Arriva Rail North DOO

[footprints]

I think that by looking at the rather pathetic service Northern can muster, it is obvious it is achieving something.

There's a difference between whether the action is having an impact on services on strike days (which the reduced timetable shows it is) and whether the action is achieving anything (which 40 days in, being no nearer a resolution, it clearly isn't).

 

[Gems]

There's a difference between whether the action is having an impact on services on strike days (which the reduced timetable shows it is) and whether the action is achieving anything (which 40 days in, being no nearer a resolution, it clearly isn't).

Yes but it has made a mockery of Wilkinson's claims that we would all rollover by 24 days.

 

[alansheppard77]

Since starting to follow this thread I've noticed how readily the RMT uses the strike weapon, but these statistics really underline the problem.

The vast majority of union dealings with employers are being resolved without strikes. Many unions rarely get as far as threatening strikes.

As one who was actively involved with my union for 30 years, and seen many disagreements, I can't recall one time when we actually called a strike. Work to rule, ban on overtime and less drastic sanctions brought matters to a head. The threat of them was usually enough.

By resorting to strikes at the drop of a hat the RMT has reduced the value of it's ultimate weapon to achieve any settlement. It has also maximised the damage to the employer by the impact it's having on those using the service.

Such masochism may play well within some union quarters, but it certainly doesn't with travellers and is counterproductive.

None of which excuses the employers from playing their hand better either!

Glad I've got a car. Rail enthusiast I may be, but like very many I don't have to use a train. The services are bad enough without strikes.

Its not Northern that should go its the RMT they dont give a damm about the passenger they a ruining peoples lives and ruining the economy

 

[Robertj21a]

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.



.

 

[northwichcat]

Well lets play devils advocate.

1) Will someone who is purely selling tickets on the train notice a disabled passenger on the platform?
2) Why did Northern keep insisting they wanted to explore the idea of no second person on the trains until TFN stepped in.
3) Why do Northern keep coming out with the rather pathetic line of "We want the RMT to help shape the future roll when they have no ideas of their own"?

1. The role stated is customer service and revenue, so assisting passengers will be part of the role. You could say how does a guard notice there's a wheelchair passenger on a busy train if there's a crew change and the wheelchair passenger has been on longer than the guard?

2. Could it have been they had no plan to but used it as part of their negotiating strategy? Trade unions can demand huge pay rises when negotiating, the reason being if they demand 7% and get 4.5% they know they've got the best offer - if they demand 4% and get 4% then they don't know what would have happened if they demanded more. When trade unions use that kind of tactic why won't employers?

3. I'm under the impression the RMT asked for a guarantee of a guard on every service for the duration of the franchise (knowing what terms the franchise had been let on) and when Northern said no they started the dispute. Surely the RMT should be willing to say what it will accept and it shouldn't just be exactly what they have now.

 

[northwichcat]

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.

Agreed and the RMT's antics make the government more likely to tighten legislation relating to trade unions and if they do that all unions will suffer, even the professional ones who only call strikes as an absolute last resort.

 

[LowLevel]

1. The role stated is customer service and revenue, so assisting passengers will be part of the role. You could say how does a guard notice there's a wheelchair passenger on a busy train if there's a crew change and the wheelchair passenger has been on longer than the guard?

We don't 'notice' anything, we do a handover

Any train faults, any passenger assistance, any other matters requiring attention. Takes about 5 seconds or you leave a note if you're in a hurry.

Do you really think we just prance off and don't talk to our relief

If it's complex we might even, shock horror, phone in advance or send a text message to one another.

Entertainingly considering your stance the only time you might have to go wandering around to find out what's happening on a train is if you're an OBS boarding one that was previously uncovered en route

 

[6Gman]

Would you like me to trawl up the register of Tory donors. Russian oligarchs and tax haven dodgers. Not a pretty list is it.

Oh indeed. I was just pointing out that the earlier suggestion that Corbyn and colleagues had no direct link to the RMT financially was incorrect.

 

[Bletchleyite]

Well with slam door trains the passengers operated the doors - a method of operation I am quite happy with as I have never gone along with the anti-slam door hysteria which has swept this country. However it was still the guards job to check that no one was still trying to get in, no doors were left open, no one was leaning on the train etc.

Slam doors were killing people. The UIC folding slamdoor with autocloser and 5km/h blocking would have been fine, but that was "not invented here".

 

[6Gman]

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.

I'm a passenger and I believe every passenger train (other than in tightly controlled conditions) should have a second safety-trained member of staff. Because if the "man at the front*" is incapacitated I want there to be somebody who knows what they are doing to take control of the situation. Is that "ridiculous"?


* Figure of speech. I appreciate some of them are the woman at the front.

 

[6Gman]

Slam doors were killing people.

And creating x minutes of delay and general nuisance.

"2H52 arrived Wilmslow with offside door open. 1A23 to check track Wilmslow to Crewe. 1M36 to be held at Crewe until line clear confirmed."

 

[yorksrob]

Slam doors were killing people. The UIC folding slamdoor with autocloser and 5km/h blocking would have been fine, but that was "not invented here".

Slam doors on trains were still safer than cars and lorries, which are still "killing people". I was a lot safer travelling on a slam door train than crossing the road.

 

[Gems]

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.



.

Completely ignores what I wrote. I assume it was because you didn't like the truth about Sunday working and imagined we were all queuing up to fill our boots. Problem is that you all fail to understand the RMT has the backing of it's members. They can do nothing without that.
Personally I hope santa comes early and delivers 52 consecutive Saturdays and throws in the bank holiday Mondays for good measure. Let it just roll on because everyone to a man is pretty damn happy not to be doing Saturday nights.

 

[Robertj21a]

I'm a passenger and I believe every passenger train (other than in tightly controlled conditions) should have a second safety-trained member of staff. Because if the "man at the front*" is incapacitated I want there to be somebody who knows what they are doing to take control of the situation. Is that "ridiculous"?


* Figure of speech. I appreciate some of them are the woman at the front.

You do realise that hundreds of our busiest trains have been running perfectly safely with just the driver, for decades ?

 

[Robertj21a]

Completely ignores what I wrote. I assume it was because you didn't like the truth about Sunday working and imagined we were all queuing up to fill our boots. Problem is that you all fail to understand the RMT has the backing of it's members. They can do nothing without that.
Personally I hope santa comes early and delivers 52 consecutive Saturdays and throws in the bank holiday Mondays for good measure. Let it just roll on because everyone to a man is pretty damn happy not to be doing Saturday nights.

Not sure where you get that from. I didn't mention Sundays or overtime because it seemed quite understandable to me. I raised many other issues - which you are side-stepping.

Do you agree that the RMT should be looking after their current members rather than trying to tell Arriva what jobs they want kept for ever more ?

 

[alastair]

I'm a passenger and I believe every passenger train (other than in tightly controlled conditions) should have a second safety-trained member of staff. Because if the "man at the front*" is incapacitated I want there to be somebody who knows what they are doing to take control of the situation. Is that "ridiculous"?


* Figure of speech. I appreciate some of them are the woman at the front.

No it's not "ridiculous", everyone is entitled to their opinion. But it all depends on what you mean by "tightly controlled conditions"? Otherwise you appear to be suggesting that many of the thousands of trains that currently run DOO over large swathes of the former NSE area (and have done for up to 30+ years) should be allocated guards. Good luck with expecting the taxpayer or passenger to fund that.

 

[CN75]

Your argument is a circular one, because you are saying that Southern passengers had to put up with two years of diabolical action and this has been neutralised by the switch to DCO. Nevertheless, had there not been any intention to switch to DCO, there wouldn't have been that industrial action in the first place.

The argument is that Southern runs better now and provides better customer service as it runs DOO. DOO will always be better to recover from disrupted conditions on complex networks and operators such as South Western, Southern or Northern particularly around the cities, as having to locate a guard and a driver to start recovery from delays is double the trouble.

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.

The RMT also has pushed ‘safety critical’ to mean ‘essential’, which is incorrect. A staff member can have responsibilities which require a ‘safety critical’ standard medical assessment, but still not be essentially present to do any task that involves moving a train.

Arriva wouldn’t desire the second member of staff to be ‘safety critical’ for a number of reasons and resource flexibility. Apart from anything else, the customer service, revenue protection and using a mobile phone or emergency equipment wouldn’t require a second member of staff to be ‘safety critical’. Indeed guards are only safety-critical because of the requirement to dispatch trains and the archaic fantasy of assisting on the track in emergency protection. With those removed, why bother making the role safety critical? The medicals, associated training and re-assessment, and having to have members of staff sat about because they have lost their pair of glasses etc are all expenses. Of course it also makes the staff harder to substitute when they go on strike and therefore the more specified the second person’s job is, the more the RMT stands to gain at pay talks or when one of their members is sacked.

 

[northwichcat]

We don't 'notice' anything, we do a handover

Any train faults, any passenger assistance, any other matters requiring attention. Takes about 5 seconds or you leave a note if you're in a hurry.

And of course guards never forget anything when handing over, while an OBS would forget to look for wheelchair passengers on the platform. :roll:

So if your about to transfer to another service and the replacement guard hasn't arrived you leave a note - how you can be 100% certain that note doesn't fall on the floor, get missed or doesn't get misread by the replacement guard.

 

[yorksrob]

The argument is that Southern runs better now and provides better customer service as it runs DOO. DOO will always be better to recover from disrupted conditions on complex networks and operators such as South Western, Southern or Northern particularly around the cities, as having to locate a guard and a driver to start recovery from delays is double the trouble.

As I mentioned to Coppercapped, I would need to see some statistics of what proportion of disrupted services could theoretically run were a guard not required, as opposed to those that would be disrupted anyway, to be able to ascertain the value of this.

Whether it is worth another year of disruption through industrial action, I doubt.

 

[Carlisle]

Whether it is worth another year of disruption through industrial action, I doubt.

As out railways are supposedly privitised , what’s preventing another company getting a temporary contract to run some services on northern for a year ?

 

[yorksrob]

As out railways are supposedly privitised , what’s preventing another company getting a temporary contract to run some Saturday services on northern for a year ?

I should imagine finding anyone to operate them would be the challenge, particularly on the scale of the Northern network.

I'm afraid that the only way forward with this at the moment is to reach an agreement with the RMT. We can hurrumph that we don't like their policies or their tactics, however there really is no way around it if we want a train service.

 

[furnessvale]

Personally I hope santa comes early and delivers 52 consecutive Saturdays and throws in the bank holiday Mondays for good measure. Let it just roll on because everyone to a man is pretty damn happy not to be doing Saturday nights.

I should think long before then the guard's role on many lightly loaded Northern trains will have been eliminated. The problem is the driver will also have gone together with ticket office staff and platelayers.

Just how long does the RMT think they can twist the tiger's tail of a Tory government before they react. Railways carry 5% of passenger journeys and the vast majority of them are essential and in London. That Northern subsidy will buy lots of votes when spent in other directions.

 

[Carlisle]

I'm afraid that the only way forward with this at the moment is to reach an agreement with the RMT. We can hurrumph that we don't like their policies or their tactics, however there really is no way around it if we want a train service.

That would’ve likley been acceptable in the days of Bob Crow who at least appeared capable of reigning in the most militant elements of the union to get negotiations moving eventually thus assisting members loosing money & passages alike, but under Mr Cash it’s become little more than an extremist organisation conducting an almost continuous idealistic strike fest that virtually no government should just totally capitulate to

 

[Robertj21a]

I should imagine finding anyone to operate them would be the challenge, particularly on the scale of the Northern network.

I'm afraid that the only way forward with this at the moment is to reach an agreement with the RMT. We can hurrumph that we don't like their policies or their tactics, however there really is no way around it if we want a train service.

So you are quite happy to just surrender to 'blackmail' in order to get a quiet life ?

Personally, I feel that 'bullies' shouldn't be acceptable in this day and age.

 

[6Gman]

You do realise that hundreds of our busiest trains have been running perfectly safely with just the driver, for decades ?

With all due respect, that is not the point I was making.

[But yes, I was aware. Having worked on implementing DOO(NP) I know the history.]

 

[6Gman]

No it's not "ridiculous", everyone is entitled to their opinion. But it all depends on what you mean by "tightly controlled conditions"? Otherwise you appear to be suggesting that many of the thousands of trains that currently run DOO over large swathes of the former NSE area (and have done for up to 30+ years) should be allocated guards. Good luck with expecting the taxpayer or passenger to fund that.

Well, personally I would be happy to meet the costs of restoring a second member of staff to many of those services. (I do not have enough knowledge of those areas to say which fall into which category.)

 

[Carlisle]

Yes but it has made a mockery of Wilkinson's claims that we would all rollover by 24 days.

When did Mr Wilkinson make that statement ? As I wasn’t aware he’d ever commented publicly on the northern dispute.

 

[yorksrob]

That would’ve likley been acceptable in the days of Bob Crow who at least appeared capable of reigning in the most militant elements of the union to get negotiations moving eventually thus assisting members loosing money & passages alike, but under Mr Cash it’s become little more than an extremist organisation conducting an almost continuous idealistic strike fest that virtually no government should just totally capitulate to

So you are quite happy to just surrender to 'blackmail' in order to get a quiet life ?

Personally, I feel that 'bullies' shouldn't be acceptable in this day and age.

Well, that's all very honourable, but being honourable and standing up for what you believe in isn't going to get the trains running again, and getting the trains running again is all I care about - not some highly technical argument over whether one way of operating train doors is superior over another.

As I've said before, there is no way to force the RMT to capitulate. The current Government is too weak and distracted to clip their wings through legislation, and Mr Corbyn isn't going to, so how do you propose to get the trains running again ?

What you or I "feel" is immaterial. This is the real world and we need the trains running again now. There is clearly a solution which might be mutually acceptable - DO/GC, so we should attempt it.

 

[Xenophon PCDGS]

As I've said before, there is no way to force the RMT to capitulate. The current Government is too weak and distracted to clip their wings through legislation, and Mr Corbyn isn't going to, so how do you propose to get the trains running again ?

Let us have a referendum......

 

[Robertj21a]

Well, that's all very honourable, but being honourable and standing up for what you believe in isn't going to get the trains running again, and getting the trains running again is all I care about - not some highly technical argument over whether one way of operating train doors is superior over another.

As I've said before, there is no way to force the RMT to capitulate. The current Government is too weak and distracted to clip their wings through legislation, and Mr Corbyn isn't going to, so how do you propose to get the trains running again ?

What you or I "feel" is immaterial. This is the real world and we need the trains running again now. There is clearly a solution which might be mutually acceptable - DO/GC, so we should attempt it.

No, that isn't mutually acceptable. Who has said it is ?

You seem to overlook the simple fact that the railways are used by such a small % of the UK population that it really isn't of very much concern to most people. They'll be happy to let it drag on through 2019.