Why are Northern allowed to cancel Sunday Services seemingly at will?

Llama said:

Northern ex-FNW drivers have to work their booked Sundays too...

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There are some caveats attached to that ...eg...if a drivers booked Sunday job has changed , it is not considered their job, and dont have to come in for it.

That's also contingent on the company amending the diagram when they know the work is amended, which isn't happening.

Carlisle said:

Some BR grades, (fitters etc) had long included Sunday’s in their rostered working week, paid at an enhanced rate, however train crew & traffic grades didn’t get restructured before BR was broken up .

I believe privatised TOCs that sucessfully incorporated Sunday’s into their working week eg Virgin SWT, did so very early on when wages & growth rates were significantly lower than now, giving the TOC rather more bargaining power than they seemingly have currently.

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Interesting.

So can anyone confirm whether Northern Spirit/ Arriva Trains Northern "bought" Sundays into the working week or whether this was something already inside the working week from Regional Railways North East days?

I'm interested in how this happened (as it wasn't a period where I kept up with railway developments) since I don't remember any disruption/strikes (or threatened strikes) when it happened, but it's been too difficult for subsequent TOCs to harmonise in many (over twenty?) years.

tbtc said:

Interesting.

So can anyone confirm whether Northern Spirit/ Arriva Trains Northern "bought" Sundays into the working week or whether this was something already inside the working week from Regional Railways North East days?

I'm interested in how this happened (as it wasn't a period where I kept up with railway developments) since I don't remember any disruption/strikes (or threatened strikes) when it happened, but it's been too difficult for subsequent TOCs to harmonise in many (over twenty?) years.

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When DRI (driver restructuring initiative) happened in around 1996 ish. The companies at the time which I think were regional railways northwest and regional railways north east, though it may have been FNW and northern spirit cant quite remember the eastern side started off on I think £22,000 basic with sundays inside the working week and the west side started on £20,000 but with sundays outside the week.

Mathew S said:

The blunt answer is that I disagree, I think we're at the point now where the only remaining option is to call the unions bluff and go for radical, wholesale change. The lovely thing about strikes is that you don't have to pay people, so no problem hiring in - or even buying in, for a prolonged dispute - fleets of buses to replace train services. I say this as someone who is actively involved in my own trade union, and who has been a rep in the past; the railway is stuck in 1970s industrial relations and Aslef and the RMT are, in my view, part of the problem. The railways aren't public services anymore, they're commercial companies, and the sooner the unions realise that they too need to change with the times the better it will be for the travelling public.

I don't minimise the pain that will be experienced by some railway staff who might earn less, or have to work longer hours, under poorer conditions, but that's the world we live in and which, peculiarly perhaps, we call progress.

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Again all you are doing here is making suggestions that wont be brought to the table because they carry a massive risk of untold levels of service disruption .

Firstly , I never mentioned anything about strikes . I mentioned the risk of a significant number of drivers standing their ground and not signing new contracts effectively taking redundancy . In that instance there would not be loads of excess money to hire in or buy buses ,fare income would pretty much evaporate overnight if everyone suddenly clocked on that they would be getting buses instead of trains for the foreseeable future . On top of that you are going to have to spend significant sums of money recruiting a lot of new drivers . And given it is in theory supposed to take 3 years to go from someone walking in off the street to being a fully productive train driver this situation might continue for a protracted period of time . Of course that 3 year timescale is on the basis of plenty of instructors ready to instruct trainee drivers . You might lose some or a lot , then what ? In all honesty , in order to cause unmeasurable levels of service disruption it would only take maybe 30-40% of drivers at some of the bigger depots to refuse to sign , and at smaller depots it could become a problem at even lower proportions .if anything near 50% of drivers refused to sign a new contract you would really be in it big time .

I mean if the economics of just weathering out a big dispute by buying or leasing a load of buses are that sound , why did Northern not hire or buy in buses during the guards dispute , strike action almost reached the 2 year mark and contingency plans meant some trains could run meaning numbers of buses needed would be smaller . I mean Arriva probably know a thing or two about procuring buses as well ?

Another reason I never mentioned Strike action , is that ASLEF members would not even have to escalate to strike action to cause chaos . A work to rule would pretty much cripple any training activities currently going on . Imagine if a work to rule stopped the ability to carry out training on 195's and 331's ? . This would have wider implications because until more 195's and 331's are in service withdrawing 142's will leave a shortage of units . A work to rule could even cripple day to day service provision in some areas . Personally in my view ASLEF have a strong hand in this area , it surprises me a little that they are not playing it as well as they should IMO .

Listen ,you can accept whatever nonsense tinkering with terms and conditions you want from your employer under the guise of it "being a business" or "the world we live in". But train-crew on the railway will politely decline your request for us to engage in any activities that involve sacrificing our long held , fought for and valuable terms and conditions for a pittance . The irony here of even suggesting a contract imposition is that the prime union this discussion is about are not against Sundays being in the working week , it is part of their charter after-all . They just would not accept it being done for nothing or in a way which is detrimental to drivers conditions which is the role of a TU .

Llama said:

Northern ex-FNW drivers have to work their booked Sundays too...

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That is what is agreed , but there is no consensus over what happens if a driver does not appear for a booked Sunday . The company claims they can discipline drivers for not coming in for a booked Sunday . Various mess room lawyers reckon they cannot .

Then of course there is the whole issue with short term planning diagrams meaning drivers dont have to come in and in some instances jobs being uncovered for that reason .On top of that if there is engineering work there could be additional diagrams made up of unusual empty moves or different services , you also have the booked Sundays of drivers on either short or long term sick uncovered , this time of year there are also a lot of booked Sundays buried by 2 week leave which go uncovered , and the booked Sundays of anyone taken off trains for medical or incident reasons . With all those uncovered jobs but not a lot of volunteers for additional Sundays it is obvious to see why the situation occurs . A healthy incentive to work Sundays might be one way to alleviate the issue in the short term .

When do Northern decide which services will run on a Sunday? I've got to go to Blackpool next weekend, and can't be bothered with the musical bus game

Surely if you are going from Yorkshire to Blackpool you go via Leeds. I don't think these services are affected by the NW cancellations?

muz379 said:

The irony here of even suggesting a contract imposition is that the prime union this discussion is about are not against Sundays being in the working week , it is part of their charter after-all . They just would not accept it being done for nothing or in a way which is detrimental to drivers conditions which is the role of a TU .

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Indeed!

An excellent point that is often raised but usually ignored in these discussions, as it does not suit the rabidly anti-union bias of some posters.

I suspect many of them lack strong union representation of their own, and have perhaps seen their own T’s and C’s drop through the floor, hence the evident sour grapes towards rail staff!

jizzer said:

When DRI (driver restructuring initiative) happened in around 1996 ish. The companies at the time which I think were regional railways northwest and regional railways north east, though it may have been FNW and northern spirit cant quite remember the eastern side started off on I think £22,000 basic with sundays inside the working week and the west side started on £20,000 but with sundays outside the week.

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Yes I can remember BR proposing DRI nationally around 1992 and it being rejected by the unions, but wasn’t sure if the successor BR TOUs had the authority to undertake wage restructuring before they actually became proper franchised TOCs

Glenn1969 said:

Surely if you are going from Yorkshire to Blackpool you go via Leeds. I don't think these services are affected by the NW cancellations?

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Sheffield - Manchester Piccadilly - Blackpool

Or Sheffield- Leeds- Blackpool

syorksdeano said:

Sheffield - Manchester Piccadilly - Blackpool

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Sheffield - Picc services are at risk of cancellation on Sundays, since they're worked from the Manchester end.

Bovverboy said:

Sheffield - Picc services are at risk of cancellation on Sundays, since they're worked from the Manchester end.

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To be fair, not many have been.

Bromley boy said:

Indeed!

An excellent point that is often raised but usually ignored in these discussions, as it does not suit the rabidly anti-union bias of some posters.

I suspect many of them lack strong union representation of their own, and have perhaps seen their own T’s and C’s drop through the floor, hence the evident sour grapes towards rail staff!

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I think the default position of some people is to assume that the union will always be against anything the company want , what really irks me about it in relation to Sunday working is that if they even bothered to check their facts they would find out fairly quickly that rail unions are not against Sunday working , but they are against their members paying for the provision of sufficient cover on a Sunday with their terms and conditions . Love them or hate them this is the correct position for a trade union to take . The bizarre thing is these people point to other industries having Sundays included for nothing , or in some cases having pay enhancements for Sunday working removed so they know full well that such things are undesirable yet they still complain about rail unions attempting to ensure that Sunday working is not done in a way that disadvantages members .

Anyhow , as I am sure you will be aware working on the railway most things are done with cooperation between union and company who most times meet in the middle . Many points of contention are managed by local and company council reps without "the union" as an organisation actually being involved .

Bromley boy said:

Indeed!

An excellent point that is often raised but usually ignored in these discussions, as it does not suit the rabidly anti-union bias of some posters.

I suspect many of them lack strong union representation of their own, and have perhaps seen their own T’s and C’s drop through the floor, hence the evident sour grapes towards rail staff!

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Likewise that the TOCs like RDW because it allows them to employ fewer drivers, saving all the associated costs with having extra people on the headcount. Unions have incentive *not* to support RDW as that means recruiting more drivers, which means more potential members (although this can of course conflict with the wishes of some members who like having their salary topped up with OT!).

Incredibly, I’ve heard from a highly reliable source that LU of all operators is flirting with the idea of RDW. From a reliability point of view it’s insane for one of the few operators who don’t do any form of RDW (for drivers at least) to be even considering it, but there again if we look at how many cancellations some lines are now seeing on a regular basis then this provides some explanation, namely that they clearly don’t have enough drivers and this is a tempting sticking-plaster lifted from the box marked “desperate”. Could be an interesting one to watch if the idea progresses. No doubt if it all goes pear-shaped the unions will get the blame, when of course the real issue is weak management and a certain mayoral fares freeze policy...

Bovverboy said:

Sheffield - Picc services are at risk of cancellation on Sundays, since they're worked from the Manchester end.

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Killingworth said:

To be fair, not many have been.

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I thought I could remember a particularly bad Sunday not long ago and find that on Sunday 26/5/19 four return trips missed (27% of scheduled). Included was the last scheduled journey of the day, Sheffield - Manchester Piccadilly. Since then only one return trip appears to have missed on a Sunday, a mid-afternoon one on 23/6/19.

bramling said:

when of course the real issue is weak management and a certain mayoral fares freeze policy...

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By "weak management" are you saying that LU should stand up stronger to the unions?

London has one of the highest, if not the highest, fares in the world for a major world city. So the blame for lack of funding should be directed elsewhere than the Mayor.

bramling said:

Likewise that the TOCs like RDW because it allows them to employ fewer drivers, saving all the associated costs with having extra people on the headcount. Unions have incentive *not* to support RDW as that means recruiting more drivers, which means more potential members (although this can of course conflict with the wishes of some members who like having their salary topped up with OT!).

Incredibly, I’ve heard from a highly reliable source that LU of all operators is flirting with the idea of RDW. From a reliability point of view it’s insane for one of the few operators who don’t do any form of RDW (for drivers at least) to be even considering it, but there again if we look at how many cancellations some lines are now seeing on a regular basis then this provides some explanation, namely that they clearly don’t have enough drivers and this is a tempting sticking-plaster lifted from the box marked “desperate”. Could be an interesting one to watch if the idea progresses. No doubt if it all goes pear-shaped the unions will get the blame, when of course the real issue is weak management and a certain mayoral fares freeze policy...

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To be fair , an element of RDW is always going to be inevitable because even if you have a full compliment and a ratio of spare cover there will always be times when more than the average number are off sick , or taken off driving because of incidents etc . These things are unpredictable so the ability to use RDW to plug these gaps will result in better reliability .

If it is becoming the Norm to rely on RDW just for service delivery then yes absolutely the compliment needs looking at , the ratio and distribution of spares might also need altering or it could be that there is a deficit of route or traction knowledge . This is something a lot of people forget to consider when looking at compliments , yes in theory a depot might have the right number of drivers for the numbers of booked jobs and ratio of spare cover . But if there are gaps in route knowledge with numbers of drivers not signing routes or traction in their link then whilst the compliment for the depot is correct the numbers of actually fully productive drivers is not , and it is the latter number which is IMO more important .

Another time when RDW can be useful is for training purposes , a lot of TOC's at the moment are getting new fleets , some of them operating over new routes . Obviously whilst a driver is off training new units or new routes someone needs to be doing the job they would have been doing . Its not practical to increase compliments temporarily just to facilitate training so usually RDW is sanctioned to cover training .

Rdw relies on good relationships between employer and union.

It flies in the face of the "let's flog them into new contracts or sack them" mentality displayed in here by some.

muz379 said:

To be fair , an element of RDW is always going to be inevitable because even if you have a full compliment and a ratio of spare cover there will always be times when more than the average number are off sick , or taken off driving because of incidents etc . These things are unpredictable so the ability to use RDW to plug these gaps will result in better reliability .

If it is becoming the Norm to rely on RDW just for service delivery then yes absolutely the compliment needs looking at , the ratio and distribution of spares might also need altering or it could be that there is a deficit of route or traction knowledge . This is something a lot of people forget to consider when looking at compliments , yes in theory a depot might have the right number of drivers for the numbers of booked jobs and ratio of spare cover . But if there are gaps in route knowledge with numbers of drivers not signing routes or traction in their link then whilst the compliment for the depot is correct the numbers of actually fully productive drivers is not , and it is the latter number which is IMO more important .

Another time when RDW can be useful is for training purposes , a lot of TOC's at the moment are getting new fleets , some of them operating over new routes . Obviously whilst a driver is off training new units or new routes someone needs to be doing the job they would have been doing . Its not practical to increase compliments temporarily just to facilitate training so usually RDW is sanctioned to cover training .

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All very valid points. It would certainly come as a shock to an operator who have a whole generation of staff who have never had RDW.

One point to make is that LU have a slight advantage over the TOCs in that many of their depots are pretty large (there's depots with over 250 drivers), and it is of course easier to move people around with depots being thickly spread over a relatively small geographical area. This means that some of the things mentioned like training cover can be more easily resourced without the need to use RDW. Generally for things like upgrades they will simply go above establishment for a while. Likewise spare provision is, on paper, normally fairly lavish - albeit of course these are the first duties to become uncovered!

I see that as far as Northern's own delays and cancellations go, 'silly' explanations seem to be creeping in again. One which rears its head with monotonous regularity is the one about 'more trains than usual needing attention at this time'. At 2130? Hardly.
I don't know what the appeal of this particular explanation is, I mean, I'm sure it isn't any more palatable to intending passengers than most others. At least 'shortage of a driver', or 'unavailability of a crew member', are more plausible (and probably true).
One explanation I found particularly intriguing was the one given for the late (50L) departure of last night's 2230 Liverpool Lime Street - Manchester Airport (via Chat Moss, stopper). Of course, with an actual departure of 2320 it left Lime Street only a minute prior to the scheduled departure of the following 2321 Lime Street to Manchester Victoria. By Eccles it was 56L and running four minutes behind the scheduled time of the Victoria train, the latter as you might imagine, having next to no passengers on.
Anyway, the reason given for the late departure of the 2230 was, it was delayed 'waiting for a train to be attached'. I don't know what ultimately happened to the train 'waiting to be attached', but the 2230 arrived at Eccles formed of 319374, no extra bits that I could see.

I've been over to Smithy Bridge this morning. Leeds - Man Vic trains are not stopping, despite the cancellation of the Blackburns for the fourth Sunday in a row. There were no passengers waiting so I guess everyone has given up on Sunday travel. This will apply also at Castleton, Mills Hill and Moston. The pa gave an announcement about a cancellation being "due to congestion"!

There is a Peterloo rally in Manchester today which I was going to attend but I'm not just going to risk getting stuck at Victoria with trains either cancelled or overloaded.

The Leeds and Manchester parts of Northern were, we (the user group) were told, talking to each other to arrange these extra stops but maybe they have forgotten (again) to tell the drivers.

geoffk said:

The Leeds and Manchester parts of Northern were, we (the user group) were told, talking to each other to arrange these extra stops but maybe they have forgotten (again) to tell the drivers.

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As poor as the situation is, the Calder Valley now has tight turnaround times at Victoria so by adding in extra calls can lead to the eastbound working running late throughout too.

Have Northern made any progress with an agreement to bring Sunday's inside the working week since the proposal a few weeks ago? It seems the situation won't be resolved until this is in place

northernchris said:

As poor as the situation is, the Calder Valley now has tight turnaround times at Victoria so by adding in extra calls can lead to the eastbound working running late throughout too.

Have Northern made any progress with an agreement to bring Sunday's inside the working week since the proposal a few weeks ago? It seems the situation won't be resolved until this is in place

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Yes there are tight turnround times at Victoria but nearly an hour at Leeds, so an extra 8 minutes each way will not affect departure times westbound.

Eccles1983 said:

Rdw relies on good relationships between employer and union.

It flies in the face of the "let's flog them into new contracts or sack them" mentality displayed in here by some.

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I doubt it’s that straightforward, considering the old northern (Serco Abellio) , whom it’s pretty much universally acknowledged treated the unions with kid gloves throughout their tenure, still had to endure substantial periods without a RDW agreement in place

That was of their own doing, the Chief Operating Officer (S.B.) issued a notice after a productivity deal had been accepted -the one where 'altered workings' by RPC became a thing- proudly saying that "there will be no more driver rest-day working on Northern". Unfortunately they got their sums wrong and had to approach Aslef a few years later. Apart from a few short blips driver RDW has been sanctioned pretty much continuously since it was reinstated at that time.

Bovverboy said:

Sheffield - Picc services are at risk of cancellation on Sundays, since they're worked from the Manchester end.

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In the example quoted you would most likely be using Transpennine Express or East Midlands Railway from Sheffield to Manchester as Northern only operate the slow trains so that bit probably wouldn't be an issue.

Manchester to Blackpool you would be on Northern of course.

If Northern decide not to run trains from Blackpool South on Sunday (highly unlikely given the Bank Holiday and day trippers but this is Northern), would passengers be able to use Blackpool North if their tickets say Blackpool South?

There were lots of very infuriated passengers on Wigan North Western yesterday afternoon as I arrived to catch the 1630 to Euston. Trains to Liverpool Lime Street, Manchester Airport and Barrow-in-Furness had all been cancelled - with the cause being 'a shortage of train drivers' - all within 15 minutes of each other. Passengers were being told to join the 1611 to Euston and change at Warrington to get to Liverpool - the only trouble being that the vestibules of the 1611 were already full of standing passengers.

I myself have pretty much given up on using the Northern service to connect to Wigan North Western on a Sunday since I can't be sure if my train will run. It's been going on far too long and it needs to be fixed. It's starting to really irritate me, and I'm a great advocate of rail travel, I can't imagine what ordinary punters make of the situation.

AE said:

There were lots of very infuriated passengers on Wigan North Western yesterday afternoon as I arrived to catch the 1630 to Euston. Trains to Liverpool Lime Street, Manchester Airport and Barrow-in-Furness had all been cancelled - with the cause being 'a shortage of train drivers' - all within 15 minutes of each other. Passengers were being told to join the 1611 to Euston and change at Warrington to get to Liverpool - the only trouble being that the vestibules of the 1611 were already full of standing passengers.

I myself have pretty much given up on using the Northern service to connect to Wigan North Western on a Sunday since I can't be sure if my train will run. It's been going on far too long and it needs to be fixed. It's starting to really irritate me, and I'm a great advocate of rail travel, I can't imagine what ordinary punters make of the situation.

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I would say that sounds shocking but isn't really as we have got used to this level of service on Sundays with planned (and unplanned) cancellations every Sunday (there have been a few without planned cancellations) for over a year now. It's been the same for Blackrod and Adlington (and much of the west of the Northern network) where the planned and unplanned cancellations have been on the local stopping services rather than the semi-fast services. Replacement bus services don't seem to run to schedule and frequently people are left stranded or told to walk to the next station with a train service. Personally, I think that they should only make the planned cancellations where all stops on the route are also served by another service each hour or cancel one diagram on a few more routes (obviously I would prefer it if they had sufficient staff and improved staff morale to make staff more willing to work Sundays)