Once again we go around and around. Let's lance a few misconceptions.
There is no overtime ban. How can you have a overtime ban when Sundays are outside of the working week. If Northern said no overtime working if you strike, you would kiss goodbye to every train on a Sunday also. But more than that, it would be incredibly difficult to predict what services would run during the week, you would certainly get random cancellations.
Thing is about posters here, you don't know the full picture. Northern send us emails on a daily basis begging us to work overtime and cover diagrams. Rather than seeing it like many of you do as a form of supporting the strike financially, perhaps you should see it as there still being a slither of goodwill left and something to build on.
Now we come to the old chestnut of 'safety critical' Being safety critical does not mean you need a guard to operate the doors on every service. It does however mean they have the competency to do so should they be needed. There are loads of possibilities here, and loads of scenarios where you may need to switch back even on a temporary basis. To me a blanket no is plain stupid on the part of Arriva. It smacks of not understanding the role which I honestly don't think many managers do.
There is only one reason to me why they would not consider this avenue, and that is because in their long term thinking they don't want any second person on the trains.
While we're lancing a few misconceptions........
1. Any blanket 'No' is on the part of the RMT, not Arriva. How the union can honestly suggest that a safety-critical guard will always be required on *every* train is quite ridiculous. The new trains could be run DOO (as they are in other parts of the country) and there's no apparent difference in safety.
2. This is a dispute that is primarily about the RMT wishing to keep their membership numbers up. All the other issues are secondary to them.
3. The RMT should not be dabbling in Politics, nor attempting to dictate to the TOC which roles must continue for ever more. Their responsibility should be for their existing members, not somebody who may join them in years to come.
4. To claim that they enter talks with Arriva with no pre-conditions is another myth - they always qualify it by re-stating their need for a safety-critical guard on every train.
5. Strikes should be a last resort, not the very first thing you do when there's something you might not like in the future.
6. Of all the bigger unions, the RMT stands out as one of the least professional.
7. Of all the bigger unions, the RMT stands out as one of the least co-operative.
8. Of all the bigger unions, the RMT stands out as the most outdated, happiest to live back in the 1980s.
9, 10, 11 .....I'm sure you get the idea.
.