Except that for most HQ roles, the work can be completed just as effectively at home as it can from the office. The decision to come in is one that people make primarily for social reasons.
The same can't be said of "spare from home". One of the main reasons for having spares is that you have traincrew ready to spring into action at a moment's notice. Having to wait an hour (or more) to get someone in renders it fairly pointless.
There were no legal restrictions in England during Omicron, other than the mask mandate (which did not apply in workplaces). If anyone felt at risk in a "crowded" messroom they had the option to wear an FFP2/3 mask. Frankly, these were specious arguments that were merely a reflection of the unions' dogmatic left wing views.
To be fair standby turns, not spares, are there to cover the ability to “spring into action” and they were (understandably) expected to come in throughout. Unutilised spare crews are merely an additional “nice to have”, especially at a time when the timetable was reduced. People who were spare and allocated something could also be asked to come in the next day, or called that morning to come in for a PM turn, so “work from home if you can” fits this scenario pretty well.
In this case the union was simply urging the company to follow the advice of the government at the time, nothing to do with “dogmatic left wing views”. Even at the height of the pandemic it was not unusual to encounter messrooms with a dozen people in them (including spare, standby and running turn staff taking breaks) which - whatever your views on Covid - was a fairly stupid approach given the isolation requirements. Hence something had to be done.
Indeed withdrawal of the policy rather backfired where I am, when the “pingdemic” meant that one “infected” person in a messroom would wipe out half a dozen people with needing to isolate, so that trains were were being cancelled due to lack of crews and they had to start begging for people to do overtime again
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Overall spare from home was a long time ago now, over very briefly and was a non issue for myself and most of my colleagues due to rarely actually being spare. I’m honestly not sure why it keeps being brought up by certain people on here, other than to further their usual anti staff agenda (and in this case seemingly making up ballots for action that never happened).