ScotRail Industrial Relations issues (including conductor strike action)

[snookertam]

I also see that Unite members at Stagecoach in Scotland have also voted for strike action, as have they refuse collection staff at Glasgow City Council. This looks like being a fun 12 days.

 

[320320]

This now smacks of a political strike against an independence supporting Scottish Government and an attempt to humiliate Scotland on the world stage.

It feels this is now significantly beyond an industrial dispute and from a few peoples comments who’d usually be instinctively supportive, this evening suggest the RMT has unloaded both barrels into both feet.

Tin foil hat stuff.

 

[Facing Back]

They won't need to wait long until this kind of action takes place on a DfT controlled operator.

Genuine question - will it be a DfT controlled or a Scottish Government controlled operator?

 

[Bald Rick]

Genuine question - will it be a DfT controlled or a Scottish Government controlled operator?

Scotland.

 

[lordbusiness]

Personally if I was abellio I'd write off the whole sorry mess, give them triple what they are asking for and cut and run in Mar 22.

Let the new Operator sort it out

 

[Facing Back]

Who are "they". This entire debacle could be ended with a swish of a pen.

It is the TOCs responsibility to run the service. They should be held accountable. If "they" are treating their staff badly, have poor industrial relations; they should be held accountable.

Both sides have pens and both sides have an element of responsibility for industrial relations. It seems neither side has covered themselves in glory in this area. I get the big company vs the individual dynamic but isn’t that why unions exist? To provide a symmetrical negotiation?

In this case I’m not entirely sure who the sides are though. Where Abellio ends, the agencies and executive of the Scottish government and the Dft and UK government. If anyone knows I would be really interested in finding out

Scotland.

Thanks BR

 

[68000]

Absolutely dreadful for passengers who are trying their own best to make it through these turbulent times

 

[Facing Back]

Personally if I was abellio I'd write off the whole sorry mess, give them triple what they are asking for and cut and run in Mar 22.

Let the new Operator sort it out

I admire your style. There may be a couple of minor points there though…

 

[DanNCL]

This is very clearly a political strike rather than an industrial relations strike now. It is illegal to strike for anything other than industrial relations, therefore I hope legal action is now taken to stop these strikes given that beyond doubt this is an attempt by the RMT to make the SNP government look bad rather than a genuine industrial relations issue.

 

[Kite159]

Personally if I was abellio I'd write off the whole sorry mess, give them triple what they are asking for and cut and run in Mar 22.

Let the new Operator sort it out

Most likely any deals will be above Abellio to agree to, the purse strings are controlled by Transport Scotland. Especially as they only have 4 and a bit months to go before handing the keys over, so even in normal times where Covid never happened they wouldn't be allowed to sign off any long deals which will affect the new operator (didn't that happen once before years ago with another operator, gave all the staff a massive payrise in the last couple months before another operator took over knowing they didn't have to fund it?)

 

[haggishunter]

I doubt the 1000 or so conductors voting for strike action are thinking much further than their own pay and conditions, and if they are thinking any further than that it’ll be a response to poor relations with management at ScotRail.

Abellio ScotRail is done - the franchise has 4 and a bit months after COP26 to run, I can’t imagine Abellio gives a flying ****! Indeed it’s likely people above any position in ScotRail itself at Abellio wouldn’t be to bothered by a strike till March as it would probably save Abellio money.

However, the both barrels comment is that related to what the RMT hope to achieve if they succeed in embarrassing Scot Gov and Scotland more generally in front of the worlds eyes, when Scot Gov will be the operator in a few months times?

This feels like it could be an unmitigated disaster for how the future pans out for Scotland’s Railway, where instead of leading the way to a more sustainable Scotland it could be sidelined and left behind as an increasingly irrelevant anarchism from the past.

I think that there is a grave risk of it becoming quite a widespread sentiment that we survived the last 18 months without the railway, do we need it anymore and if we do we can get by until the Railway is modernised so to erase the relevance of the RMT.

That this dispute started with conductors having just cause is in danger of becoming irrelevant. The public pay the RMTs rail members salaries through fares and taxes, and several other unions have agreed acceptable deals for their members without months of disruption.

The RMT if this strike happens during COP will look increasingly petulant from the outside. That will have consequences for the RMT members.

If either Scot Gov or HM Govt turn round and say the public can have pre covid service levels or guards on trains, what do people think the majority answer will be?

 

[LoogaBarooga]

You can't run a pre covid service without guards.

 

[InOban]

Remember that Cop26 is being hosted and funded by Westminster. Holyrood could argue that if they had a completely independent budget they could sort it.

Abellio and Holyrood have done a poor job of presenting their case.

As lockdown eased there was a shortage of both drivers and RMT grades. That's why they were offered a major enhancement to work rest days. New drivers take at least a year to train and so there is still a shortage and the enhancement continues but will, AIUI, be reviewed every three months. RMT grades take only a few weeks, there was no shortage of suitable candidates, and according to Abellio, and presumably the Scottish government, there is now no need to pay this bonus. They would rather spend the Transport budget on essential railway services.

 

[XAM2175]

Genuine question - will it be a DfT controlled or a Scottish Government controlled operator?

Scotland.

I read @Starmill's post as suggesting that in the future we will see similar industrial relations issues with one or more DfT-controlled operators in England. Bald Rick's response appears to mistakenly treat the question as being one about this dispute.

In this case I’m not entirely sure who the sides are though. Where Abellio ends, the agencies and executive of the Scottish government and the Dft and UK government. If anyone knows I would be really interested in finding out

Neither the DfT nor any other agency of the UK Government are involved in this dispute. Scotrail is controlled by Transport Scotland, an agency of the Scottish Government. Abellio's responsibility as operator is diminished by the emergency measures introduced during the Covid response, but they remain the formal employers of Scotrail staff.

 

[MadCommuter]

Wasn't there threatened strike action in the run up to the Commonwealth Games?

 

[6Z09]

This is very clearly a political strike rather than an industrial relations strike now. It is illegal to strike for anything other than industrial relations, therefore I hope legal action is now taken to stop these strikes given that beyond doubt this is an attempt by the RMT to make the SNP government look bad rather than a genuine industrial relations issue.

Absolute nonsense.

 

[Starmill]

I read @Starmill's post as suggesting that in the future we will see similar industrial relations issues with one or more DfT-controlled operators in England. Bald Rick's response appears to mistakenly treat the question as being one about this dispute.

That's what I was thinking yes. Although facing back might have been asking an additional, supplementary question, and of course Bald Rick answered it anyway.

 

[Bald Rick]

This feels like it could be an unmitigated disaster for how the future pans out for Scotland’s Railway,

I agree.

It seems that the RMT have pressed the nuclear button - straight to a 12 day strike* - perhaps assessing that the Scottish Government won’t have the balls to press their own (much bigger) nuclear button. Personally that’s not something I would want to risk, because now RMT have nowhere to go if Scottish Government decide to take it on the chin.

*it does seem odd that in pursuit of a pay claim, the membership have voted to guarantee themselves a 3% pay cut this year by not working for 3% of it. And curious that the strike is timed to be almost exactly when COP26 is on. I do wonder if there would be a 12 day strike if there wasn’t a major multi-national conference in town.

 

[haggishunter]

You can't run a pre covid service without guards.

You can, given time. And to be clear I am certainly not advocating it, it would be an extremely unwelcome development, but I do genuinely think a strike for the duration of COP26 could be terminal for the long term future of guards on ScotRail trains. From the outside looking in it looks like self harm.

We’ll probably get a beast from the North East November super blizzard too the way things are shaping up for COP26!

 

[MadCommuter]

It might deter protestors from coming if there's no suitable transport to get them here.

(I know it won't.)

 

[DanNCL]

Absolute nonsense.

It’s not nonsense. If this was genuinely just an industrial relations issue they would not all of a sudden be doing a 12 day strike, deliberately timed to coincide with one of the world’s most important summits taking place in Glasgow, when they’ve previously only been striking on Sundays. Escalation to striking two days a week instead of one could be considered reasonable, but going from single days straight up to 12 days in one go is not.

The RMT has very close ties to the Labour Party, and both have a mutual interest to make the incumbent SNP government look as bad as possible, in part to distract people from how useless Labour’s own leadership is.

Im not for one second standing up for the SNP here as they’re far from perfect, and if I lived in Scotland I would not vote for them, but this has very clearly developed into a political strike against the SNP government.

 

[68000]

It might deter protestors from coming if there's no suitable transport to get them here.

(I know it won't.)

Is that the reason the strike was called?

 

[Bald Rick]

Im not for one second standing up for the SNP here as they’re far from perfect, and if I lived in Scotland I would not vote for them, but this has very clearly developed into a political strike against the SNP government.

I’m not sure it’s a political strike against the SNP Government. There’s certainly politics in it, but I suspect this is aimed further south (as the first salvo); Scottish Government will be ‘collateral damage’.

 

[ainsworth74]

The RMT has very close ties to the Labour Party

So close that they're not even affiliated with them!

 

[Goldfish62]

So close that they're not even affiliated with them!

Indeed, so close that they didn't even reaffliate when Corbyn was in charge.

 

[LoogaBarooga]

You can, given time. And to be clear I am certainly not advocating it, it would be an extremely unwelcome development, but I do genuinely think a strike for the duration of COP26 could be terminal for the long term future of guards on ScotRail trains. From the outside looking in it looks like self harm.

We’ll probably get a beast from the North East November super blizzard too the way things are shaping up for COP26!

How much time though? They'd have to shut the railway for months whilst they retrained drivers, kitted out trains for DOO, infrastructure in the stations. Drivers would have to be balloted to agree to it too.

I think the future for guards is bleak any tbh. This was too good an opportunity to pass up though

All they need to do is offer guards the same terms as the drivers and this thing will be over.

 

[maradona10]

It’s not nonsense. If this was genuinely just an industrial relations issue they would not all of a sudden be doing a 12 day strike, deliberately timed to coincide with one of the world’s most important summits taking place in Glasgow, when they’ve previously only been striking on Sundays. Escalation to striking two days a week instead of one could be considered reasonable, but going from single days straight up to 12 days in one go is not.

The RMT has very close ties to the Labour Party, and both have a mutual interest to make the incumbent SNP government look as bad as possible, in part to distract people from how useless Labour’s own leadership is.

Im not for one second standing up for the SNP here as they’re far from perfect, and if I lived in Scotland I would not vote for them, but this has very clearly developed into a political strike against the SNP government.

It is nonsense, complete nonsense.
If it weren’t for Cop26 then Abellio/Transport Scotland would still be ignoring any calls for negotiations to end this dispute, as they have done for the best part of 7 months. It’s only due to the imminent conference they are entering talks at all, and now they are claiming to staff that the offer is in light of the hard work staff carried out throughout the pandemic. It’s a wafer thin veneer and they know it and we know it.
The threat to strike throughout Cop26 is to try and force and end to this dispute. With a bit of foresight the company could have envisaged this scenario and put an end to it a long long time ago.
This dispute is about a RDW enhancement which is being given to one grade and not given to others.

 

[Scotrail314209]

My opinion earlier may have been a bit sharp tongued as I was rightfully angry that there is going to be 12 days straight strike action, which has the risk of grinding everything to a halt.

I feel for the people in the rural Highlands who may have their service cut off as a result of this.

It's great to see another yet another person on here without a shred of empathy for workers, though. Fantastic.

I’m finding it hard to have empathy for the staff (or ScotGov) when this has been going on and on for months.

 

[Bletchleyite]

Abellio ScotRail is done - the franchise has 4 and a bit months after COP26 to run, I can’t imagine Abellio gives a flying ****! Indeed it’s likely people above any position in ScotRail itself at Abellio wouldn’t be to bothered by a strike till March as it would probably save Abellio money.

This rather smells of latter day Silverlink, where weekend strikes had become the norm, but everyone knew full well that the franchise change meant they had to end (as the grievance would then be with a different company and so require a reballot) and so they just carried on and pretty much ignored it, and sure enough at the franchise change there wasn't a reballot and they stopped as a result.

 

[68000]

This dispute is about a RDW enhancement which is being given to one grade and not given to others.

My understanding is that ScotRail agreed with the RMT and ASLEF the conditions for that enhancement. The agreement with the RMT has met the conditions and the agreement with ASLEF has not. Is that not the case?