Which bit of ASLEF? GTR?
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Southern DOO: ASLEF members vote 79.1% for revised deal
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Which bit of ASLEF? GTR?
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Captain Chaos
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I'm not sure. All I have seen is a posting on a FB group which details a press release from Mick Cash stating that sister union ASLEF will be informing their members they will be balloting for strike action over the extension of DOO following talks with Southern GTR. That's all I know I'm afraid. I'm sure more information will be forthcoming very soon though!
yep spot on, got a text from ASLEF earlier.
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Well said, tonight's unfolding events prove you know far more about the realities of what's going on than some on here want to give you credit for
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the sniper
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Well said, tonight's unfolding events prove you know far more about the realities of what's going on than some on here give you credit for
Heh? I don't think this is the sort of support James was calling for!
Heh? I don't think this is the sort of support James was calling for!
The initial comment was made because it appears some people are adamant that the OBS role will be a failure. They also come across as people that would rather not do their best to support the role. So IF it doesn't work, they can say we gave it our best shot. They appear to be the sort of people that would rather assist it's demise because they are desperate to say I told you so.
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Will this be in relation to nearly all services towards London from Three Bridges and Haywards Heath now being DOO(P)?
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When the next person dies or has their legs chopped off due to a PTI incident are you still gonna gloat over the extension of DOO ?
Maybe if you had made it as a Driver you wouldn't be so bitter against them.
Both unions public announcement ) to join forces nationwide to oppose any further DCD/DCO/DOO occurred around 6 months BEFORE Wilkinsons daft outburst you mention, so please suggest how better diplomacy from government /DFT would have realistically changed anything at all ?
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BestWestern
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Could you perhaps enlighten us all as to how exactly you think the nasty Drivers and Conductors are going to sabotage the OBS role? Blow raspberries at them? Give them funny looks perhaps? Or maybe just launch a campaign of mass slaughter and throw them all onto the juice rail?!
I'm sorry to take the rise, but that is one of the most desperate and really rather pathetic suggestions so far. When, at the beginning of the next franchise, the OBS role is dumped, it will be because that was the plan from the very beginning, not because of something that other staff have done. Please, do try to see the realities of the situation here.
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Deepgreen
Established Member
If we are nit-picking then it's'held by Don King and me'
It's not nit-picking when it changes the meaning completely.
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I suspect that Wilkinson's blatant fighting talk delivered a strong message to the unions and others, that negotiation was off the table. This will automatically have caused the unions to bristle before even discussing the issue - not a helpful starting point. Without the deliberate taunting, for example, there may have been more fruitful talk about the huge and well-established precedent of DOO around the country and the franchise, and the reasons for the unions taking a stand over this particular DOO proposal.
It's possible to have a strong negotiating stance without deliberate provocation, or the utterly negative campaign elements such as the staff car parking withdrawal, the twitter debacle, etc.
Robertj21a
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I may have misunderstood, but hadn't the RMT already made their point of view on DOO crystal clear well before this talk ?
Nope not bitter a tad below the belt but I will rise above the comments of a bully. and I am am not gloating and I wouldn't gloat over such an incident. JOI what are the odds of such an incident occuring? Why aren't TL GN and Metro route trains always causing horrific injuries to people?
Yes they have, I was referencing a joint declaration they signed with ASLEF opposing any further DCO/DOO around 6 months before that speech was made, prior to that declaration ASLEF had at least been up for negotiations re possible DOO extensions (since around 1984 anyway)
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Xenophon PCDGS
Veteran Member
Do you honestly believe what you have said about "more fruitful talk" above...:roll:
Why am I a bully ?
There are comments made, such as the one you made, about how staff have ulterior motives behind the strikes and have a vested interest and ergo have a biased opinion. So I put it to you again. If you had made it as a Driver. Would your opinions on DOO and the risk of imprisonment and the risk of killing someone and the risk of chopping someone legs off change ? When your the person pressing that button your opinions rightfully change.
It is genuine to ask those who question us from a looking in perspective but we are looking out and I guarantee if you were in our position you would 100% see it differently.
Is it OK for you to take digs at staff ? Do you really believe that we are going to sabotage our own colleagues. If you have such a low opinion of us then why did you apply ? That's not bullying. That's a genuine question. I speak to many Trainees and new entrants and their is a huge misperception of how the railway works. There is a also a huge misperception about what we do. Oh my does that perception change after a few weeks.
Happens a lot on DOO trains does it? I can't say that I've noticed.
Such blatant scaremongering is never going to further your cause on a forum like this.
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NSEFAN
Established Member
ComUtor, are you able to summarise the statistics for us? If there is a higher PTI incident rate between DOO and non-DOO then I would like to see this. I know however that this won't be the full picture, due to more minor incidents and near misses going unnoticed when there are fewer staff to see and report them...
I suspect that non-DOO is a bit safer. (Especially when guard operated services have many of the DOO safety upgrades such as GSM-R, well lit stations, etc).
Thing is, safety seems a bit abstract to passengers who have never themselves experienced an incident. To be frank, it can also seem an absurd argument when strikes lead to crush loaded trains and dangerously packed platforms.
Safety will therefore be one consideration but perhaps not the main one for passengers. It is such a shame that the RMT seems so incapable of engaging positively with the public, extolling the customer service benefits of staff and encouraging the hiring of more staff to resolve the availability issue.
Done correctly, the RMT should have tried to instigate a mass demand from passengers for guards. We should have been persuaded to write to our MPs to ensure our service isn't degraded.
Instead, the RMT comes very close to doing the opposite. It doesn't appear to view passengers as stakeholders to engage with. It makes Southern's aspiration to reduce the power of the RMT seem almost reasonable as an aim in itself. Passengers just want this over and will now support any outcome which achieves this. A wasted opportunity.
Thing is, safety seems a bit abstract to passengers who have never themselves experienced an incident. To be frank, it can also seem an absurd argument when strikes lead to crush loaded trains and dangerously packed platforms.
Safety will therefore be one consideration but perhaps not the main one for passengers. It is such a shame that the RMT seems so incapable of engaging positively with the public, extolling the customer service benefits of staff and encouraging the hiring of more staff to resolve the availability issue.
Done correctly, the RMT should have tried to instigate a mass demand from passengers for guards. We should have been persuaded to write to our MPs to ensure our service isn't degraded.
Instead, the RMT comes very close to doing the opposite. It doesn't appear to view passengers as stakeholders to engage with. It makes Southern's aspiration to reduce the power of the RMT seem almost reasonable as an aim in itself. Passengers just want this over and will now support any outcome which achieves this. A wasted opportunity.
It has been mentioned many times. There are no statistics to separate DOO and non DOO services. There is a report done every quarter (iirc) that lists numbers of incidents.
gtr driver
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Dispatched a lot of DOO trains have you? We're not scaremongering. We're SCARED.
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It's possibly due to a systematic side lining of the unions and their input. The Transport Select Committee Report on recent events made it clear that the RSSB and the RAIB are responsible for railway safety, not the unions. The unions' only legitimate work is to protect their members. However, the well being of staff, proper training, engagement with the job, as well as physical safety, are all crucial to railway safety - and these are areas which we rely on the unions to act as a check and balance on! Also faith in the RAIB and RSSB is diminishing amongst train crew. Maybe as we move further and further from a co-operative culture we end up closer to an adversarial one.
Tetchytyke
Veteran Member
The RSSB report on this every year, and the most recent report is here: http://www.rssb.co.uk/Library/risk-...nnual-safety-performance-report-2015-2016.pdf
The RSSB do not distinguish between DOO and non-DOO services, which makes a comparison very difficult. I will let others speculate as to why they do not make this distinction.
However what is clear is that the biggest risk of harm at the PTI comes from becoming trapped in the doors. Standards for guards have changed to ensure that they have a clear and unobstructed view of the platform when despatching and that they do not leave the door controls until the train has fully left the platform so that they can monitor the situation. Drivers cannot see the platform once they have taken power; the CCTV monitors switch off or the platform displays/mirrors are no longer in view.
The biggest risk factor comes from someone becoming trapped in the doors and not being noticed until after the train has started moving. This can happen with guards- an incident at Newcastle with a TPE 185 showed this- but it appears to happen more with DOO, because of the additional difficulties that drivers have seeing the whole train fully. Issues are not uncommon on London Underground and the Tyne and Wear Metro, including in many cases where things are only picked up later through passenger reports or CCTV footage.
DOO is about more than door operation and despatch though. The risks of DOO on third rail are shown fairly regularly on SouthEastern, where passengers will de-train themselves if they end up stuck too long. An incident last year at London Bridge was extended by about four hours because passengers let themselves off the train, in the absence of staff being there to help and advise, meaning the electricity supply had to be isolated until they'd all been moved to safety. We saw a similar issue last month on the Tyne and Wear Metro when a transformer blew; passengers were trapped underground for hours with no idea what was happening due to the lack of staff.
Things do not go wrong often on the railways. Incidents like Kentish Town or Hayes and Harlington are uncommon. I think this is partly why we end up with ideas like DOO: the cost of paying out on the occasional incident is cheaper than paying a second member of staff. Kentish Town cost First Capital Connect about £100k all in. Paying that out is cheaper than employing the guards.
DOO is "safe enough", because the railway is generally very safe. I think people in management are starting to take it for granted though.
There was an investigation of dispatch of a DOO train on the Great Northern at Kings Cross, do you see the common theme occurring here?
https://www.gov.uk/raib-reports/per...pulled-along-platform-at-king-s-cross-station
If a guard was in charge of dispatching the train, they could have seen the person caught in the doors. Also if they were dispatching from the cab, drop down the window and watch the train departing the station. If there was a safety issue the guard can hit the emergency plunger to stop the train.
I travel on them regularly and funnily enough I've never witnessed any such incidents.
In my experience, many of them do. In fact it's a requirement at a lot of TOCs.
Trust me I used to be a guard.
Deepgreen
Established Member
I certainly think that going into discussions having already publicly boasted about crushing the unions could not have helped the mood! I can well imagine that many people might have been swayed in favour of strike action simply by the pugnacious stance taken, without necessarily considering the issue more calmly. It is possible that a more reasoned discussion might have taken place if the DoT's guns had not already been drawn, cocked and aimed.
As far as I can see (and as someone who favours the retention of guards), there has still been no answer to my question of several days ago as to why this particular extension of DOO has been fought over so bitterly by the RMT, when so much of the rest of the railway is already DOO, and the safety issue has not been brought up so vehemently during previous discussions on the topic (by definition - if it had, then there would have been this level of strike action at that stage). I can only assume that the main reason for the 'fight to the death' now is that the pre-negotiation words have created such a toxic atmosphere that sensible discussions have been precluded. Much though I favour guards' retention, the opportunity to retain the role on safety grounds has long since passed, given the number of very intensive services that have been DOO for so long. It may well be that two-person working is safer, but the principle of DOO has been entrenched in the UK railway scene now for decades, and it will not be reversed.
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gtr driver
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I bow to your superior experience. Being personally responsible for a hundred safe stops and starts a day in sometimes very challenging circumstances is nothing to being a passenger on a couple of trains is it?
It probably due to this being the first proposed extension of DOO since RMT signed their joint declaration with ASLEF against DOO late last year, I think that agreement took away most of the guards incentive to settle for virtually anything other than outright victory , in the belief that if they couldn't win the battle alone the drivers definitely could on their behalf
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bramling
Veteran Member
It's hard to quantify, however I'd say there are two types of incident where a DOO service is more vulnerable:
1) Someone tried to board as the doors are closing and gets something caught, the driver doesn't notice, and this leads to a dragging incident. (e.g. Huntingdon, Hayes & Harlington).
2) A packed platform and a packed train trying to depart, with people left behind, and someone on the platform gets something caught in the doors and the driver doesn't notice (e.g. Clapham South).
In my experience, many of them do. In fact it's a requirement at a lot of TOCs.
Trust me I used to be a guard.
I don't doubt it but I have also witnessed a number of guards do not. Oh and some of these have plenty of union badges on themselves and their bags about no to DOO etc
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