These threads always seem to come up with the same circular arguments , predominately from people not in the rail industry .
Firstly , the unions are not set against Sundays being inside the working week . If you go to the depots and speak to some of the members you might get that impression but the position of ASLEF is clearly that Sundays should be inside the working week . And there should be no reliance on overtime to cover the train plan . To this affect ASLEF have indeed been negotiating with Northern to achieve that aim as well as the harmonisation of 3 sets of T's&C's . But it seems that the deal put to the members was not acceptable to them . I have no doubt those negotiations will continue and it seems reasonable to expect that something might be put before members which they do find acceptable , but I could equally be wrong on that . That in my view is the correct way to go about guaranteeing cover for sundays .
Secondly , this idea of people being employed on new contracts is simply not going to happen , the unions would not sanction it and being honest about it , it would not even solve the problems anyway . Contracting people to work every sunday is all good and well until they book sick , get taken off trains for some reason or other or have annual leave . Then you will be relying on the people currently not contracted to work every Sunday to cover their work ? How well do you think that will go down . Given the topic of this thread and ongoing issue is getting staff not contracted to work Sundays to work them ?
Whilst I would not go as far as to call it a toxic environment , it would cause some friction between people in the same grade . If you employed someone to work every Sunday but paid them the same as current drivers without the requirement to work Sundays you are clearly going to get friction that occurs there . But also if someone is going to work every Sunday they cannot be rostered onto a late Saturday to early Monday turn shift changeover which is one of the least desirable aspects of shift working so that would cause friction . And of course in order to accommodate every Sunday whilst maintaining a 4 day week they are going to have to have a different rest day pattern to others in the same grade which will also cause friction . Whilst these might only be small points of friction between people in the same grade they can over time effect morale and ultimately reduce the amount of goodwill staff show to each other and the company . And even at TOC's with Sundays inside the week for all train crew there is still some need for staff showing goodwill .
The numbers also would not add up to start with and leave Sunday work uncovered . Say you have a larger depot with 150 drivers , and 10% of those are on the new contract . That is 15 drivers in work every Sunday , but at larger depots there can be 20-25 Sunday turns that need covering . And of course if any of those 15 drivers have annual leave , are off sick or are unable to drive for some other reason you have even less cover . That's why in my opinion bringing it in member by member in an industry with low staff turnover like the railway is just a daft idea and would not work in practice . In the short to medium term in fact it might make things catastrophically worse . Thankfully those advocating for it are nowhere near the bodies that make these decisions in the industry .
For me one short term change which could be used to try and improve things whilst negotiations are ongoing is make Sunday working more financially attractive , currently drivers earn more for a weekday RD than a Sunday , which stands to reason as being something to do with why Sundays are difficult to cover .