You must really be in a bubble if you don’t realise that’s what regularly happens to us out in the real world.
It’s happened to me three times. But I would rather take the money and go than blackmail my employer into keeping me.
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DfT: South Western Railway NOT Financially Sustainable
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It’s happened to me three times. But I would rather take the money and go than blackmail my employer into keeping me.
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SlimJim1694
Member
That speaks volumes about you.
Brissle Girl
Established Member
- Joined
- 17 Jul 2018
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- 2,619
Happened to me twice, no complaints. It’s reasonable that if your employer decides the role you fulfill is no longer useful or needed then they should be able to change it or dispense with you. Why should they continue paying you for the next 40 years if they don’t need you any more? Remember the newspaper print workers (typesetters) who struck in the 80s because their jobs were being replaced by word processors directly feeding new printing presses. Does anyone today think they were entitled to a job for life doing a completely outdated role. Maybe on the railway we should still have manual crossing keepers too, only abolishing each crossing when the keeper retires. Nope, things move on, except in the eyes of the RMT.
SlimJim1694
Member
These posts above are mad. Go back up and read Montys post.
Malcolmffc
Member
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- 300
I did. I’ve sympathy for his personal feelings but it doesn’t change the fact that there really is no justification for keeping guards in their current form. The RMT should accept the role of the OBS and move on.
I'd argue they're not attacking Monty, having a contrasting view shouldn't be considered rude. I have sympathy for the guards who felt they had no other choice but to strike I haven't been in such a situation before luckily, doesn't mean I or hundreds of thousands of others were also able to put our lives on hold for a whole month to help 1 trains full of people who -understandably- want to keep their jobs
The future of SWR is now uncertain but if SWR continues to be compensated for long strikes performed by RMT members, who exactly are they hurting except the passengers?
I think it's been discussed on the 701 thread, if things work to SWRs favour and drivers accept DCO/DOO with a fitting pay rise, there wouldn't be much stopping SWR from giving out mass amended contacts/redundancies to all the guards (90 days notice?) Would obviously not be anytime soon as drivers would need to be trained. Whether First Group or otherwise, I do see patience running low and SWR potentially doing this unless there are any legalities I'm unaware of. Also note the new managing director, he'll still be relatively new as the trains begin to roll out and I doubt he will be interested in backing down so early on into his management.
Matt Taylor
Established Member
Cheers, it's nice to be labeled as 'despicable' by someone who doesn't know you because they have this preconception that I sit in a corner and get myself off to the thought of disrupting other peoples lives.
I withdraw my labour because I feel like I have no other choice, the dispute has be ongoing for over two years and I refuse to be belittled because I have the integrity not to stand idly by as the powers that be attempt to change my grade for (in my professional) opinion for the worse. Going on strike isn't some big jolly adventure for us and nor do I take any pleasure in the disruption that it causes. I used to bleed railway, it was my life and my dream career. Now I find myself a borderline depressive in his middle 30s would of probably topped himself by now if it wasn't for the fact I have a family who rely on me. Either way a career I have loved for well over a decade has quickly turned into a toxic environment in a matter of months and it doesn't help when I see vitrol like that from the likes of you.
And guess what, Monty isn't the only one who feels this. I've been passionate about transport and railways in particular all my life and after twenty six years on the job I've never felt so disillusioned. A few days ago I worked a train that could've started right time but didn't, we began losing more and more time until we were over an hour late, the previous train had been cancelled so some of my passengers were two hours late, and then the unit failed and I had announce that the train was terminating less than halfway through its journey and face passengers who now had another long wait (an hour as it turned out) on a platform on a chilly night. There is nothing enjoyable about that and when you spend days on end apologising and dealing with passengers who are quite rightly fed up it has an effect on you mentally, and now we have the added uncertainty of a probable new franchise or OLR. It's easy for people to blame SWR but the Dft needs to be honest with people, they accepted the bid and they've underfunded Network Rail to the point that they can't provide the infrastructure upgrades that the bid depended on.
I stick at it because I hope that it will one day get better, I recall the dark days of 2000-2004, but it came good in the end. But for now it's a case of trying to ignore the divisions the strike has caused, not least for my own mental health which is more important than any job.
bramling
Veteran Member
Really sorry to hear things are like this. Never nice to be on the receiving end of organisational change, especially when the motives behind it are questionable. Like you say it causes division and conflict between people as the bad atmosphere bites. It’s one of the distasteful aspects of the industry that people who put effort into trying to do their job well find themselves dragged down by the rot.
I was only referring to South Western Railway routes and services as this is about SWR not being financially sustainable.
I appreciate people maybe making journeys involving mutiple TOCs.
So you'd think this would help SWR stay in the black, as part time workers would still have a season ticket for a week.
Are their season tickets too heavily discounted or their day tickets too expensive? Maybe it's the latter putting people off and they need a mix of seasons and days to help make their figures add up.
If they reduced their day ticket prices, would that help boost their profits, what with more people travelling and thus make them financially viable?
The tax payer? However this shouldn't make them financially unsustainable as they are not losing out.
Since the alternative would be akin to turkeys voting for Christmas...
I am not a rail worker but have to say that l find pathetic individuals ranting on internet fora more despicable than people trying to protect their jobs - yes that does mean you!
I can’t wait for what was another important thread to be closed and locked because it’s descended into another DOO mud slinging fight.
personally I think we need an SWR DOO thread so that people who want to go round and round in circles can fill their boots, and those who are bored of it keep their sanity and don’t need to see it.
@Monty and @Matt Taylor i hope you can keep your mental health in a strong place.
personally I think we need an SWR DOO thread so that people who want to go round and round in circles can fill their boots, and those who are bored of it keep their sanity and don’t need to see it.
@Monty and @Matt Taylor i hope you can keep your mental health in a strong place.
The thing I don't understand is why the guards are striking given that the proposal is that every train will be rotated to have a guard, it's only that some of the trains will be able to run without a guard if there's not a guard available (late running train, sick, etc.).
Yes it is very possible that once this is allowed that the TOC would try to continue a roll out so that more services are impacted. However, surely that's a battle for another day.
Now it could well be argued that by allowing this that the strength of the Union would be weaker in future strikes, however SWR aren't rolling this out to all trains, there's still a lot of trains and routes which wouldn't be able to run without a guard. As such there'd still be a lot which could be done in a future strike.
With regards to passenger safety the difference between the two ways of operation is fairly small, in fact if you wanted to look at a better thing to do to ensure passengers are safer you could well look at ensuring that all guards are first aid trained. As there's quite a lot of cases each year where trains are delayed due to passengers being unwell. In fact those who cite examples of why we need guards often give the example of a driver suffering a heart attack, if a guard was first aid trained then they could assist the driver until further help could be sort (in the first instance other passengers to enable them to then deal with other matters). As with most things getting help fast is important if the guard had already taken a few minutes to get to the sick driver and then it takes another few minutes for a first aid trained passengers to get there it could well be too late.
Having said that, guards in SWR have a good reputation as they are very customer facing (unlike others who often hide in the rear cabs, and no I'm not just talking about on late night services when they could be at risk but rather during the evening rush hour) and generally are wanted to be retained by customers. Those who are guards shouldn't be got at for voting the way they did, or probably in quite a few cases for the way that other guards voted.
What was needed long before now was significant capacity improvements to the network, as not only would this have resulted in more guards, but it would have made the role of all the staff easier due to the network not being so rammed.
If we can't justify the cost of Crossrail 2 to provide capacity on some of the busiest lines and services in the country then we should be looking VERY hard at if we can even run the railways which we already have.
As I've highlighted before if SWT had the same level of subsidy per passenger as TPE then Crossrail 2 could have been paid for by now. That's not even allowing for other funding, increased ticket sales from the extra services, etc.
As others have said DfT have treated it as a cash cow rather than using some of that money to generate more money by increasing capacity.
With customers feeling that the DfT haven't improved things and that guards are making their life hard (different passengers will take different views on this, some being understanding as to why whilst others less so), then is it no wonder that SWR are finding it hard to run a sustainable franchise.
Yes it is very possible that once this is allowed that the TOC would try to continue a roll out so that more services are impacted. However, surely that's a battle for another day.
Now it could well be argued that by allowing this that the strength of the Union would be weaker in future strikes, however SWR aren't rolling this out to all trains, there's still a lot of trains and routes which wouldn't be able to run without a guard. As such there'd still be a lot which could be done in a future strike.
With regards to passenger safety the difference between the two ways of operation is fairly small, in fact if you wanted to look at a better thing to do to ensure passengers are safer you could well look at ensuring that all guards are first aid trained. As there's quite a lot of cases each year where trains are delayed due to passengers being unwell. In fact those who cite examples of why we need guards often give the example of a driver suffering a heart attack, if a guard was first aid trained then they could assist the driver until further help could be sort (in the first instance other passengers to enable them to then deal with other matters). As with most things getting help fast is important if the guard had already taken a few minutes to get to the sick driver and then it takes another few minutes for a first aid trained passengers to get there it could well be too late.
Having said that, guards in SWR have a good reputation as they are very customer facing (unlike others who often hide in the rear cabs, and no I'm not just talking about on late night services when they could be at risk but rather during the evening rush hour) and generally are wanted to be retained by customers. Those who are guards shouldn't be got at for voting the way they did, or probably in quite a few cases for the way that other guards voted.
What was needed long before now was significant capacity improvements to the network, as not only would this have resulted in more guards, but it would have made the role of all the staff easier due to the network not being so rammed.
If we can't justify the cost of Crossrail 2 to provide capacity on some of the busiest lines and services in the country then we should be looking VERY hard at if we can even run the railways which we already have.
As I've highlighted before if SWT had the same level of subsidy per passenger as TPE then Crossrail 2 could have been paid for by now. That's not even allowing for other funding, increased ticket sales from the extra services, etc.
As others have said DfT have treated it as a cash cow rather than using some of that money to generate more money by increasing capacity.
With customers feeling that the DfT haven't improved things and that guards are making their life hard (different passengers will take different views on this, some being understanding as to why whilst others less so), then is it no wonder that SWR are finding it hard to run a sustainable franchise.
This rotation sounds like a load of nonsense. Either a train needs a Guard or it doesn't. It seems to be creating an unsustainable and indefensible position.
While in public a lot of noise is made about safety, in practice anything that removes the ability of a certain union to close down the railway at its choosing will be opposed.
Robertj21a
On Moderation
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- 22 Sep 2013
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- 7,518
Difficult to see why TOCs and unions can't just accept that the Southern OBS arrangements work perfectly well - despite all those who dreamt up all sorts of Doomsday scenarios.
43096
On Moderation
- Joined
- 23 Nov 2015
- Messages
- 15,270
Exactly. There are loads of people who go through this - it’s a part of life unfortunately.
Railway staff (or should I say the franchised railway) seem to think they are somehow different and should be exempt from it. Unsurprisingly there isn’t much sympathy from the paying passengers for them.
Bletchleyite
Veteran Member
Is a job for life important? I'm not sure it is any more.
Bletchleyite
Veteran Member
OBS surprised me. I thought it would be an excuse to quietly get rid a year or two later - and it actually hasn't been.
SlimJim1694
Member
Last time I checked RMT represented signallers, shunters, p-way, fitters etc. If the signallers walked off the job people would think a guards strike was just a friendly tickle.
If someone is trying to break into your house with the intention of stealing your belongings and doing you and your family harm, do you just sit back and let them do it or do you defend yourself, your family and your property by whatever means you have at your disposal? I can only assume all these anti-guard people on here would just sit back and let the intruders do what they like. After all, loads of people get burgled, robbed and attacked - it's just part of life.
Because it would place ASLEF in dispute
The OBS on every train aside exceptional circumstances (aside the Brighton main line) was a part of their agreement
Also OBS have a crucial role to play regarding accessibility and still have input into the doors by keeping a local door open with a key
Finally getting rid of them would worsen relations with other TOCS
If you were cynical you might suggest they would be told not to bin the OBSs until they had got all the other TOCs signed up to it....
That is an utterly preposterous analogy. You appear to have lost all grip of what a job actually is. A job isn’t a benefits system that happens to involve working, it is a piece of work an employer needs someone to do. If that piece of work no longer needs doing then the job no longer exists and the worker has to find another one.
Bletchleyite
Veteran Member
Possibly, though I think the pressure from the accessibility lobby will prevent that, at least everywhere except Merseyrail and GA where they have the scope with their new stock for level boarding and thus not needing assistance to board/alight a wheelchair user.
SlimJim1694
Member
You must be lucky in that your job isn't that important to you. Most people are only one or two paydays away from the street. For many people losing their job would also involve losing their home and possibly their family - not to mention the mental and emotional damage it does, as has been highlighted by guards in this thread. It's not a preposterous analogy in the slightest. I deliberately used it because to many people an attack on their job is a personal attack on the things they value the most.
Workers going on strike affects YOU, but someone giving a burglar a slap doesn't and I think that's what this all boils down to. Guards should sit back and just accept attacks on their jobs because YOU dont want to be inconvenienced.
Firstly....the guards jobs aren’t threatened just the role with the doors
In the real world people are losing their jobs all over the place, because the jobs aren’t needed any more - they get paid off and they move on. To be two pay days away from being on the street is poor planning, very poor if you earn guards money plus the likely decent redundancy.
Your position is nonsensical- we would still have second men sitting in EMU cabs doing nothing. We would have no internet shopping or banking, no self service tills or petrol pumps, and we would be running out of food because we can’t have those machines doing farmhands jobs.
It isn’t an “attack on guards jobs”. The role has gone.
If the RMT had any sense they would be taking advantage of the public feeling to try to get OBS on all trains that are currently DOO rather than fighting the tide.
SlimJim1694
Member
Have you seen the cost of housing in the areas served by SWR?
There are parents of kids in my kids school who are in employment but still rely on food banks. I suppose that's 'poor planning' too is it?
The first and second parts of that sentence are in direct contradiction to each other.
3141
Established Member
What we’re recently seeing in this thread is probably a pale reflection of what is happening in mess rooms, and what guards (and others, probably) are experiencing on the job. People like Monty and Matt Taylor clearly came into the job because it was something they wanted to do, they want to do it well and they get a sense of satisfaction from doing that. It must be very upsetting to be faced with the irreconcilable dilemmas when there’s a strike ballot. If the outcome is in favour of striking you have to decide whether to strike or not. If you do strike you’ll be feeling concern about the consequences for passengers and about the job you’d like to be doing but aren’t; and if the outcome is against striking there’ll be some colleagues who make it clear they think those who voted against should have voted for, so there will still be tensions and bad feelings.
Inevitably there are passengers who get angry about continual disruptions, especially the ones for the whole of December, as shown in some recent posts here.
As others have already pointed out, things change, and that happens in every aspect of life. A job cannot be guaranteed for as long as you wish to stay in it. The prospect of a job disappearing is disturbing, because of course at that point you cannot know what alternatives are going to be available, and uncertainty is almost always worrying. Over the past thirty years a substantial proportion of train services have become DOO or DCO, and there is nothing so different about South Western services to prevent many of them from being run that way as well.
There’s the example of OBS on Southern which shows that no longer having a guard doesn’t necessarily mean there won’t be a second person on board. Guards on SWR seem to me to be faced with the alternatives of continuing to fight to retain their current position in full, which on balance is likely to lead to defeat, or accepting that there will be change and seeking to ensure they have a new position in the new arrangements. They may indeed be faced with further changes in the next ten or fifteen years, and have to adjust again. Does anyone really believe that there’ll still be guards doing the same job as today on trains from Windsor to Waterloo in 2050?
As further strikes will do also, strengthening the passengers' case for getting rid of the people whose actions are preventing them from travelling. And everyone digs themselves further in. They need to accept the future while there's an opportunity to help shape it.
Exactly the problem. Insisting that a second person on board must control the doors, when there is already widespread operation by only one person, is likely to wipe out the employment of a second person.
Inevitably there are passengers who get angry about continual disruptions, especially the ones for the whole of December, as shown in some recent posts here.
As others have already pointed out, things change, and that happens in every aspect of life. A job cannot be guaranteed for as long as you wish to stay in it. The prospect of a job disappearing is disturbing, because of course at that point you cannot know what alternatives are going to be available, and uncertainty is almost always worrying. Over the past thirty years a substantial proportion of train services have become DOO or DCO, and there is nothing so different about South Western services to prevent many of them from being run that way as well.
There’s the example of OBS on Southern which shows that no longer having a guard doesn’t necessarily mean there won’t be a second person on board. Guards on SWR seem to me to be faced with the alternatives of continuing to fight to retain their current position in full, which on balance is likely to lead to defeat, or accepting that there will be change and seeking to ensure they have a new position in the new arrangements. They may indeed be faced with further changes in the next ten or fifteen years, and have to adjust again. Does anyone really believe that there’ll still be guards doing the same job as today on trains from Windsor to Waterloo in 2050?
As further strikes will do also, strengthening the passengers' case for getting rid of the people whose actions are preventing them from travelling. And everyone digs themselves further in. They need to accept the future while there's an opportunity to help shape it.
Exactly the problem. Insisting that a second person on board must control the doors, when there is already widespread operation by only one person, is likely to wipe out the employment of a second person.
SlimJim1694
Member
Very good post. There are people on here I will never agree with and they will never agree with me. Neither will either of us succeed in changing the others opinion. It's too easy to be let emotions take over and get sucked into these circular arguments.
I live in a very expensive bit of the SWR area.
There are of course unlucky people, but an awful lot of financial difficulties are due to poor life choices and terrible financial control.
But even ignoring the two paydays bit the answer is not to have people doing unnecessary jobs, especially when those jobs are subsidised by taxpayers.
But SlimJim is correct - we aren’t going to agree (though personally I have become more and more convinced that pure DOO should be limited, and in particular a DC EMU with over a 1,000 on board should have an OBS)
Bletchleyite
Veteran Member
I could see that happening anyway for reasons of accessibility, and could be inclined to support it on that basis (plus the other benefits of a member of staff whose role is solely passenger care and revenue, and who can therefore be doing that role at all times). At least other than TOCs who have ordered Stadler FLIRTs and are in a position to have level boarding at all stations.
That's an interesting question, indeed. From the Union point of view what's better? OBS on all trains including those which are presently driver only (in order to, for example, allow wheelchair users to turn up on spec), or guards on some trains as per the status quo?
Bletchleyite
Veteran Member
By 2050 I'd expect to see guard only operation, i.e. fully automated driving, on many routes. This would of course (DLR style) give them the dispatch back.
If DLR style then they would need emergency driving skills. Therefore I reckon it would be a downgraded driver role, with current drivers offered it as a “no compulsory redundancies” policy. I would imagine a lot of drivers would take a redundancy offer rather than have to get involved with passengers??
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