So, if you de fragmented the railways and nationalised them what would be the benefit? Some on here call for nationalisation and believe it to be the ultimate answer however who the f*** is paying for all this?????? The unions would chew Corbyns arse and we would either all be paying more taxes regardless of if we use the railways or not or the passengers would pay more. Now if we were all paying more taxes to reduce the cost of travel then we would be subsiding the rich in the south east (not exactly Labour stomping ground), but if we instead paid more for our tickets then rail travel would cost more. Strangely both solutions are against Labour polices and ideals but they ring out with those who support the party line of nationalising "The fragmented privatised railway", cant get my head around it personally.
Non sequitur, de-fragmentation does not mean re-nationalisation.
This is a debate that could take us down many diversionary routes. What is clear is that 50 years ago the terms and conditions for rail staff were significantly more coherent across the nation than they are today. The railway industry is not alone in that. Large private companies have merged and de-merged with various bodies of staff carrying with them previous terms, conditions and pension arrangements. That gives major headaches to human resource managers, operational managers and unions alike.
It has already been pointed out that buying out employees to even up the terms can be a very expensive operation, in many cases prohibitively so. Signing up new staff on new terms makes the operation even harder to manage. Businesses with a high turnover of staff requiring relatively little training may find it easier, but even then it's potentially very divisive. It would be divisive if east side crews were brought in to cover more west side diagrams.
Northern is a classic case where there are several groups of staff who have moved from one company to another over time. Another potential transfer might come if, say, the Liverpool - Nottingham route were split from the East Midlands franchise and given to Northern. Staff on that route might be offered a TUPE to Northern, but if they did it would add another layer of complexity to an already confusing situation.
This is not easy to resolve, but losing 3 return services today, on a route with an hourly service at best, leads to total despair that the railway industry seriously wishes to take more than it's miniscule 2% of the travel market.
Or maybe we should give up on these rural lines, leave them for freight only and subsidise better buses? It may well cost less.