75A
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According to the BBC website there's disruption on the London Underground today caused by a strike by RMT Drivers, nothing on here?
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Tube Strike
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I thought that odd too so I just searched for "Tube Strike" in RailUKforums and this is all we have!
bramling
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Possibly under the radar as it’s been heavily publicised as being Night Tube related.
The amount of trouble Night Tube has caused since first being proposed is unreal. Another great Boris idea...
Dstock7080
Established Member
In the existing Night Tube thread:
When might night tube reopen?
Anybody in the know heard any rumours about when the night tube might get back up and running ? Leisure travel has picked up much better than commuter travel, is has to be reaching close to pre-pandemic demands, judging by the crush on the last trains of the night on friday/saturday.
www.railforums.co.uk
Circle Line is not involved in the dispute, just train cancellations due to lack of staff.
Interesting call-in on LBC radio 8.30 this morning by an ASLEF tube driver, who described how the rationale is seen as ludicrous, and on the Aslef Whats App board "everyone is laughing at them".
Maybe someone here can post some of the comments from there. The media just don't seem to have picked up on there being two different drivers' unions mixed in, RMT has called a strike, ASLEF not.
Maybe someone here can post some of the comments from there. The media just don't seem to have picked up on there being two different drivers' unions mixed in, RMT has called a strike, ASLEF not.
bramling
Veteran Member
I wouldn’t put too much credibility on what people from another union say. Relations between RMT and ASLEF have always been rather “interesting”, to put it diplomatically. Some people are very tribal about it.
What’s funny is that they already work nights!
This is rather insulting, and proves you obviously have absolutely no concept of the skills and knowledge required to become a train operator. I don't blame you for that - the right wing press have been pushing this 'dumbing down' agenda for years.
I wonder, do you yearn for Paramedics to be known as 'van drivers' as that's all you see them doing?
A night link for Train Operators was brought in specifically for this purpose - which actually suited a lot of people very well. Then having that scrapped & shoving everyone into a large roster with rotating nights every X weeks with minimal discussion isn't fantastic. I'm not normally a fan of RMT strikes (normally under the guise of "safety" but in reality anything but), but this one has a bit more merit.
Yeah. Not as if I have a relative or two that are based at Northumberland Park and Golders green depots. They literally boast it’s money for nothing now pretty much. Sure they may have knowledge. But the overwhelming majority won’t ever need that knowledge. It’s open the doors. Close the doors. Push to start. Rinse repeat.
i think it’s insulting that other, much more skilled jobs are paid far less.
Ultimately that is an issue that those industries are underpaid then. You don’t drag down other roles with you. Out of interest which roles are you comparing to?
Whilst there may well have been some wage inflation over the years, a lot of railway / LU roles may not appeared “skilled” but there is a lot of knowledge and experience required for the “what if?” scenarios and are remunerated accordingly.
philthetube
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I am trying to make sense of this sentence and am failing, bear in mind that good communication skills are required for tube drivers.
How are you going to decide which few drivers will need that knowledge?
357
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I'd love to see his reaction if he's stuck on a train in the middle of nowhere one day and the driver says "sorry, I'm not trained on how to fix air faults"
Is commonly said that drivers and many railway grades aren't paid for what they do minute by minute - they are paid for what they need to know how to do.
I suppose you could say basically similar to that of an airline pilot/captain and many other professions.
*Without wishing to divert this into a train driver vs Pilot/bus driver/truck driver etc thread which has been done to the death on these forums.
Just a consideration for those who may say certain professions are overpaid, there may be more to their roles and knowledge that meets the eye.
As a driver on the tube for some years now, I think when the issue of salary is raised it's inevitably a contentious issue. The only reason in my opinion that our pay is good is because of industrial leverage through union membership. Yes, Drivers have a certain amount of knowledge for fixing faults and dealing with emergencies, but I'm sure that even taking that into account it's not a good enough reason for the company not to want to pay us less, and I'm sure they would if they could. When I first started I felt that the pay was fairly proportionate with the job and its importance to keeping the city moving, but now I'm not so sure: As wages in other sectors have stagnated and more tube lines have become automated, Drivers' pay has begun to look more inflated and out of kilter. Maybe it's a case of make hay while the sun shines though for us -once all tube lines are automated it will be much easier for the company to make the case for a new contract on a lower rate of pay.
Most of the modern stock has remote diagnostics now. And no tube driver is gonna be fixing faults in the tunnel. Nice try old bean
bramling
Veteran Member
Reality is that you’re quite right the job is quite simple nowadays - most of the time. The difficulty is that from time to time things happen, and on those occasions it’s rather important the correct response happens.
Taking into account antisocial hours (shifts which may start as early as 0445 or finish as late as 0130), potential to work every day except Christmas Day, and the need to attract reliable / competent people to fill these roles, I’m not sure the case is there to say that pay is too high. Indeed LU pay has lagged behind mainline TOCs for some while now. It may well be the case that LU is going to go through a phase of struggling to attract quality recruits.
As regards Night Tube, TfL have got into a mess because of Covid, specifically recruitment / training hasn’t been able to keep pace with vacancies. Night Tube drivers have proved the saviour to this as it has allowed some vacancies to be filled quickly. The problem is there’s many more vacancies, and quite simply it isn’t a good use of resources to devote training resource to training new Night Tube drivers who require 100% training but will only be 40% productive in that role.
What should have happened is the reintroduction of Night Tube should have been kicked a lot further into the long grass. Instead we have it back just as Omicron has emerged.
As ever, the problem is that Night Tube was a political whim. It’s caused no end of troubles ever since it was first proposed.
Yes they absolutely do fix faults when in the tunnel. Even if they can't fix then they need to know what to do when being rescued by another train (releasing brakes etc). The only stock that "phones home" is the S Stock on the sub surface lines. The rest is left to the driver to deal with.
357
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I think your knowledge of train driving, and even trains in general, might be rather lacking.
Every tube train I've ever been involved with, and every mainline train I've ever driven, have various isolating cocks on the inside of the train for that very reason. The train could be in a tunnel, in a platform, on a viaduct, in a location where the adjacent line can't be blocked (mainline parallel running with LU) or many more reasons.
Ever wondered what the seemingly random letter stickers above some seats on the tube are? They are abbreviations of the isolating cocks below the seat. The seat opens with a J door key.
On the mainline, the one you're most likely to see inside the train is a BSRIC (could have a slightly different name on other stocks) as there is one in each coach, however there are more in body end cupboards.
Tube driver
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The amount of times I’ve had to go back and isolate something or trip something back in or something similar and the amount of times I’ve had my train come up in a heap with a fault that I’ve had to deal with would make your mind boggle.
Ahh, you‘ll say that help is but a radio call away who’ll talk you through it. Most replies from control are along the lines of “what have you done to rectify the situation, driver?” or “carry out your fault rectification procedures, driver.” and will only get the control room tech on the line when ALL options have been exhausted by the driver.
I drive a relatively modern stock (by LU standards anyway) and it most certainly does not ‘phone home’ when in trouble.
You‘re clueless.
Nym
Established Member
LUL trains wouldn't have a means to phone home reliably even if they wanted to, deep level tunnels don't have any reception (except for select parts of the JLE) and the connection into the LU radio system is deemed unable to accept such data. Usually due to the data production being hiddiously badly optimised.
Also, what would the phoning home actually do with the data, doesn't help with the only qualified person is already on board, with a handbook on how to rectify faults, that in some cases is quite useful and in others, very much not.
From my experience, LUL drivers to a hell of a lot more fault rectification than any mainline driver, the latter seems to be "First call, phone control to cover my behind in case I do something wrong" which is very much not the right attitude in the LUL environment.
Also, what would the phoning home actually do with the data, doesn't help with the only qualified person is already on board, with a handbook on how to rectify faults, that in some cases is quite useful and in others, very much not.
From my experience, LUL drivers to a hell of a lot more fault rectification than any mainline driver, the latter seems to be "First call, phone control to cover my behind in case I do something wrong" which is very much not the right attitude in the LUL environment.
75A
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ignorance is bliss.
choochoochoo
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A lot of mainline drivers would love to rectify faults, but I believe third party maintenance and support contracts dictate that the dedicated fleet control technicians need to be contacted before anything is touched/done.
357
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We spend weeks learning traction and fault fixing, to then be told we can only follow instructions given by the fleet support tech!
Trying to judge whether pay matches skills compared to other jobs is wasted air - its almost entirely subjective.
Really the only question should be whether you can attract and retain enough suitably qualified people at the wage you are paying. If they are queuing out the door to get involved then you are paying too much.
Really the only question should be whether you can attract and retain enough suitably qualified people at the wage you are paying. If they are queuing out the door to get involved then you are paying too much.
357
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Another consideration needs to be how many people in said queue will pass the assessments and the training.
davetheguard
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I think the RMT need to be pretty careful they're not seen by what I regard as probably the furthest-right British government of my lifetime, as a target; a new National Union of Mineworkers that they want to smash for political reasons.
Ordinary union members and their communities suffered greatly while Arthur Scargill & Thatcher fought their political war.
Ordinary union members and their communities suffered greatly while Arthur Scargill & Thatcher fought their political war.
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