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Why aren't West Midlands Trains (aka London Northwestern Railway) running ANY services on Sunday 4th February 2024?
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dk1
Veteran Member
When you say part time is that proper part time as a train driver or job share please?
bahnause
Member
Proper part time working.
dk1
Veteran Member
Very unusual in most of the UK.
Hard to see how there could be a logical reason for objection when existing staff would still be being offered their contracted hours.I very much doubt that would be acceptable at most depots to ASLEF. We only allow part time through job share where the two drivers operate as one and must never be seen together in public
Appreciate these things vary by country, but full time train driver vacancies are heavily oversubscribed in the UK.
Maybe because the part time drivers would take the more desirable shifts, leaving the dross to be covered by the full time workforce? That was part of the controversy regarding the C2C arrangements, and seems perfectly logical to me.
Regardless of that, it isn’t a serious proposal anywhere, as far as I’m aware, for the reasons outlined above.
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dk1
Veteran Member
ASLEF has never been keen on part time. It was only around 20 years ago that the first job share was agreed on my patch and that caused quite a stir at the time. Must be some very good reason why it’s not acceptable.
If they offered to do all the very last or horrible jobs I’m sure they’d be more acceptable but often with family friendly or part time posts like that they seem to pick up the cream with little or no weekend working. That does stick in the throat of many.
northwichcat
Established Member
20 years ago the legal requirement for flexible working didn't exist. Now an employer must consider a request and needs a good business reason to reject it. Surely, it's the union's role to assist members in getting their requests accepted, and not trying to block members from not getting the union representation they've paid for? If the union's on the employer's side and not the member's side then it's no longer a viable trade union and needs to begin a winding up process.
dk1
Veteran Member
But they have to look at the impact on the majority. We would all like our own way & to pick our days if we could but that does impact significantly on others. Where does it end?
Everything that the union controls is to be fair to all in one way or another. Nobody should have more favourable terms without exceptional reason.
northwichcat
Established Member
If one new parent wants to never work Sunday-Tuesday and another at the same depot never wants to work Thursday-Saturday, why would any other driver have any issue with them sharing one full time role between them? Yes, they'll be times it doesn't work but ASLEF should be looking for solutions, not thinking such requests are unacceptable. If ASLEF refuse to help people with getting working hours that fit around childcare or caring arrangements, then they're stuck in the steam age era and contributing to staffing shortages on the railways. Drivers shouldn't have to resign as they can no longer work full time hours.
Yes but the DfT have being wanting to "have their cake and eat it too" for years and finally reality is striking!
Train_manager
Member
LGV / PCV DCPC competency is not in the same league as a Train driver competency.
The DCPC was and still is an EU money making gimmick. There isn't even a pass or fail. Or even any tests at the end.
Your required to sit in a classroom for 7 hours a day for 5 days and listen to an ex-copper going on about how good they are. It like a speed awareness course.
dk1
Veteran Member
I think you have got the wrong end of the stick. That is exactly what job sharing is. The two drivers decide who wants to do what then that is what is agreed with management/unions. If they then follow that line of work as one throughout the roster then it’s fine & exactly how it works.
The planned engineering works shows replacement buses that they have now choosen not to run.
Reason given is lack of train drivers to operate North Camp to Gatwick so is definitely overtime ban related.
No information anywhere on their website app or customer service team to tell you this.
They're more formally known today as MS, Member of the Senedd. They're the parliamentarians rather than the government.Ahhh ! Of coursethanks both
I’m assuming you mean as in, they wanted to run Sunday services but wanted it on goodwill from employees ?
If so then yes, reality is ‘striking’ as if they want good will they need to show good will back and refusing any sort of reasonable pay negotiation is not the way too keep the good will going both ways!
Ahh thank you !
And that’s exactly what happens currently, with job share arrangements, as sanctioned by ASLEF. The misinformation propagated on this forum is extraordinary, at times.
Falcon1200
Established Member
During my railway career there were essentially three groups of staff; Those who worked no (non-rostered) overtime at all, those who worked overtime when it suited them, and those who took every minute of overtime possible (they were known affectionately as 'grabbers'). People did of course migrate from one group to another, as their personal circumstances changed.
Yes they wanted Sundays to be reliable (i.e within the working week so not part of overtime) which is a perfectly reasonable objective and one I agree with in a modern era. However they haven't been particularly keen to part with the cash that the inevitable driver uplift (and potential pay-rise to account for Sunday payments) this would involve. So we're left with this fudge that means occasionally, on some TOCs, the Sunday service is decimated.
To my thinking this is fine so long as the total contract hours over a time period are agreed then the rostered shifts set in well in advance just as if full time. If there is a short notice need then the opportunity for additional voluntary hours.
Goodwill should not be required to fully operate the published timetable so long as no abnormal situation. I put examples of abnormal situations in my earlier post.
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Totally agree. no reason that sundays should be any differnet to saturday in terms of services
james_the_xv
Member
I don't believe WMT drivers have Sunday working in their contract. From the looks of it WMT have rostered all their drivers within contract Monday - Friday this week to try and run a decent service (which for the most part they have from my travels).
Nobody's disagreeing with that being the ideal though.
The problem arises when we look at the costs. Let's be conservative and say 20% increase in crew costs in the initial years. This may drop slightly after 5 - 10 years once significant numbers of people who will be hired under your proposed recruitment drive are productive and offsetting the six figure training cost per recruit. If you inadvertently recruit a higher rate of people who aren't able to make the cut, costs rise still further. At TOCs where driver recruitment costs more in proportion to the whole operation, such as SWR, this cost will be even more difficult to bear. At TOCs who are most at risk of poaching (especially Southeastern, Northern) you need to find some additional funding for a retention-related incentive, such as handful milestone bonuses beginning after 4 years in the job, otherwise large proportions of that training cost are just being wasted. WMT used to provide free travel in First Class in this category, now that wasn't worth very much, but what's it worth today? A big fat zero.
Now we could say that huge rise in cost is worth it, which on some lines will be true if we look at an economy-wide appraisal rather than only the financial position of the service or service group in question. But on many it won't be. If you're asking for all of this hundreds of millions of pounds of Treasury subsidy to fund reliable Sunday services on the Marston Vale, St Albans Abbey, Coventry - Nuneaton and Hereford - Worcester routes on Sundays then rightly they'll push back on that very strongly. Partially this is why the first still doesn't. Ultimately you could ask for latitude to raise more revenue, but given the huge and justified public backlash against LNER's repeated attempts to achieve better yields I think you'd struggle there too.
There's a middle ground here, which is to negotiate an extended working week with the trade unions, to agree a full Sunday cover, to find novel ways of increasing ancillary revenue (like car parking, advertising and so on) and to reduce service from some lines in the late evening or on Sundays. That would leave everyone fairly unhappy with the outcomes but it'd be better than today.
Like anything just demanding more money on its own will get you nowhere, indeed you could even say that attitude has partially got us where we are today. A more sensible government would raise taxes to fund these things, realistically there is no chance of this happening any time soon under any party.
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Sleepy
Established Member
This isn't how rostering works, if they have Monday and Tuesday as days off on the line of work in the roster the company can't just change it as they see fit and expect you to work them.
The post you're quoting specifically deals with that though, it says so in it. There's actually a fair amount of latitude in some of the relevant contracts.
Even if they had zero it's still relevant because no pay for Sunday and none for the strike day encourages more volunteers to the other days, within the usual times.
I disagree.
Saturday's planned engineering was between Reading & Blackwater. The original schedule (published widely) was for an hourly Blackwater - Gatwick train, express buses from North Camp to Reading and stopper buses from Blackwater to Reading.
Last Monday or Tuesday, these services all "disappeared" on National Rail Enquiries, only to reappear on Friday afternoon. So, I get up on Saturday morning to make my usual journey, only to find the service had disappeared again. Despite the engineering works not requiring a blanket shut-down of the entire line, GWR chose to shut it anyway and communicated their decision extremely poorly.
I'll leave it to others to posit why GWR made this choice. AFAIK, Saturday is part of the working week and I fail to see why the overtime ban would have a material impact given the M-F service on the NDL this past week has, if anything, seen fewer cancellations than normal.
In which case I stand corrected; my apologies!
Explained in the thread specifically about the North Downs cancellations. Basically, running a non-standard service which involves drivers having to get taxis to the places where the trains run can't be done within the standard rosters - https://www.railforums.co.uk/thread...ement-buses-on-north-downs-line-03-02.262171/
Am I correct that union subs are a rate per member per week? It is thus in the union bureaucracy's interest to have as many members as possible, and "overtime" is against this, regardless of whether members want/need the money.
In the USA union dues are a percentage of total pay. It is thus in the union's interest to have their members make as much money as possible, and higher earnings are what is desired.
In the USA union dues are a percentage of total pay. It is thus in the union's interest to have their members make as much money as possible, and higher earnings are what is desired.
Snow1964
Established Member
Yes a number of companies do this, quite sensible if alternative is training someone new. It is also quite reasonable to put restrictions eg only for those with 15+ years service.
If start creating new part time jobs, have the problem of locking in training contract refund clauses, eg if person does 60% of normal hours should lock in 1/60% as repayment period.
This is where the costs are often not well understood, some seem to forget that not providing the service means lose more in revenue than the direct cost of employing someone to work Sundays. I accept majority of revenue goes to Government, but keep small percentage of it as management fee, so money being lost, whereas it's 100% for subsidy income.