BRX
Established Member
- Joined
- 20 Oct 2008
- Messages
- 3,708
It's true that the point of a strike is to cause disruption, disruption which will have a financial (and perhaps reputational) cost to the company the strikers are in dispute with. So, its part of the nature of industrial action that the "public" will suffer the consequences.
The issue here is perhaps the disproportionate affect it has on the sleeper services. The cancellation or part-bustitution of a sleeper service has a very large impact on the people intending to travel on it - in many cases entirely destroying the whole point of what it's supposed to be - ie, you're supposed to be asleep and in a comfortable berth, not being shoved into a coach at 4am. Generally people will have paid a lot for a sleeper journey; it might also be part of a holiday they have been looking forward to for some time, and it might be something they don't do very often. So for the passengers concerned, the disruption of a sleeper journey is a fairly major event in terms of hassle and discomfort, and in the case of someone who's not used it before, it would mean 100% of their sleeper journey experiences are negative. We all know that the Highland sleepers in particular are somewhat fragile; they don't make money and are often under threat of withdrawal (although hopefully safe for some years at present) so bad experiences (which will be relayed word-of-mouth to others thinking of trying it out) are very damaging.
Compare this with the effect of a cancelled daytime service - it might still be a hassle but in most cases ultimately it means a delayed journey, perhaps also a somewhat crowded or uncomfortable one, but probably not enough to make most people think "I will never travel by train again" because its a small fraction of all the journeys they make each year.
So, for the sleeper the effect on the passengers is very large, but for Scotrail fairly small I imagine. Passengers will associate the bad experience with CS instead. In theory of course, it can damage Scotrail's contractual relationship with CS, incentivising CS to make other arrangements in future but I don't imagine that losing whatever income they get from providing staff for the sleepers is exactly a big deal financially.
In comparison, for daytime Scotrail services the impact on the passenger is lower, but the cost to Scotrail higher.
So I can see there might be an argument for the RMT to make the decision to go easy on the sleeper impact, but others have explained above why it's not that straightforward.
Really it's CS who should take the blame here, rather than the RMT. It seems they have decided to manage their services such that they are highly reliant on staff from another company with a low incentive to make sure those staff are always available. The consequence of this is that when those staff aren't available - for reasons that are outwith CS's control - the impact is fairly catastrophic. Maybe they need to rethink their resilience to this kind of thing.
The issue here is perhaps the disproportionate affect it has on the sleeper services. The cancellation or part-bustitution of a sleeper service has a very large impact on the people intending to travel on it - in many cases entirely destroying the whole point of what it's supposed to be - ie, you're supposed to be asleep and in a comfortable berth, not being shoved into a coach at 4am. Generally people will have paid a lot for a sleeper journey; it might also be part of a holiday they have been looking forward to for some time, and it might be something they don't do very often. So for the passengers concerned, the disruption of a sleeper journey is a fairly major event in terms of hassle and discomfort, and in the case of someone who's not used it before, it would mean 100% of their sleeper journey experiences are negative. We all know that the Highland sleepers in particular are somewhat fragile; they don't make money and are often under threat of withdrawal (although hopefully safe for some years at present) so bad experiences (which will be relayed word-of-mouth to others thinking of trying it out) are very damaging.
Compare this with the effect of a cancelled daytime service - it might still be a hassle but in most cases ultimately it means a delayed journey, perhaps also a somewhat crowded or uncomfortable one, but probably not enough to make most people think "I will never travel by train again" because its a small fraction of all the journeys they make each year.
So, for the sleeper the effect on the passengers is very large, but for Scotrail fairly small I imagine. Passengers will associate the bad experience with CS instead. In theory of course, it can damage Scotrail's contractual relationship with CS, incentivising CS to make other arrangements in future but I don't imagine that losing whatever income they get from providing staff for the sleepers is exactly a big deal financially.
In comparison, for daytime Scotrail services the impact on the passenger is lower, but the cost to Scotrail higher.
So I can see there might be an argument for the RMT to make the decision to go easy on the sleeper impact, but others have explained above why it's not that straightforward.
Really it's CS who should take the blame here, rather than the RMT. It seems they have decided to manage their services such that they are highly reliant on staff from another company with a low incentive to make sure those staff are always available. The consequence of this is that when those staff aren't available - for reasons that are outwith CS's control - the impact is fairly catastrophic. Maybe they need to rethink their resilience to this kind of thing.
90044 on the front.
