BR Pay

[quarella]

Lurking in my archives I have found a fact sheet about working in British Rail's Retail Outlets in the Bristol/Swindon area. Undated but I would guess dates from about 1987 when I went to see the careers officer at school. I had no interest in rail travel but he didn't have any leaflets about the coach industry.
Starting pay for Telephone Enquiries is £5592 pa + overtime and unsociable hours premium. Grade 2- Booking Office starts at £6779. Those wanting a 9-5 job should not apply. When I started on Telephone Enquiries in 1995 the differential had ceased to exist CO1/2 starting at £8042.00

 

[Greenback]

I started as a postman in 1988 on £2.78 an hour, or £6216 per annum. In the mid to late 1980's I seem to remember BR clerical and Royal Mail pay being pretty similar in both structure and amounts. Both employers seemed to rely on people working a lot of overtime.

By the time I started on the railway ten years later, the pay had gone up to £5.36 an hour, and was a bit more than a Post Office counter job I applied for at roughly the same time. Plus, there was the opportunity for a lot more overtime on the railway at that time compared to the counter in a PO!

 

[bishdunster]

When I started on B.R. as a signal lad in1970 the basic rate for 40hrs (06.00-14.00 and 14.00-22.00) was £4 17s 5d, boosted by every other Sunday a 12hr (07.00-19.00) shift at time and a third, the time sheets,(I still have a couple unused) were complex things, being 2 sides of A3 with such oddities as time and 7/12ths, time and 5/19ths etc !!!

 

[Wyvern]

I left the RAF in 1962 and got a job at £11 a week. Mind you a new two bed house then was only about £2000.

THere were strict limits on the size of the mortgage you could take on and a minimum deposit so house prices stayed fairly steady. No debt bubbles then!

I remember around 1965 it was the ambition of everyone where i worked to become a "thousand a year man". I was on about that when I joined BR in 1966.

 

[David Barrett]

1973 First Year Craft Apprentice £13.60 Per Week.

 

[bb21]

When I started on B.R. as a signal lad in1970 the basic rate for 40hrs (06.00-14.00 and 14.00-22.00) was £4 17s 5d, boosted by every other Sunday a 12hr (07.00-19.00) shift at time and a third, the time sheets,(I still have a couple unused) were complex things, being 2 sides of A3 with such oddities as time and 7/12ths, time and 5/19ths etc !!!

I can understand time and 7/12ths, since 1/12 of a pound in proper money is 1s 8d. I can't see the point of having time and 5/19ths as 19 doesn't divide into £1 nicely.

 

[quarella]

I can understand time and 7/12ths, since 1/12 of a pound in proper money is 1s 8d. I can't see the point of having time and 5/19ths as 19 doesn't divide into £1 nicely.

It is the railway. Logic doesn't necessarily apply.





One thing I have found interesting over the years is that through promotion and pay rises I now can live fairly comfortably on my basic + booked Sundays. Managers have claimed they have swept away old BR working practices and yet express total shock that I don't want to work my Rest Days or do excessive overtime. I would not say that the work is harder now but maybe more of it and definitely more accountability.

 

[Wyvern]

I can understand time and 7/12ths, since 1/12 of a pound in proper money is 1s 8d. I can't see the point of having time and 5/19ths as 19 doesn't divide into £1 nicely.

They initially had us using these full timesheets. They really were amazing - you just about needed to be a qualified accountant to fill them in. Since we wre on a flat salary with just overtime on the occasional weekends, our completed forms were a few figures a the edge of an expanse of paper.

We did have one chap who was coining the overtime at weekends. I think we were installing trackside equipment for the APT runs, or it was the catenary on Shap Fell. At any rate, they had just installed a new computer system and this chap got a negative payslip. It turned out he'd done more overtime than the system was programmed for. They had to make him a loan and claim it back the following month.

 

[Greenback]

One thing I have found interesting over the years is that through promotion and pay rises I now can live fairly comfortably on my basic + booked Sundays. Managers have claimed they have swept away old BR working practices and yet express total shock that I don't want to work my Rest Days or do excessive overtime. I would not say that the work is harder now but maybe more of it and definitely more accountability.

I'm sure you are not alone! Pay has increased in real terms overall, and, of course, promotion will also have the effect of increasing income.

The main difference in the past, at least as far as I was concerned, was that overtiem was a necessity in order to be able to survive. Not only did I do my booked Sunday, I also did RDW, plus other little bits here and there. It all helped to make ends meet, and even save for a few luxuries like a holiday (by which I mean a three day break to Brussels or a DFDS Seaways mini break!).

Of course, if I had been receiving a more reasonable wage, it would not have been necessary to do so many extra hours! Some people used tot hink I came in on days off because I liked it, rather than because of needing to pay the bills!

 

[steevp]

I worked on a Southern Region station - platform duties and cleaning in the mid to late 70's. By working 12 hour days or nights on alternative weeks, I could clear £50 which was not bad for a 17 year old in those days. Trouble is that when I started training as a guard, I reverted to junior railman rates (as I was under 18) and barely made enough to live on (£17 a week?) . I also remember that we were paid in cash from the ticket office and incorporated a round up or down to the nearest 50 pence to avoid having change in the pay packet and make it easier to check.

 

[Trog]

Started on BR as a Technical Officer Scale B in 1980, just under £3000 a year. Paid on the standard BR thirteen months in a year system with weekly pay slips.


One of the additional payments you could earn was ALP (Annual Leave Premium) where you were paid your average overtime per day when on leave. This was to encourage staff who would otherwise not take leave, so as not to miss out on their overtime, to take their holidays. Needless to say the keener members of staff would use up their leave Tuesday to Thursday. Then work their normal weekend overtime and so earn both overtime and ALP.


ALP was something else where the computer was programmed to only believe that people worked up to a certain amount of overtime. If you went over this rate the computer would flag it up as an error rather than paying you. The pay bills staff would then have to work out what was due to you manually and add it to your pay. As they did not get much overtime themselves this made you very popular.

 

[steevp]

Paid on the standard BR thirteen months in a year system with weekly pay slips.

I'd forgotten about the 13 month year - when I went on to monthly pay (i.e, 4 weekly), it played havoc with paying the (normal) monthly bills

 

[quarella]

When I started as a lowly CO1/2 the overtime was certainly necessary to survive.

I still like ALP where I earn more for being on holiday, and remember certain colleagues ramping up the overtime in the weeks preceding their Annual Leave.

Some do find it hard to get out of the old habits. One of my colleagues who has been on the railway over thirty years is still available to work rest days and Sundays whilst on leave, except for the one week he does go away.

I am sure there is a reason for four weekly pay instead of monthly. Every few months there is frantic activity by some colleagues as they move all their direct debits and standing orders to coincide with pay day again. Fortunately I don't have to do that but the odd transfer out of the savings account is not unknown.

 

[Mojo]

I'd forgotten about the 13 month year - when I went on to monthly pay (i.e, 4 weekly), it played havoc with paying the (normal) monthly bills

Whilst getting paid 4 weekly is a bit of a nuisance for the first one when you start; if you can budget a 4 weekly pay as if it were monthly, it works just the same. I do this so once a year (or more in those every 20 odd years when you get 14 pay days) I get a pay check that it don't have to pay anything from - so can be used for savings/a holiday/etc.

 

[yorksrob]

Presumably with 4 weekly pay you don‘t have that unfortunate situation where some pay packets have to cover 5 weekends !

If they could arrange bills, rent and mortgages to be payable on a four weekly basis, that would be much better than the current shambles based on what some monks came up with several centuries ago !

 

[Trog]

There was a thread about the thirteen month year on the Network Rail in house forum some years ago. Mainly newcomers saying how difficult it was, but the old timers came in pointing out that you got a payday free of each bill which was useful. It was then suggested that having thirteen even length calendar months in the year would be a good idea, followed by much argument over what the thirteenth month should be called.

 

[Mojo]

One truly annoying thing is having the week start on a Sunday!