Fire & Rehire for railway jobs, especially Train Drivers.

[cactustwirly]

Oh dear.
If you actually bother to read the thread, I was challenged by another person whose nerve has been touched to disclose my salary and occupation to prove I'm not just jealous. Whilst I'm not going to do that, I'm happy enough to state the sector I work in and that train driving would not earn me as much.
I don't think I've belittled anyone. I haven't said train driving isn't a valid career, or isn't useful, or doesn't require specific skills. I've merely suggested that train drivers are well paid compared to similar roles in related industries and that therefore they ought to think carefully before raising the idea of strikes etc in the midst of the worst recession for 300 years as they might not get much sympathy from the public, government or their employers.


Best of luck to everyone in these times.

Completely agreed, public sympathy would be 0.
The government will pass laws to make striking much harder.
And the train drivers and the unions would be seen as militant, just like the coal miners in the 80s.

 

[C J Snarzell]

I don't want to go slightly off topic but I have seen more companies advertising Fixed Term Contract jobs as a result of the Covid19 fallout.

Having worked on a FTC myself, HR's can stipulate in the contract they can terminate the contract at anytime at short notice. Many TOC roles are advertised as FTC and these are usually back office type roles or some customer service roles which don't need a lot of skill.

I can't see operational roles like train driving or guard roles being on a hire & rehire scheme because the TOCs invest too much money in training staff for these jobs and they are not what I would consider to be 'disposable' professions.

CJ

 

[43066]

Well, we could look at other safety critical(ish)*, relatively low skilled occupations as a guide for a starting point.
What about a bus drivers salary? Safety critical? Tick. Low skill? Tick. Arguably requires more effort than train driving, and not as cushty working conditions (physical and contractual).
That would be a good starting point, wouldn't it?

*Ish because things like TPWS and ATP and there to reduce or eliminate reliance upon the driver to be the safety assurance.

I’d disagree that it’s “low skilled” - it takes a year or so to train a driver and costs around £100k to do so. A bus driver can be trained up in a matter of weeks. You don’t need a degree to be a train driver but you don’t need one to be an airline pilot, either, a job that has a similar training period and cost of training.

TPWS/ATP are safety nets, but if you trigger TPWS loops its been a seriously bad day at the office, and it’ll be on your license for the rest of your career. You’ll be off track, investigated, and placed under a microscope on a development plan. Do it more than once and unemployment is a real possibility.

 

[Supertrains19]

It looks like part nationalisation of the railways is getting closer as reported by ABC and the telegraph on new Emergency Recovery Measure Agreements.

"Train firms that were struggling financially prior to the coronavirus pandemic will be offered an operating margin of as little as 0.5%. This will push some firms into the red...leaving them little choice but to hand back the keys to the state."

Should find out more next week and the company’s likely to be handing back the keys.

 

[Bletchleyite]

You need 2 pilots because automation cannot cover all eventualities. I'd like to have seen an A320 and land itself on the Hudson.

Interestingly, the automation of the A320 provided what the pilot needed to do that. He did need to be a good aim to get it on the river, but all he had to do was pull back hard on the stick then move it left and right, and the aircraft would itself give him as much lift as it safely could without stalling. I'm sure I recall him saying he didn't think he could have done it in a Boeing as it'd have been too easy to stall.

Of course planes are a bit more critical in that way, because with a train, if there's a problem you just stop as quickly as possible (give or take if you're in a tunnel, which can be easily coded into a system).

 

[43066]

Interestingly, the automation of the A320 provided what the pilot needed to do that. He did need to be a good aim to get it on the river, but all he had to do was pull back hard on the stick then move it left and right, and the aircraft would itself give him as much lift as it safely could without stalling. I'm sure I recall him saying he didn't think he could have done it in a Boeing as it'd have been too easy to stall.

What was impressive about the Hudson incident was how the pilot had the presence of mind to commit to aiming for the river, rather than attempting to reach an airfield, which would almost certainly have resulted in the aircraft stalling and crashing in densely populated New York. That decision would have gone against all his instincts, and was made under extreme duress, when his life was on the line.

The same scenario was rerun in a simulator and only a tiny minority of the commercial pilots who attempted it made it...

 

[Bletchleyite]

What was impressive about the Hudson incident was how the pilot had the presence of mind to commit to aiming for the river, rather than attempting to reach an airfield, which would almost certainly have resulted in the aircraft stalling and crashing in densely populated New York.

It wouldn't have stalled, the Airbus envelope protects against that. It would have lost too much height and crashed as described, though.

The same scenario was rerun in a simulator and only a tiny minority of the commercial pilots who attempted it made it...

Indeed, it was still a masterpiece of judgement - the point I was making was that automation contributed very strongly to that effort, as having to manually avoid stall as well (as per a Boeing 737) would probably have been too much for a human to do.

 

[SlimJim1694]

I think rail employees need to get off their arrogant high horses and be very glad they have a job, and not one of the 3 million soon to be unemployed.

There have been a few things said in this thread that smack of trolls churning out the usual comments about rail staff on a forum filled with us, looking for a bit of attention, and I was being careful to avoid biting...

...However...

A sweeping generalisation about railway staff being on "arrogant high horses", that really is a cut above the usual tired, predictable and bland fayre.

I'd just like to climb down off my arrogant high horse for a moment to say "full marks".

 

[John Bishop]

It does make you wonder why they are on forums like these. Slightly strange.

 

[DB]

It does make you wonder why they are on forums like these. Slightly strange.

It could perhaps be argued that drivers might help themselves by just ignoring it! If anyone wants to provoke a reaction then they are pretty certain to get one. It does seem to be a railways thing too - people in most professions simply don't care whether or not others think they are overpaid.

 

[tiptoptaff]

It does make you wonder why they are on forums like these. Slightly strange.

To bash us, I think.

It could perhaps be argued that drivers might help themselves by just ignoring it! If anyone wants to provoke a reaction then they are pretty certain to get one. It does seem to be a railways thing too - people in most professions simply don't care whether or not others think they are overpaid.

The problem is, they're quite direct, personal attacks. Almost like we're fair game for insults and belittlement.

 

[trebor79]

You need 2 pilots because automation cannot cover all eventualities. I'd like to have seen an A320 and land itself on the Hudson.

You need 2 pilots because that's what aviation regulations require. And regulatory change in aviation is glacially slow.
Most aviation crashes are due to some error on the part of the pilots. Completely automatic planes would be safer, albeit still fallible in certain circumstances.

My commercial pilot friend arranged for us to have a go on BAs 747 simulator. He demonstrated an airplane - plane literally lands itself and rolls to a stop on the runway, with the pilots just doing comms and monitoring.

This automation is even coming to light aviation. Garmin now sell a system whereby if the pilot becomes incapacitated, he or a passenger can press a big red button.
The system then takes over, works out where the nearest suitable runway is, puts out a distress call, changes the transponder code, changes the cockpit displays to explain to a non-pilot passenger what is going on and then flies an approach and lands before rolling to a stop.

There's no good reason to have 2 people up front, other than the oil tanker of regulation that would need to be turned round and the crippling industrial action that would happen before it could be implemented.

 

[tiptoptaff]

You need 2 pilots because that's what aviation regulations require. And regulatory change in aviation is glacially slow.
Most aviation crashes are due to some error on the part of the pilots. Completely automatic planes would be safer, albeit still fallible in certain circumstances.

My commercial pilot friend arranged for us to have a go on BAs 747 simulator. He demonstrated an airplane - plane literally lands itself and rolls to a stop on the runway, with the pilots just doing comms and monitoring.

This automation is even coming to light aviation. Garmin now sell a system whereby if the pilot becomes incapacitated, he or a passenger can press a big red button.
The system then takes over, works out where the nearest suitable runway is, puts out a distress call, changes the transponder code, changes the cockpit displays to explain to a non-pilot passenger what is going on and then flies an approach and lands before rolling to a stop.

There's no good reason to have 2 people up front, other than the oil tanker of regulation that would need to be turned round and the crippling industrial action that would happen before it could be implemented.

Pilot suicide is a reason alone to have two people in there for eternity. It was when the FO was left alone, that he locked the cockpit and flew the Germanwings plane in to the side of a mountain

 

[TravellingPhil]

I always thought the 'Railways Jobs and Careers' section on this forum was designed to help and support people with starting and progressing their railway careers...not discussing how they could be ended or diminished.

 

[trebor79]

Pilot suicide is a reason alone to have two people in there for eternity. It was when the FO was left alone, that he locked the cockpit and flew the Germanwings plane in to the side of a mountain

I'd advocate no pilot at all. There's absolutely no technological reason whatsoever that a fully autonomous commercial airliners could not work.

 

[Bletchleyite]

I'd advocate no pilot at all. There's absolutely no technological reason whatsoever that a fully autonomous commercial airliners could not work.

Like a fully automated train, it's a much easier problem to solve than a self-driving car, because the safety model, like with rail, involves keeping planes well away from other planes.

 

[choochoochoo]

I'd advocate no pilot at all. There's absolutely no technological reason whatsoever that a fully autonomous commercial airliners could not work.

One reason alone is the same reason automated trains are years off. Infrastructure and support/maintenance to keep it safe.

The Cat IIIC you saw in the 747 simulator is only achievable on certified aircraft with certified crew at certified airfields. To install that system at every airfield and on every aircraft and keep it calibrated to that level of accuracy would cost a fortune. Which is why only the big airports have it and airlines only operate it on aircraft using routes where the cost of bad weather diversions is more than the cost of keeping it maintained.

Likewise the infrastructure change to automate the railway and maintain the required level of accuracy to guarantee safe operation would be equally cost prohibitive. They can barely keep the signalling system running without fault right now. Imagine trying to create/replacing the signalling system to be ultra reliable.

Edit: Just realised you said 'technological reason' - my reply was not a technological reason

 

[yorkie]

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[Steam]

There are some very foolish comments being made by people who seemingly don’t work on the Railway.

A no good thread. Again.

 

[ILoveLamp]

Yeah if your overinflated salary is being bankrolled by the taxpayer, at a time when the economy has shrunk 25%. It's clearly not sustainable.

I work in the private sector, my company simply cannot afford to pay wages like that, if they did many many good hard working people would be out of a job to afford it.
I don't think many rail employees appreciate how lucky they really are, they have total job security.

I think they will take a paycut, because drivers etc can't quite as there aren't many other jobs to go to, the ones that are available don't pay anywhere near as much as the rail industry pays.

This forum is the help people in their quest to find employment in the rail sector, not for someone to come in and slag it off. Please take yourself to the daily mail if you want to vent off.. Take minty with you too!

 

[dctraindriver]

So you expect me to roll over and take whatever raid on my pay, conditions, pension, leave, etc they want? Sorry but it's not going to happen.

We have to stop this race to the bottom. A culture of jealousy. Just because our terms are better than others, we're fair game for it.

Not. Going. To. Happen.

The entire driver grade will go on strike. Not even this Tory government has the stomach for that

The govt are rather busy hashing things up or sweeping reports under the carpet but when they get back to the pledges in the Queens Speech late last year and subsequently the white paper is introduced to ensure a minimum service is implemented on the railways during a strike we should then expect them to start picking away at what some outside the industry believe rather favourable T&Cs.

Expect a lot of govt and media spin to start knocking public confidence in the railways and how disgraceful the unions and workers are holding to ransom private enterprise and the ‘ordinary’ public.

We’ve seen it over the past decade. Policing and fire services were given an extremely tough time. I hope my cynicism towards what may happen is totally wrong.

 

[irish_rail]

(Quote)
The govt are rather busy hashing things up or sweeping reports under the carpet but when they get back to the pledges in the Queens Speech late last year and subsequently the white paper is introduced to ensure a minimum service is implemented on the railways during a strike we should then expect them to start picking away at what some outside the industry believe rather favourable T&Cs.

Expect a lot of govt and media spin to start knocking public confidence in the railways and how disgraceful the unions and workers are holding to ransom private enterprise and the ‘ordinary’ public.

We’ve seen it over the past decade. Policing and fire services were given an extremely tough time. I hope my cynicism towards what may happen is totally wrong.



[/QUOTE]
Sadly I think your right. And to think there are train drivers out there who actually voted Tory in december....the mind really does boggle.

 

[Red Devil]

Nail hit on head. Pay scales have risen, basically, because the TOCs find poaching cheaper than training. Market forces.

Good old market forces! Capitalists wet dream. Large scale redundancies and offers of early retirement at the end of BR created the shortage of drivers. Hence the poaching of drivers from other companies by the promise of increased renumeration started the ball rolling.
Don't forget it became free from a national pay limit,can't have a privatised industry subject to salaries imposed by government.

 

[cactustwirly]

Don't forget it became free from a national pay limit,can't have a privatised industry subject to salaries imposed by government.

You cannot have your cake and eat it...

It's not really a privatised industry is it?

 

[bramling]

Being wary not to feed the trolls, and going back to the original post...

I don't think there is any danger of this happening all the while there is any involvement of the private sector in the industry, because it wouldn't be long before the market forces that led to drivers wage increases in the first place came back into play and wages started to go up again. If it was fully renationalised then I can see it being attempted for sure, but otherwise no.

One of the biggest challenges around any possible future renationalisation would surely be harmonizing pay and conditions across the country. There are TOCs now that were formed of previous TOCs where they haven't been able to harmonise after years. It would need full renationalisation and harmonisation in order to be a success - otherwise people would still leave for the better paid TOCs and the others would have to try to keep up - as has happened since the 90s - leading to the drivers wages you see today.

The next issue is how do you harmonise grades within the industry? Speaking for drivers (but it could be applied to any grade) you have some TOCs offering over £70k basic while others are still paying in the high £40k bracket. Meal breaks, rostering, sundays, DOO, duty length etc all vary between TOCs so you've got to factor that in too. There is huge disparity within the railway industry among people who do the same job. You could cut £20k from some drivers wages today and they'd still be earning more than drivers at other TOCs.

I wouldnt be against harmonisation of the grade nationally, but the only way it's going to happen is with full renationalisation. Whether or not it's a race to the bottom, a race to the top, or a meeting in the middle (and how the hell it would be implemented) would remain to be seen.

If it was nationalised then you would have to think of ways to keep drivers working at depots where the work is absolute rubbish. In BR days the metro depots at my TOC were very different to what they are now. If a driver stays with one intensive TOC because he's a prisoner to his higher wages, or his safety record holds him back, he'd no longer have any reason to stay so they'd need to look at other ways of balancing staffing (eg: completely changing the work content at some places).

There would be countless other things to consider too.

It's easy to spout the same tired, jealous rhetoric about drivers wages and unions, its easy to ignore the fact that this narrative is overly simple... but it's not helpful, it lacks originality or serious thought, and doesn't actually achieve anything unless you are going to offer workable solutions to address the massive disparities within the privatised rail industry.

Would I be prepared to accept it? Not without a fight. Would you let someone come round your house and take your stuff without a fight? No, of course you wouldn't... Or maybe you would? But I wouldn't.

Very good post. There’s some quite strange disparities opened up between different TOCs. It is, for example, odd that you can have a GTR driver on 70k whilst next door at Southeastern someone doing essentially the same work is on much less. Whose idea was it for GTR to push DOO at all costs again?!

As others have said there are very specific reasons for why driver pay has increased, not least political interference and poaching. We should also remember that greater performance is expected of drivers now - the expectation nowadays really is 100.0% performance, which even with massive numbers of applicants per post still does require a high level of selectivity.

 

[dctraindriver]

You cannot have your cake and eat it...

It's not really a privatised industry is it?

Well the shares I hold with my company suggest otherwise. As for you paying my wages thank you. A few of my furloughed friends working in air traffic and private companies thank you too.

 

[theironroad]

There are some very foolish comments being made by people who seemingly don’t work on the Railway.

A no good thread. Again.

As the creator of the thread and just logged in to catch up, I'd disagree.

I'd suggest there has been a interesting exchange of views, some robust, some a bit sensational, but overall a good exchange.

For me personally as a driver, if a large pay cut and detrimental t and c was pushed through, I'd probably accept in the short term as there are bills to pay, but as someone else mentioned, I'd probably be looking at leaving in the medium term. While I do enjoy the job most of the time , the variable shift work (or even permanent earlies or lates) really is a major downside and harmful to health and wider life. However, this is not the time really to be finding a new job.

Hopefully, fire and rehire won't come to the railways , but despite passengers numbers rising, it's pretty evident that the railways (esp TOCs and FOCs and OA) are in financially perilous situations right now and cost cutting is going to be right up there, so let's not be too complacent.

 

[yorkie]

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[choochoochoo]

The govt are rather busy hashing things up or sweeping reports under the carpet but when they get back to the pledges in the Queens Speech late last year and subsequently the white paper is introduced to ensure a minimum service is implemented on the railways during a strike we should then expect them to start picking away at what some outside the industry believe rather favourable T&Cs.

Expect a lot of govt and media spin to start knocking public confidence in the railways and how disgraceful the unions and workers are holding to ransom private enterprise and the ‘ordinary’ public.

We’ve seen it over the past decade. Policing and fire services were given an extremely tough time. I hope my cynicism towards what may happen is totally wrong.

Not sure on all the details of minimum service agreements (my understanding is individuals giving notice to employers know you're intending to strike?) but i believe they don't seem to work very well in France.

Also unlike fire/police/nhs whilst the railway is essential, does it affect the safety of the public if it doesn't provide minimum service?

 

[FastTrax]

with great power comes great responsibilities..... train drivers ARE responsible for hundreds of lives everyday. its only fair they are rewarded by very good wages. people compare it with NHS and Police etc who seems to be underpaid, well then one has to take it up with the government to raise their wages.... if a nurse who works 12 hours shift and saves lives is not even allowed a free parking then its their empoyer's fault.... TOC is looking after the drivers and because of it u get really good people going for it. drop the wages and the quality of applicants will drop too eventually leading up to **** drivers leading up to possible loss of lives...