I can personally see why many people working on the railway dont volunteer for additional Sunday working . Salaries are already attractive enough , and if you have a family it might be the one guaranteed day of the week you can spend with them . Also as has already been raised there are points in most Roster patterns where working a Sunday will lead to you working an extended number of days without a break .
I think most train-crew I speak to however realise that the reality of the matter is that there does need to be a service on a Sunday and if a reasonable offer was made they would be prepared to entertain a commitment to work them with the most popular solution being to bring them inside the week whilst retaining the 4 day working week . This means TOC's employing a lot more guards/drivers and incurring the costs of that .
I personally dont mind it occasionally , I find our work content is lighter and you usually end up with double units all day so less stress with overcrowding .
True, but unions wont likley agree new contracts easily that aren’t on extremely generous terms & neither can management simply impose deals they themselves might deem fair without a high probability of enduring a prolonged period of strike action as a result, so the debate just goes round & round endlessly.
There is the third side to this , which is that companies dont approach the issue with serious proposals or with any serious intention to actually make a deal .
Take the recent attempt at this very TOC to bring Sundays inside the week , it was not just a straight deal offered on Sundays it included many other condition changes and was vague on how Sundays would be implemented whilst maintaining a 4 day week .
