How would you have the RMT proceed if you were in charge?
Well, what is this all about? It isn’t really about guards suddenly caring about safety or disabled customers, it’s about:
- job security
- RMT union power
- not being easily replaced
- and fear of the unknown
Many guards of course do care and are professional, but many care about the above and they and the RMT are deeply affronted that after years of being treated with kid gloves by the private railway, the companies are now daring to finish off what BR started.
So, as a purely hypothetical alternative - first, call off the strikes for the time being. It’s going to become unsustainable for some guards and people will cross the picket lines, and then the guards and union members will just turn on one another and start infighting. As soon as the strike breaks up, it’s game over - so why push it to that level of pressure when there is no movement from anyone else in sight?
Next, ask Arriva how much DOO they really require. Accept that figure and start to think of a plan B. Ask them what they will legally commit to introducing and no more. Tempt the DfT to make a deal which will help get the strikes off the agenda.
Third, ask Arriva how many station staff jobs there are to come out of the switch to DOO and where they are to be located. Clarify what those imagined jobs involve.
Then, plan how to share the station duties out with the guards jobs within a shared roster, so that every guard keeps guards competence and the switch to working on stations is shared. The job becomes multi-functional. Highly paid jobs for all - and if a guard can’t manage guards duties any more, a job on the station to fall back onto on the same money. Arriva get their DOO.
Arriva might feel they had to accept this outcome but the real winner would be the RMT. No guard would get ‘downgraded’, the whole grade would still have the industrial weight to secure pay rises, no guard would lose salary, the training required would stay the same length, and it wouldn’t be easy to replace guards short notice. A strike would still mean no trains could run without the contingency arrangements that happens now.
The RMT is shouting at the incoming tide to go back out again. In a few years, signals will all be in cabs rather than at the end of platforms and the guard will be a job that exists on steam railways. It’s the worst aspect of the RMT that they lack the vision to compete in and not fight progress.
It also doesn’t help the RMT that the Northern strikes are under the radar, it gets a brief mention of the news and that is it.
Imagine if a London operator had 10 weeks of no Saturday service.
SWR is a London operator?