Arriva Rail North DOO

ComUtoR · 6 Sep 2018

jcollins said:
Unsociable hours is usually one of the main reasons given on here if anyone questions why train crew salaries are so high.

To save the needless debate. Here a list of some of the many reasons why our salaries are so high. Please note; this list is not exhaustive.

Privatization
Kept up with inflation
Unionisation
Industry Competition
Attractive employment
High staff turnover
Selective employment criteria
Sheer Awesomeness
High employment failure rate
Historic benefits absorbed into salary
Unsociable hours
Skilled employment
Safety critical
High responsibilities
Terms and Condition buyouts

Unsocial hours is a slice of a very big cake.

RailUK Forums

the sniper · 6 Sep 2018

jcollins said:
Your argument is flawed. How many minutes per hour will the driver spend opening and closing doors and dispatching trains? Let's look at Chester to Warrington to Manchester part of the soon to start Chester to Leeds route that'll take just under an hour and most trains will only call at Warrington between Chester and Manchester, so in one hour you open the doors three times, close them three times and dispatch the train 3 times. Let's say it's 5 minutes spent doing those duties during those 60 minutes using your £15k suggestion/demand that's £8.25 for doing additional duties during 5 minutes when you are being paid to work or equivalent to almost £100/hour extra (given there's 55 minutes when you won't be touching the door buttons.) You see how outrageous it would be for ASLEF to demand that?

Your argument is completely irrelevant. The time doing the doors is almost completely irrelevant. They'll demand a price based on the grief, risk and liability they'd be taking on, be it the doors on most services, or dealing with passengers and passcoms on 'DCO'/DOO services running without an OBS equivalent for operational convenience. ASLEF can ask for whatever they like, whether you like it or not. You correctly recognise in post #4910 that this'll see staffing costs go through the roof, in the short term... Well, no doubt! Why do you think we've been telling you that the 'second man' grade is dead beyond the length of the franchise? Someone will have to pay for the Kings ransom in the long run, and that'll be the ex-Guards. Before you say ASLEF should in that case not get £10k to £15k, don't waste your time. They're entitled to ask for what it is worth to their members, the TOCs will pay it because that is the price of DOO.

Agent_Squash said:
They weren't too fussed back when BR did it.

Oh please... Pre-1992 staff could be pissed up half the time, safety wasn't a foremost concern in many respects and as such the 'PTI' wasn't even on the radar. Who was getting sacked or prosecuted for dispatch irregularities back then? So much was just able and expected to be brushed under the carpet... With that in mind, plus the much lower pay rates of those days and with far more opportunities and options across the organisation for displaced Guards, how can the situation back then be sensibly compared to the situation now?

Confused52 · 6 Sep 2018

muz379 said:
My understanding of the dispute at SWR is that out of all of the disputes it is closest to the situation at northern . With there being some suggestion of extension of DOO on suburban services when new stock arrives .RMT has asked for a guarantee of a guard on every train . Which to my understanding has not been given by SWR . My understanding at SWR is also that the changes are only in relation to the suburban services with no suggestion of any changes to staffing on long distance services . This is the opposite to Northern but the situation with regards to still requiring some complement of guards to work trains is the same .

I am afraid I do not know what guarantee of jobs or pay has been made to SWR employees involved inthis dispute as I am not employed there or involved in that dispute .

Have SWR also got a franchise requirement to provide DCO like Northern because I couldn't find it in the (2017) document. If it isn't there then Northern is a standout dispute. What am I missing?

pt_mad · 6 Sep 2018

the sniper said:
Your argument is completely irrelevant. The time doing the doors is almost completely irrelevant. They'll demand a price based on the grief, risk and liability they'd be taking on, be it the doors on most services, or dealing with passengers and passcoms on 'DCO'/DOO services running without an OBS equivalent for operational convenience. ASLEF can ask for whatever they like, whether you like it or not. You correctly recognise in post #4910 that this'll see staffing costs go through the roof, in the short term... Well, no doubt! Why do you think we've been telling you that the 'second man' grade is dead beyond the length of the franchise? Someone will have to pay for the Kings ransom in the long run, and that'll be the ex-Guards. Before you say ASLEF should in that case not get £10k to £15k, don't waste your time. They're entitled to ask for what it is worth to their members, the TOCs will pay it because that is the price of DOO.

Oh please... Pre-1992 staff could be pissed up half the time, safety wasn't a foremost concern in many respects and as such the 'PTI' wasn't even on the radar. Who was getting sacked or prosecuted for dispatch irregularities back then? So much was just able and expected to be brushed under the carpet... With that in mind, plus the much lower pay rates of those days and with far more opportunities and options across the organisation for displaced Guards, how can the situation back then be sensibly compared to the situation now?

Not to mention the railways were a lot less busy passenger wise in 1990 compared to today. The health and safety culture has become huge, and if historic DOO hadn't already set a precident for new DOO then it may have been much more difficult for Southern to get this through with ASLEF for the price they did.

Let's be realistic here. If ASLEF members say no DOO on Northern at any price, and mean it, then the game will be over for the DFT and Northern with this. The painful reality for guards may be that for a raise equal to or probably more than was offered on Southern ASLEF members may agree to taking it on under agreed circumstances. This wouldn't necessarily mean the end for the RMT dispute because all remaining guards on traditionally operated routes could continue to strike indefinitely, leading to absolute chaos long into the future. This potentially gives them more clout.

Thirdly we heard from another poster that the National Rail Passenger Survey in the northern area apparently revealed that most passengers wish for all trains to be staffed. However it was suggested that they don't care for the job title of the person doing the staffing. I can't verify this but if that is true, we have to ask ourselves, is the intermediate disruption, damage, cost of this and damage to industrial relations really worth it just to force someone's job title to change and so you can take their safety critical off them? (With the toc potentially having to give in and guaranteeing the second member on all trains in the end).

If the DFT is going to have to accept the guarantee of the second staff in the end, why is it pushing so hard just to remove someone's safety crit? At the human cost of the government's own citizens, voters and its own local economy in the north.
Or is the plan that OBS staff will be cheaper and so they'll save money in the end?

CN75 · 7 Sep 2018

pt_mad said:
Not to mention the railways were a lot less busy passenger wise in 1990 compared to today. The health and safety culture has become huge, and if historic DOO hadn't already set a precident for new DOO then it may have been much more difficult for Southern to get this through with ASLEF for the price they did.

Let's be realistic here. If ASLEF members say no DOO on Northern at any price, and mean it, then the game will be over for the DFT and Northern with this. The painful reality for guards may be that for a raise equal to or probably more than was offered on Southern ASLEF members may agree to taking it on under agreed circumstances. This wouldn't necessarily mean the end for the RMT dispute because all remaining guards on traditionally operated routes could continue to strike indefinitely, leading to absolute chaos long into the future. This potentially gives them more clout.

Thirdly we heard from another poster that the National Rail Passenger Survey in the northern area apparently revealed that most passengers wish for all trains to be staffed. However it was suggested that they don't care for the job title of the person doing the staffing. I can't verify this but if that is true, we have to ask ourselves, is the intermediate disruption, damage, cost of this and damage to industrial relations really worth it just to force someone's job title to change and so you can take their safety critical off them? (With the toc potentially having to give in and guaranteeing the second member on all trains in the end).

If the DFT is going to have to accept the guarantee of the second staff in the end, why is it pushing so hard just to remove someone's safety crit? At the human cost of the government's own citizens, voters and its own local economy in the north.
Or is the plan that OBS staff will be cheaper and so they'll save money in the end?

The railway has never been safer, and that goes for DOO equipment, train radio systems and track-based signalling equipment. It is also far busier than in the early 1990s but at that time, just like now, the busiest areas carrying the most passengers all day have the highest amount of DOO. The ‘how busy the railway is’ argument doesn’t sit with operational reality.

There is a presumption about ASLEF’s power in the dispute. At GTR ASLEF ended up agreeing a deal after months of delaying which (as far as DOO was concerned) mostly matched up with GTR’s publically stated plans all along. This was after the rest day bans for months and the strikes had no effect on changing the course of the TOC. Drivers had enough after realising it wouldn’t change anything, were losing too much money, and the same thing will happen at Northern. Arriva must have a long term strategy for managing ASLEF through this and right now it depends on all the drivers coming in to run trains with stand-in guards when the RMT goes on strike.

The DfT want Northern to run trains DOO as a strategic objective. It makes the railway more reliable and uses staff resources better. Rather than being a sinister organisation, it exists to organise the transport network to be as high quality and efficient as it can be. Northern politicians and passengers regularly criticise the imbalance between investment in the South and Northern regions on railway infrastructure, but now the investment in new trains is coming the standard operating model used in the South must come with it.

The DfT believe guards do obsolete tasks that carries no safety benefits over DOO, and the safety aspects get in the way of them doing the customer service aspects that would be the better use of their time. Arriva have bought the contract to bring in DOO and meet the DfT’s minimum requirements. As for the cost involved in lost revenue, if this fight has to happen at some point then it is only going to get more expensive. As nobody is losing their job or their pay rises now or in the future in the plans, the DfT can’t be said to be driving job losses for the guards.

pemma · 7 Sep 2018

the sniper said:
Your argument is completely irrelevant. The time doing the doors is almost completely irrelevant. They'll demand a price based on the grief, risk and liability they'd be taking on, be it the doors on most services, or dealing with passengers and passcoms on 'DCO'/DOO services running without an OBS equivalent for operational convenience. ASLEF can ask for whatever they like, whether you like it or not.

ASLEF can ask for it but it doesn't mean @pt_mad's logic is sound. If it was then someone who works Tues-Sat and is acting manager on Saturdays only should be paid the same the same as someone who is a full time manager. Yet if ASLEF demanded all drivers should get the same (regardless of how much DCO they do or don't work) plus they get 2/3rds of a guard salary for doing what (time wise) is a small part of the guard's role that'd be equivalent to to my manager analogy.

pemma · 7 Sep 2018

pt_mad said:
Not to mention the railways were a lot less busy passenger wise in 1990 compared to today.

Which is why Northern are introducing many more services and should be recruiting many more staff members to work those extra services (DCO or no DCO.)

Let's be realistic here. If ASLEF members say no DOO on Northern at any price, and mean it, then the game will be over for the DFT and Northern with this.

And let's be realistic here we have a Conservative government who aren't going to let a union beat them. Northern will be instructed to use perfectly legal procedures to offer staff the choice of new DCO contracts or redundancies (similar to Southern), maybe by converting one line at a time. Yes it'll cause disruption but in the end DCO will get forced through. Merseytravel being controlled by Labour won't resort to that method but no reason why Northern controlled by DfT won't.

pemma · 7 Sep 2018

Confused52 said:
Have SWR also got a franchise requirement to provide DCO like Northern because I couldn't find it in the (2017) document. If it isn't there then Northern is a standout dispute. What am I missing?

My understanding is the RMT have approached all new franchises with something along the lines of "Can we have a guarantee that all existing services will have a guard for the duration of your franchise?" And additionally if the franchise operates no DOO routes e.g. for Northern "Can we also have a guarantee that all new services will have guards as well?" And unless they get immediate responses saying "Yes" then they start a dispute. First Group were slow to respond regarding TPE so the RMT claimed they were in dispute despite no plans for DOO. Well I suppose the RMT have to do something to justify their membership fees.

pemma · 7 Sep 2018

ComUtoR said:
To save the needless debate. Here a list of some of the many reasons why our salaries are so high. Please note; this list is not exhaustive.

Privatization
Kept up with inflation
Unionisation
Industry Competition
Attractive employment
High staff turnover
Selective employment criteria
Sheer Awesomeness
High employment failure rate
Historic benefits absorbed into salary
Unsociable hours
Skilled employment
Safety critical
High responsibilities
Terms and Condition buyouts

Unsocial hours is a slice of a very big cake.

Bolded point - exactly. Someone mentioned train cleaning jobs not being well paid despite having unsocial hours but many cleaning jobs have unsocial hours and aren't well paid. For households with young children the unsocial cleaners hours might actually be beneficial e.g. one parent leaves very early to go to cleaning job, other parent sorts out getting child up, washing, breakfast and taking them to school then goes to full time job. By the time school finishes the parent who is a cleaner has finished their job and can go and pick up the child from school.

Point in italics - I think you've copied that off either Donald Trump or Jose Mourinho.

Robertj21a · 7 Sep 2018

CN75 said:
The railway has never been safer, and that goes for DOO equipment, train radio systems and track-based signalling equipment. It is also far busier than in the early 1990s but at that time, just like now, the busiest areas carrying the most passengers all day have the highest amount of DOO. The ‘how busy the railway is’ argument doesn’t sit with operational reality.

There is a presumption about ASLEF’s power in the dispute. At GTR ASLEF ended up agreeing a deal after months of delaying which (as far as DOO was concerned) mostly matched up with GTR’s publically stated plans all along. This was after the rest day bans for months and the strikes had no effect on changing the course of the TOC. Drivers had enough after realising it wouldn’t change anything, were losing too much money, and the same thing will happen at Northern. Arriva must have a long term strategy for managing ASLEF through this and right now it depends on all the drivers coming in to run trains with stand-in guards when the RMT goes on strike.

The DfT want Northern to run trains DOO as a strategic objective. It makes the railway more reliable and uses staff resources better. Rather than being a sinister organisation, it exists to organise the transport network to be as high quality and efficient as it can be. Northern politicians and passengers regularly criticise the imbalance between investment in the South and Northern regions on railway infrastructure, but now the investment in new trains is coming the standard operating model used in the South must come with it.

The DfT believe guards do obsolete tasks that carries no safety benefits over DOO, and the safety aspects get in the way of them doing the customer service aspects that would be the better use of their time. Arriva have bought the contract to bring in DOO and meet the DfT’s minimum requirements. As for the cost involved in lost revenue, if this fight has to happen at some point then it is only going to get more expensive. As nobody is losing their job or their pay rises now or in the future in the plans, the DfT can’t be said to be driving job losses for the guards.

A good summary. Well said

Mollman · 7 Sep 2018

CN75 said:
The DfT believe guards do obsolete tasks that carries no safety benefits over DOO, and the safety aspects get in the way of them doing the customer service aspects that would be the better use of their time. Arriva have bought the contract to bring in DOO and meet the DfT’s minimum requirements. As for the cost involved in lost revenue, if this fight has to happen at some point then it is only going to get more expensive. As nobody is losing their job or their pay rises now or in the future in the plans, the DfT can’t be said to be driving job losses for the guards.

Perhaps we just need someone high up in DfT or the likes of Andy Burnham to get stuck on a train in the middle of nowhere to realise why a second safety critical member of staff is a good thing.

a_c_skinner · 7 Sep 2018

Mollman said:
Perhaps we just need someone high up in DfT or the likes of Andy Burnham to get stuck on a train in the middle of nowhere to realise why a second safety critical member of staff is a good thing.

Why, will the guard get out and push?

I know that is a stupid and fatuous reply, and I apologise for it but a guard won't make them any less stuck and won't stop passengers de-training if the fancy takes them. The frequency with which this happens AND benefits from intervention from train staff AND the driver would be unable to offer as much assistance as they could with a guard must be very modest.
For the record I do think a second person on a train for customer service is important but hypotheticals and batting for the status quo don't strengthen any case.

Starmill · 7 Sep 2018

jcollins said:
Point in italics - I think you've copied that off either Donald Trump or Jose Mourinho.

I don't think you can italicise in quotes. The convention is to put the words you wish to draw attention to into roman when the whole passage is in italics.

Tomnick · 7 Sep 2018

a_c_skinner said:
...a guard won't make them any less stuck and won't stop passengers de-training if the fancy takes them...

Someone who can largely dedicate themselves to looking after the passengers, passing on whatever information they can and otherwise trying to reassure them, helping them re-plan their journey and that sort of thing is more likely to result in them staying calm and remaining on the train than them being left pretty much in the dark by a lone driver who will generally have plenty to worry about already and certainly can't be wandering through the train with any regularity.

a_c_skinner · 7 Sep 2018

Yes, of course. How often does this happen was my question. I'm not unsympathetic to the need for a second person with appropriate skills but that is a personal view and the paragon of customer service described isn't invariably the nature of customer facing staff on the trains.

Eccles1983 · 7 Sep 2018

a_c_skinner said:
Yes, of course. How often does this happen was my question. I'm not unsympathetic to the need for a second person with appropriate skills but that is a personal view and the paragon of customer service described isn't invariably the nature of customer facing staff on the trains.

I've done it twice.

I had to leave the train to try to fix an issue (not a chance) and declared a failure. The second time I had to assist a failed unit during morning rush hour.

I cannot physically be stood at the assistance point and deter people from detraining and becoming pink mist as they attempt to play chicken with units on the other line. Unless a solution is to completely block all lines as I cannot get to a phone after leaving the train.

Tomnick · 7 Sep 2018

It happens often enough, to a certain extent at least.

I'm more puzzled by the implied suggestion (more so in comments by others more than your own) that, because some customer-facing staff on trains don't have excellent customer service skills, the answer is to either get rid of them all or just redefine their role but leave them still doing the thing that they're not doing very well.

pt_mad · 7 Sep 2018

jcollins said:
And let's be realistic here we have a Conservative government who aren't going to let a union beat them. Northern will be instructed to use perfectly legal procedures to offer staff the choice of new DCO contracts or redundancies (similar to Southern), maybe by converting one line at a time. Yes it'll cause disruption but in the end DCO will get forced through. Merseytravel being controlled by Labour won't resort to that method but no reason why Northern controlled by DfT won't.

That is probably getting exactly to the nitty gritty of it. 'We have a conservative government who aren't going to let a union beat them'.

Nuff said. Not exactly pro jobs 'a country that works for everyone' type approach is it?

pemma · 7 Sep 2018

Starmill said:
I don't think you can italicise in quotes. The convention is to put the words you wish to draw attention to into roman when the whole passage is in italics.

OK the point about train crews having sheer awesomeness was what I tried to put in to italics.

pemma · 7 Sep 2018

pt_mad said:
That is probably getting exactly to the nitty gritty of it. 'We have a conservative government who aren't going to let a union beat them'.

Nuff said. Not exactly pro jobs 'a country that works for everyone' type approach is it?

While the Conservatives certainly aren't creating a country that works for everyone, it can also be argued if trade unions refuse to accept new ways of working they could be the ones holding the country back. I'm not saying that unions have a history of doing that, historically unions have been against machinery, computers and other advances because no alternative employment had been offered to their members. I'm sure the coal miners would have welcomed alternative employment. Even ASLEF have a history of accepting DOO if the conditions are right.

pt_mad · 7 Sep 2018

The guarantee of the second member of staff under all circumstances may be the key to a resolution.

Moonshot · 7 Sep 2018

pt_mad said:
The guarantee of the second member of staff under all circumstances may be the key to a resolution.

Which is what happens now, so would you accept that if a second member of staff wasn't available, the train gets cancelled, which may mean waiting an hour for the next one?

pemma · 7 Sep 2018

Moonshot said:
Which is what happens now, so would you accept that if a second member of staff wasn't available, the train gets cancelled, which may mean waiting an hour for the next one?

Which is where the other safety debate comes in. Is a lone passenger more at risk if they spend 10 minutes at a rural station and then 15 minutes on a train without a second member of staff or more at risk if they spend 80 minutes at a rural station and then 15 minutes on a train with a second member of staff?

Tomnick · 7 Sep 2018

jcollins said:
Which is where the other safety debate comes in. Is a lone passenger more at risk if they spend 10 minutes at a rural station and then 15 minutes on a train without a second member of staff or more at risk if they spend 80 minutes at a rural station and then 15 minutes on a train without a second member of staff?

...and the next logical step in that debate is whether a lone passenger is more likely to be subjected to the first scenario than the second. It's inevitable that far more trains would operate without a second member of staff under Northern's proposals than would be cancelled currently for the lack of a guard. See below...

Moonshot said:
Which is what happens now, so would you accept that if a second member of staff wasn't available, the train gets cancelled, which may mean waiting an hour for the next one?

Without such a guarantee, it's the thin end of a wedge. If there's no such guarantee, and in the absence of any other penalty regime, then there'll be no incentive to use overtime to cover vacancies in the short term and no incentive to bother filling those vacancies in the longer term.

yorksrob · 7 Sep 2018

Moonshot said:
Which is what happens now, so would you accept that if a second member of staff wasn't available, the train gets cancelled, which may mean waiting an hour for the next one?

Already experienced it a few times. I have to say, the odd occasions where that has happened are preferable to endless industrial action.

Robertj21a · 7 Sep 2018

pt_mad said:
The guarantee of the second member of staff under all circumstances may be the key to a resolution.

That won't be enough for Mick Cash. He always insists on them being safety critical.

ComUtoR · 7 Sep 2018

Robertj21a said:
That won't be enough for Mick Cash. He always insists on them being safety critical.

If they are guaranteed on the train, then what harm is it for them to be safety critical ? As long as they don't do doors then it still ticks the box of being DCO

Moonshot · 7 Sep 2018

ComUtoR said:
If they are guaranteed on the train, then what harm is it for them to be safety critical ? As long as they don't do doors then it still ticks the box of being DCO

If you were to board a Northern train in 10 years time, how do you think the staffing situation will look onboard?

ComUtoR · 7 Sep 2018

Moonshot said:
If you were to board a Northern train in 10 years time, how do you think the staffing situation will look onboard?

Dunno. I'll probably be in my flying car, using the Maglev going via the automated HS5 or using a self driving iCar.

Tomnick · 7 Sep 2018

Moonshot said:
If you were to board a Northern train in 10 years time, how do you think the staffing situation will look onboard?

Under the DfT's proposal, I don't think there'd be a second member of staff on any Northern train as a matter of routine, just roving teams of ticket inspectors to heavily penalise anyone caught without a valid ticket and to deter others from doing the same.

Otherwise, I don't think there'd be very much difference, especially away from urban areas.

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