No compulsory redundancy is an absurd position that never existed in BR.
It did, it just comes under a different arrangement, so was never called that.
It traps people in low productivity roles, reduces productivity, it is a disincentive to investment and results in people being employed in totally unsuitable roles.
No, that’s all incorrect. No compulsory redundancy does not mean that posts do not go. When combined with a voluntary severance or voluntary redundancy scheme, you can actually give employees a chance to up skill themselves.
There are literally hundreds of stations where tickets to the rest of the country are sold by a machine.
How many people in the likes of Wimbledon actually go outside the Contactless area that make this insurmountable?
It's like another DOO debate, vending machines already happen at stations used by huge numbers of people.
How soon before AI expert systems are brought in to deal with the lack of GPs? Or indeed, the same thing in other areas? There will always be some people who prefer to use technology/automation. But there will also be some people who prefer to have interactions with another person. Why shouldn’t the customer have a choice and decide which they prefer?
Another question might be, at stations which only have TVMs available and are not barriered, how many people don't like them and walk past the TVMs and pay onboard (or online if they feel they may be imminently challenged)?
Taking this further, if you have unstaffed stations, no barriers and trains with only a driver on board, how many passengers will chance not buying a ticket?
Also if there are no station staff, no ticket office, who will deal with any incidents?
We can safely assume they arent planning on improving the travelling experience and amenities for passengers, howewer.
"There arent enough passengers using the railway so we're going to make it slightly harder to use, much more unpleasent and do less maintenance to save costs" Yeah that'll entice them back.
This is being driven by government simply to try to cut costs. Spoiler: they’ve already failed with this, firstly because the cost of servicing the debts of the railways is far higher than any savings excluding the costs to the government and the country of the industrial action. And secondly, the costs to the government and the country of the industrial action outweighs the costs of any savings in the short term at least.
The government does not care about the passenger experience at all. I don’t have a crystal ball, but it would not surprise me if we end up with more unstaffed stations (with less facilities like waiting rooms and toilets), more part time staffed stations, less staff to help passengers even if the station is a staffed station. Stations becoming less well kept (a member of staff can only do one thing at a time, so if they are kept busy, the least important jobs just won’t get done). Expect more graffiti for example.
Indeed, for certain people, an unkept, unstaffed station, with no facilities may be enough to put them off using the railway. They are then likely to use their car.
Do I have evidence for the above? No. But as others have said, this is what has happened in the past.
You don’t cut costs just by moving staff out from a ticket office unless you cut the number of staff.
Someone mentioned inflation. The inflation rate that gets banded about is just the rate of change. And that is typically a figure for the last 12 months. Even if inflation dropped to zero, it does not mean that prices go back down, or that the cost of living is no longer a problem. So regardless of the current headline inflation figure, employees are still going to be wanting a pay rise so that they are not getting poorer compared to the increase in the cost of living that has already occurred.
