Should the railway be used as a job creation scheme post-COVID?

[Bletchleyite]

There is absolutely no point in creating jobs on the railway (or any other business) that add to the day to day costs of operating that business unless employing those people would bring in more than the cost of employing them (salary plus NI, pension, other benefits on costs). It would just make the business less efficient. Ideas for more onboard staff or barrier staff are highly unlikely to bring in more revenue than the cost of employing them.

I think you're missing the point of a job creation scheme, which is based around the principle that it's better to pay someone to do a vaguely useful but low-wage job (to society, in terms of taxpayer value and in terms of mental health of the individual) than it is to pay them benefits to sit at home doing nothing. It's very different to the usual principle of only employing someone if their role brings in more to the business than not having it, and it's something I think we are going to need to rebuild the economy after COVID. Remember it won't be "dead money", the money they are paid will go back into the economy and boost it all round, so it's also a subsidy to other areas of business.

Because you're going to have to put all sorts of people into these jobs to get the economy moving, they can't be difficult stuff (e.g. being a doctor or nurse), they need to be simple jobs that will be relatively low-paid and take relatively little training (so OBS is probably better than guard, for instance, even if we did decide to later train them up and reinstate actual guards on all trains). Classic examples of job-creation-scheme type work are street sweeping, graffiti cleaning, toilet attendant, park keeper - that sort of stuff - but there's plenty of scope for similar on the railway, and it's a large industry that is presently effectively fully under Government control, so there is an easy scope to chuck the money their way and just tell them to put up the job adverts.

 

[Hadders]

I think you're missing the point of a job creation scheme, which is based around the principle that it's better to pay someone to do a vaguely useful but low-wage job (to society, in terms of taxpayer value and in terms of mental health of the individual) than it is to pay them benefits to sit at home doing nothing. It's very different to the usual principle of only employing someone if their role brings in more to the business than not having it, and it's something I think we are going to need to rebuild the economy after COVID. Remember it won't be "dead money", the money they are paid will go back into the economy and boost it all round, so it's also a subsidy to other areas of business.

Because you're going to have to put all sorts of people into these jobs to get the economy moving, they can't be difficult stuff (e.g. being a doctor or nurse), they need to be simple jobs that will be relatively low-paid and take relatively little training (so OBS is probably better than guard, for instance, even if we did decide to later train them up and reinstate actual guards on all trains). Classic examples of job-creation-scheme type work are street sweeping, graffiti cleaning, toilet attendant, park keeper - that sort of stuff - but there's plenty of scope for similar on the railway, and it's a large industry that is presently effectively fully under Government control, so there is an easy scope to chuck the money their way and just tell them to put up the job adverts.

I'm not missing the point. By all means give grants to organisations to be innovative and grow their business. Give more money to councils to provide additional services but there needs to be an overall benefit. I really don't think (for example) they'd be an appetite in Government to put OBSs onto Thameslink services for example.

 

[PupCuff]

If this was a route we were going down I would rather see some form of standardised vocational training programme set up in the industry (apprenticeship type thing) - plenty of roles on the railways don't really need much if any previous experience and they are a good way of building skills and experience whilst also being given formal training to then move on to roles with more responsibility. You could easily have different tranches depending on if you wanted to go into engineering, customer service etc. I think the key things I would like to see in such a course would be exposure to different parts of the industry so there is an appreciation of who does what to make the jigsaw come together; a basic understanding of the general customer service soft skills; NRCoT, Byelaws, industry policies; a standard level of safety training etc.

 

[Yew]

I think you're missing the point of a job creation scheme, which is based around the principle that it's better to pay someone to do a vaguely useful but low-wage job (to society, in terms of taxpayer value and in terms of mental health of the individual) than it is to pay them benefits to sit at home doing nothing. It's very different to the usual principle of only employing someone if their role brings in more to the business than not having it, and it's something I think we are going to need to rebuild the economy after COVID. Remember it won't be "dead money", the money they are paid will go back into the economy and boost it all round, so it's also a subsidy to other areas of business.

Because you're going to have to put all sorts of people into these jobs to get the economy moving, they can't be difficult stuff (e.g. being a doctor or nurse), they need to be simple jobs that will be relatively low-paid and take relatively little training (so OBS is probably better than guard, for instance, even if we did decide to later train them up and reinstate actual guards on all trains). Classic examples of job-creation-scheme type work are street sweeping, graffiti cleaning, toilet attendant, park keeper - that sort of stuff - but there's plenty of scope for similar on the railway, and it's a large industry that is presently effectively fully under Government control, so there is an easy scope to chuck the money their way and just tell them to put up the job adverts.

Indeed, a large part of their employment costs can be written off against the welfare that they otherwise would have been paid, so it can be a bargain opportunity. Though I do get a little bit nervous about saddling the railways with a number of additional employees that won't be viable afterwards; so some nuance is required in it's implementation. And hence why I generally favour projects that have better ROI's and keep skilled people out of unskilled work, meaning that those jobs are available for others.

 

[SuperNova]

From: https://www.railforums.co.uk/thread...or-the-conventional-side.205188/#post-4612980


Any thoughts?

In the sense of TOC's employing people - No. If we're talking about infrastructure, then yes.

The current markets are willing to pay the Government to loan them money - now is the right time get HS2 done, finish Great Western electrification, Transpennine Route upgrade etc. Issue is, lack of skills in engineering but there's a massive opportunity to be taken.

 

[HSTEd]

The ultimate objective should be a railway employing as few people as possible.

Every person the railway employs could be employed doing something that creates new wealth/services.

Trying to make a politically damaging jobless figure go down by employing people to do pointless jobs doesn't really help many people.
The railway is already extremely labour intensive, the last thing it needs is to become moreso.

 

[Bantamzen]

There is absolutely no point in creating jobs on the railway (or any other business) that add to the day to day costs of operating that business unless employing those people would bring in more than the cost of employing them (salary plus NI, pension, other benefits on costs). It would just make the business less efficient. Ideas for more onboard staff or barrier staff are highly unlikely to bring in more revenue than the cost of employing them.

As I said earlier what is worth doing is infrastructure projects that are an investment in the business. Things that increase the efficiency of the business and productivity of the nation in the long term. HS2, East-West Rail and dare I say it new roads fit this criteria. In the short term they provide large numbers of jobs and int he long term allow better efficiency and productivity.

Agreed, whilst job creation is a noble idea, it really isn't going to be very efficient to have every station manned for the entire day. As an example my local station Baildon would need at least 6, maybe 8 different staff per day, as the first train is before six & the last close to 11:30 on and ordinary timetable, and would always need 2 members of staff to man both entrances to the single platform. It just wouldn't make economic sense for a private company.

Is not about business efficiency and the bottom line, it's about the government getting people into jobs and money in their pockets to spend to stop the economy defending into a multi year depression. Rather than paying universal credit, pay people to do a job and be able to stimulate demand elsewhere in the economy.

This isn't a corporate profit maximisation scheme , it's getting people into work.

I think you're missing the point of a job creation scheme, which is based around the principle that it's better to pay someone to do a vaguely useful but low-wage job (to society, in terms of taxpayer value and in terms of mental health of the individual) than it is to pay them benefits to sit at home doing nothing. It's very different to the usual principle of only employing someone if their role brings in more to the business than not having it, and it's something I think we are going to need to rebuild the economy after COVID. Remember it won't be "dead money", the money they are paid will go back into the economy and boost it all round, so it's also a subsidy to other areas of business.

Because you're going to have to put all sorts of people into these jobs to get the economy moving, they can't be difficult stuff (e.g. being a doctor or nurse), they need to be simple jobs that will be relatively low-paid and take relatively little training (so OBS is probably better than guard, for instance, even if we did decide to later train them up and reinstate actual guards on all trains). Classic examples of job-creation-scheme type work are street sweeping, graffiti cleaning, toilet attendant, park keeper - that sort of stuff - but there's plenty of scope for similar on the railway, and it's a large industry that is presently effectively fully under Government control, so there is an easy scope to chuck the money their way and just tell them to put up the job adverts.

Creating jobs like this isn't what the economy needs. What we need is to be innovators, for example in green energy development. We live on a series of islands that has just about every nature source of energy going, wind, wave, sun. The government should be pushing areas like these & offering incentives to businesses at the cutting edge to encourage job creation, not training up an army of ticket inspectors standing around getting bored.

 

[underbank]

Creating jobs like this isn't what the economy needs. What we need is to be innovators, for example in green energy development. We live on a series of islands that has just about every nature source of energy going, wind, wave, sun. The government should be pushing areas like these & offering incentives to businesses at the cutting edge to encourage job creation, not training up an army of ticket inspectors standing around getting bored.

Exactly. We really don't want to go down the "one man digs a hole, another fills it in again" mentality of paying people for work that really doesn't need doing.

We've already started seeing in with our local council. They got a grant from Govt to create cycle lanes (like all LAs). Rather than properly consult and think about long term cycle lanes etc., the council got a private firm to go out with an angle grinder/pneumatic drill to create holes for those tall/narrow traffic lane dividers and have plagued our city with them to create cycle lanes everywhere, which make the actual traffic lanes very narrow meaning emergency vehicles can't pass other traffic (which can no longer pull to the side or on the pavement to let them past). That's a prime example of spending money for the sake of spending money. We really have to do a lot better than than kind of lazy thinking if we're going to spend billions to support jobs etc coming out of Covid.

 

[Bletchleyite]

Exactly. We really don't want to go down the "one man digs a hole, another fills it in again" mentality of paying people for work that really doesn't need doing.

"Need doing" is relative, though. I reckon in the 1960s we would say that we needed park keepers[1], lavatory attendants, street sweepers and beat police officers - why don't we need them now? They may not, in times of austerity, meet cost-benefit analysis, but to say they don't "need doing" is going a bit far, in my view society is certainly worse for their absence.

[1] Parks are obviously maintained, but by someone ragging around in a 4x4 doing the grass as quickly as possible so he can go to the pub (I know one, and that's exactly his view on the job) - what we used to have was one person responsible for everything about a park, and a real pride in doing it well as if it was his own garden.

 

[underbank]

"Need doing" is relative, though. I reckon in the 1960s we would say that we needed park keepers[1], lavatory attendants, street sweepers and beat police officers - why don't we need them now? They may not, in times of austerity, meet cost-benefit analysis, but to say they don't "need doing" is going a bit far, in my view society is certainly worse for their absence.

[1] Parks are obviously maintained, but by someone ragging around in a 4x4 doing the grass as quickly as possible so he can go to the pub (I know one, and that's exactly his view on the job) - what we used to have was one person responsible for everything about a park, and a real pride in doing it well as if it was his own garden.

I'd say that those jobs you mention ARE worth having so I agree with you as long as they're done properly and for the long term. I suspect, however, that local councils would go down the "subbie" route and subcontract it out to people who don't give a stuff and do exactly what you say - do the job as quickly as possible so they can get to the pub.

 

[Yew]

Subcontractors aren't necessarily a bad thing though, (unless they're Serco or G4s) I'm sure there are lots of local (construction?) firms that would just at the chance to paint and pressure wash some stations.

 

[underbank]

Subcontractors aren't necessarily a bad thing though, (unless they're Serco or G4s) I'm sure there are lots of local (construction?) firms that would just at the chance to paint and pressure wash some stations.

But it's seldom the "local" firms that get public sector contracts - it's usually the national firms like Serco etc because they have entire depts set up to do the "box ticking" loved by public sector procurement.

 

[theironroad]

Agreed, whilst job creation is a noble idea, it really isn't going to be very efficient to have every station manned for the entire day. As an example my local station Baildon would need at least 6, maybe 8 different staff per day, as the first train is before six & the last close to 11:30 on and ordinary timetable, and would always need 2 members of staff to man both entrances to the single platform. It just wouldn't make economic sense for a private company.




Creating jobs like this isn't what the economy needs. What we need is to be innovators, for example in green energy development. We live on a series of islands that has just about every nature source of energy going, wind, wave, sun. The government should be pushing areas like these & offering incentives to businesses at the cutting edge to encourage job creation, not training up an army of ticket inspectors standing around getting bored.

I don't think the original idea was for only for the railway to be the job creation scheme, but certainly a good starting point.

I'd full agree that green energy development and other environmental projects would be a good idea, whether the government operates the scheme directly or funds approved businesses to do it, either way would have overall benefits to society.

Another government funded job creation scheme that would massively help climate change issues is to provide a mass home insulation scheme provided at nominal cost to householders.

Exactly. We really don't want to go down the "one man digs a hole, another fills it in again" mentality of paying people for work that really doesn't need doing.

We've already started seeing in with our local council. They got a grant from Govt to create cycle lanes (like all LAs). Rather than properly consult and think about long term cycle lanes etc., the council got a private firm to go out with an angle grinder/pneumatic drill to create holes for those tall/narrow traffic lane dividers and have plagued our city with them to create cycle lanes everywhere, which make the actual traffic lanes very narrow meaning emergency vehicles can't pass other traffic (which can no longer pull to the side or on the pavement to let them past). That's a prime example of spending money for the sake of spending money. We really have to do a lot better than than kind of lazy thinking if we're going to spend billions to support jobs etc coming out of Covid.

Isnt the LA funding of cycle schemes (and pavement widening) by central govt part of the plan to provide more space for pedestrians and to encourage people to cycle rather than use public transport in the post covid world.

 

[Yew]

But it's seldom the "local" firms that get public sector contracts - it's usually the national firms like Serco etc because they have entire depts set up to do the "box ticking" loved by public sector procurement.

That's a good point, I was hoping that a few lamposts on a station would be below the scope of their operations, but for most small businesses, it's not worth the paperwork to even bid for. Though discussing the failures of public tendering is scope for another thead.

 

[underbank]

Isnt the LA funding of cycle schemes (and pavement widening) by central govt part of the plan to provide more space for pedestrians and to encourage people to cycle rather than use public transport in the post covid world.

Indeed it is, but hastily throwing down a few posts on random roads isn't going to do that. It's just like the council spending spree every March when they have to spend the money they've got left over - all kinds of random new signs, kerb lowering, road markings etc in pretty obscure places whilst at the same, completely ignoring the busy/important places that need doing. It's as if the contractors/workers are just told to use whatever they've got in the depot wherever they feel like doing it.

That's the last thing we should be doing if the govt decide to provide funding for job creation to get us out of the covid recession. There needs to be a proper plan to use the money wisely for long term benefit, not short term social media likes.

 

[theironroad]

Indeed it is, but hastily throwing down a few posts on random roads isn't going to do that. It's just like the council spending spree every March when they have to spend the money they've got left over - all kinds of random new signs, kerb lowering, road markings etc in pretty obscure places whilst at the same, completely ignoring the busy/important places that need doing. It's as if the contractors/workers are just told to use whatever they've got in the depot wherever they feel like doing it.

That's the last thing we should be doing if the govt decide to provide funding for job creation to get us out of the covid recession. There needs to be a proper plan to use the money wisely for long term benefit, not short term social media likes.

Well hopefully they'll be able to take feedback, refine the plans and sort out hotspots over time, but I think that time was of the essence to get the work actually done so people can socially distance rather than take a year of consultations and planning.

 

[Bletchleyite]

But it's seldom the "local" firms that get public sector contracts - it's usually the national firms like Serco etc because they have entire depts set up to do the "box ticking" loved by public sector procurement.

That isn't true, particularly now a lot of the contracts I mention are being let at parish level. The groundskeeping around by me is done (badly) by a local independent.

 

[Horizon22]

OK, yes, there are stations that are at the bottom of the list but even without those, there are still many stations which could justify barriers. For example, pretty much any route with a commuter flow would be perfectly appropriate for barriers and first to last staffing. Even if we started with currently ungated stations in the conurbations it could create some level of employment.

Whilst the staffing bit is easy to solve, the infrastructure & costs to actually create the gateline is much more difficult - especially around places such as suburban London

 

[MidlandMainlie]

Earlier today there was an article in the Finaclal Times that the Government is looking for 'shovel ready' infrastructure projects to aid in economic recovery from the impact of the Coronavirus (although annoyingly I can't find it now). I think the article said they were looking for projects that could start quickly and be complete in 18 months, Any rail projects that could fit that description?

Edit: The mods have helped me to find the link


https://www.ft.com/content/2bc9f831-cc7d-42ae-b029-db01a0f9eaa6

 

[Altfish]

HS2

 

[Yew]

Ivanhoe line? Robin Hood line extension? Early Sprinter replacement with British made units? All the stations: repainting edition?

 

[Bletchleyite]

Skem extension of Merseyrail.

 

[MidlandMainlie]

HS2

HS2 will certainly create thousands of jobs but the article was about smaller projects that would be completed in 18 months which HS2 won't be.

 

[Bletchleyite]

Manchester Piccadilly platforms 15 and 16.

 

[MidlandMainlie]

Ivanhoe line? Robin Hood line extension? Early Sprinter replacement with British made units? All the stations: repainting edition?

Robin Hood line extension would be great. I think the Ivanhoe line from Leicester to Burton would need some land purchase of Industrial units to to reinstate the North cord at Knighton Junction which along with the design work would take longer than 18 months.

Manchester Piccadilly platforms 15 and 16.

That would be a good project to do, would fit the governments levelling up agenda too.

 

[Jorge Da Silva]

Any rail reopenings that could be done? Like some stations on existing lines or freight lines being converted like Walsall-Wolverhampton, Camp Hill Line, Sutton Park Line etc.

Manchester Piccadilly platforms 15 and 16 would be a good one
Shirebrook to Ollerton would be a good shout as well.
Reinstatement of Platform 4 at Snow Hill and some elements of the Midlands Rail Hub.

 

[Snow1964]

Installing a 100 space cycle rack at every station would be a quick shovel ready idea (smaller ones at wayside halts, perhaps 200 or 300 at bigger suburban stations)

Hopefully not quite so ugly as the new multi-story cycle parking at Kingston upon Thames station

 

[bluenoxid]

Hope Valley Capacity Scheme

MML electrification

 

[jonesy3001]

Electrification to stalybridge, guide bridge to Manchester and the Windermere line.

 

[cle]

I would think platform extensions can start pretty swiftly - plenty across the Northern commuter routes to do - as well as some simpler doubling schemes (Uckfield, Cotswolds, Wessex).

Piccadilly 15/16 is a biggie, but it could and should certainly begin. The same treatment for Oxford Road too. And nothing along there should be less than 5 cars (see extensions).