too, on the Cork - Cobh/Midleton branches, which are DOO. A 2-car train normally but some were 4.

 

[Bletchleyite]

Tony Miles (Modern Railways) just appeared on BBC news and mentioned cutbacks from May next year in timetables or even line closures due to reduction in government funding.

My suspicion, knowing how this Government behaves, is that they will, nearer the time, leak some pretty nasty Serpellesque proposals, and then dial it back to service reductions and maybe a few snips around the edges like closure of Parliamentary stations, then everyone will go "phew, that's not bad then" when it was what they intended to do in the first place.

Bonus if they manage to shift funding for some routes to regions, e.g. "right, GM locals down to 0.5tph, but TfGM, you can pay for more if you want".

 

[Parjon]

The RMT supported Brexit and urged its members to vote for it, but 6% of the UK inflation is the result of Brexit, according to the BoE. Without Brexit, we may not have been facing recession and growing levels of industrial unrest. Other Unions also backed Brexit, such as Unite, and perhaps this also helps to explain Keir Starmer's reluctance to call Brexit out for what it is and why he wants to "make it work".

Having read the opinion piece I can't find mention of 6%, which I would have found an extraordinarily accurate insight into such a complex time of pandemic and war.

The only direct possible link is the "labour shortages" forcing up wages. 1) Does the railway really suffer from that? I would put it to you that any railway job advertised is quicky filled, and 2) the unions deal wth wages...

Propaganda is boring. UK inflation is actually lower than in some European countries. Admittedly, so too may be the talent levels in government needed to tackle it but it still doesn't make everything the fault of an economic non-event.

 

[Starmill]

But even if that's true, the private sector will impose salary caps and headcount reductions when times are bad - as they probably are now in many cases.
Since 1997, when did railway staff notice the bad times (thanks to NR-CP and periodic franchise settlements)?

If you plot average public sector vs private sector wage growth across the last 12 years, you get a remarkably different picture to using the last two years.

Of course, both groups will happily just cherry pick whichever figure they believe most supports their arguments.

 

[Bantamzen]

Is there ny assessment of how many people are actually reliant on rail to get to and from where they are going for Chiristmas on 24 and 27 December? I'm not ware of anyone who is both reliant upon rail as their only option and who is absolutely fixed on those dates.

I suppose the main risk on the 24th is if things start to go wrong, and cancellations start to creep in pushing passengers back towards the last trains. Personally speaking I wouldn't plan to travel on that day, especially later on. For the 27th I suspect it will be a chaotic day, especially at the start.

 

[deltic]

Most people in the private sector will get nothing at all this year, and probably next too. If averages are that high it's because of a few silly-high settlements.

This is patently not correct, private sector wages have increased in virtually all sectors of the economy by around 5-10% compared to last year, the exception being accommodation and food services where there has been on average no increase. Details can be found at https://www.ons.gov.uk/employmentan...statisticsreferencetablenonseasonallyadjusted

Many sectors of the economy are still suffering skill shortages which has pushed up wage levels.

 

[ainsworth74]

Compare that with the conductors on Greater Anglia who no longer need to do the doors 99% of the time & spend nearly all the time within the train assisting passengers & protecting revenue.

I must admit I do wonder why GA can't be used as the model going forward. My experience of the Inter-City and Regional routes this March was incredibly positive. All the conductors on every train were a very visible presence checking tickets, offering information on connections, assisting with journey options during disruption. No need to do anything with the doors at all meaning they were very focused on the customer but it was nice to know that if the DOO cameras had fallen over the train could continue or if there had been an accident/incident there was a second competent member of staff around.

Seems odd to me that GA isn't being used as the poster child for how to make this work...

 

[Bletchleyite]

I must admit I do wonder why GA can't be used as the model going forward. My experience of the Inter-City and Regional routes this March was incredibly positive. All the conductors on every train were a very visible presence checking tickets, offering information on connections, assisting with journey options during disruption. No need to do anything with the doors at all meaning they were very focused on the customer but it was nice to know that if the DOO cameras had fallen over the train could continue or if there had been an accident/incident there was a second competent member of staff around.

Seems odd to me that GA isn't being used as the poster child for how to make this work...

Agreed. The Merseyrail proposals are very similar, and I believe the RMT has accepted them (not yet ASLEF, but I think they will for enough of a sweetener, and Merseytravel has a big motivation to offer one as we're soon going to reach the stage where there aren't enough 50x to maintain the service). I wonder if Stadler advised on both, as this seems to be the main way FLIRTs are operated on the mainland if there's a second member of staff.

Except where there's level boarding you are always going to need a member of on train staff or a member of platform staff (not both) because disability regulations etc are (rightly) going the way that turning up on-spec is a basic expectation, so I can't see there being any more "basic DOO" routes with neither, and I'd expect routes that are currently like that to gain an OBS a like at some stage.

Furthermore, on not-fully-gated suburban routes, the guard being freed up to do more revenue and be in any part of the train would hugely reduce fare dodging. And if they're going to be there, why not make them mandatory and safety trained? Very rarely do you see a SN OBS missing in my experience.

 

[O L Leigh]

I must admit I do wonder why GA can't be used as the model going forward. My experience of the Inter-City and Regional routes this March was incredibly positive. All the conductors on every train were a very visible presence checking tickets, offering information on connections, assisting with journey options during disruption. No need to do anything with the doors at all meaning they were very focused on the customer but it was nice to know that if the DOO cameras had fallen over the train could continue or if there had been an accident/incident there was a second competent member of staff around.

Seems odd to me that GA isn't being used as the poster child for how to make this work...

Because, and I'll stand to be corrected, GA's regional services are not actually DOO and the second person remains as a guard with full guard's competencies.

However, I'll say yet again that no particular model is guaranteed to be followed. Agreeing to DOO in principle without full information about precisely how it will be implemented would be suicide.

 

[185]

Came up in a conversation before. Does anyone know for definite the names of the (supposed) three DfT Rail Execs are who are responding to the industry, transport ministers & treasury ministers? I was given three names by someone in an unconnected department of the DfT, but I'm not entirely convinced about the third one.

One of the three showed their face on a recent (televised) TSC meeting in parliament. Not entirely sure, but at least one of those civil servants (could) have an (alleged) conflict of interest if they are recommending to ministers the best course of action in a supposedly neutral fashion.

 

[LNW-GW Joint]

The RMT supported Brexit and urged its members to vote for it, but 6% of the UK inflation is the result of Brexit, according to the BoE. Without Brexit, we may not have been facing recession and growing levels of industrial unrest. Other Unions also backed Brexit, such as Unite, and perhaps this also helps to explain Keir Starmer's reluctance to call Brexit out for what it is and why he wants to "make it work".

Off topic, but I think the 6% related to GDP not inflation, which is mostly down to global supply issues and Ukraine, magnified here by the UK's crazy economics.
The 6% was also over time, not just one year.
While Brexit has had an negative economic effect, and will continue to do so for years, it isn't the major factor in today's UK inflation.

 

[ainsworth74]

Because, and I'll stand to be corrected, GA's regional services are not actually DOO and the second person remains as a guard with full guard's competencies.

Well whatever you want to call it the driver opens and closes the doors which seems to be what the majority of the battle is around whenever this crops up!

However, I'll say yet again that no particular model is guaranteed to be followed. Agreeing to DOO in principle without full information about precisely how it will be implemented would be suicide.

Indeed, signing a blank cheque is clearly unwise so I quite agree that the proposal as stated was always going to have to be rejected.

 

[Mat17]

Only in the sense that it will be all companies and all passenger services.

My point is that it should not be assumed that this will follow any particular model. That a second person has been preserved on Southern in the past few years is not any guarantee that this will be the case going forward.

Exactly, just like second men, remember those?

 

[O L Leigh]

Well whatever you want to call it the driver opens and closes the doors which seems to be what the majority of the battle is around whenever this crops up!

That really isn't what the majority of the battle is about. But then, that's a discussion for another thread.

 

[Goldfish62]

Propaganda is boring. UK inflation is actually lower than in some European countries.

It's higher than all the major European economies. The UK is the only G7 economy where GDP is shrinking. The whole thing is a complete disaster and Lynch and the rest of the Lexit mob need to take responsibility for getting into bed with the Hard Right and conning working class people into voting to make themselves poorer.

 

[station_road]

Key off driver, stroll back 8/12 coaches, get the ramp, put it down, help user on/off, put ramp back, stroll another 8/12 coaches, key on and set the train up again... possible? Yes. Practical? Absolutely not. That's easily 15+ minutes lost, now imagine that happens at 4 stations, your train is now 1 hour late. Behave

Doesn't work like that in Melbourne - every train has a wheelchair space at both ends of the train, there are signs on the platform telling wheelchair passengers where to wait (always at the front) - it doesn't take any longer than wheelchair boarding in the UK does using the guard or platform staff.

 

[ic31420]

It’s all very well getting the bonus payment but that’s not pensionable.

Sorry that was my bad wording.. they all got 2.2% added to their basic pay, then another £600. So if he was on 10,000 basic He'd now be on £10820 he then gets shift allowance as a % ontop of the lot which is then taken as the figure he takes 8% from for his pension (and the employer contributes in % form too I think they match to 8% then give you half what you pay to some amount possibly 15%) he was paying more but has just taken on a mortgage.

This percent and a fixed sum seems quite popular at the moment. I think it's seen as a way of weighting the bottom.

 

[Bletchleyite]

Key off driver, stroll back 8/12 coaches, get the ramp, put it down, help user on/off, put ramp back, stroll another 8/12 coaches, key on and set the train up again... possible? Yes. Practical? Absolutely not. That's easily 15+ minutes lost, now imagine that happens at 4 stations, your train is now 1 hour late. Behave

OTOH it is entirely possible on a slackly timed 2 car DMU on a branch line...

 

[XIX7007177]

Doesn't work like that in Melbourne - every train has a wheelchair space at both ends of the train, there are signs on the platform telling wheelchair passengers where to wait (always at the front) - it doesn't take any longer than wheelchair boarding in the UK does using the guard or platform staff.

Great, works in Melbourne. Won’t work here, majority of wheelchair spaces are in the middle of a unit. So potentially 6 coaches back on some trains.