Is 2 days off a week an unacceptable aspiration in the modern railway or otherwise world ?

[father_jack]

Rather than responding to an ongoing thread I am following forum guidelines and asking the above in a new thread.

I have worked on the railways for 20 years this year.

For the purpose of my point in 2017 I worked 33 Sundays, each week I worked a Sunday I had only one one day off.

However in 2017 I also worked my other rest day 18 times.

So 18 weeks that year I had no day off that week.

The money was welcome at the time but in hindsight it was not a good renumeration.

Rest day work was (still is) 100% of basic rate and Sundays were (still are) 120%.

Now the Sunday optional nonsense is going to be formalised (not a bad idea) but every week in many grades it will become compulsory overtime so permanently on say, every third week you permanently only get one day off that week.

I ask the "normal" viewers to the forum who say, work Monday to Friday in whatever your job is how would you feel if your working week was added to and became 6 days ?

 

[Bletchleyite]

I do not believe it should be permitted for safety critical staff to work rest days or significant planned overtime. To be safe, proper rest is needed.

I would choose not to do so.

Sunday should simply become part of the normal working week.

 

[jfollows]

As a former "normal" worker I would say that I would not expect a normal working week to become 6 days, but on the other hand I worked in a job in which I was expected to work unpaid overtime, including at weekends, as an exception rather than as a rule. So travel in my own time, and sometimes go to meetings, or work to fix specific customer problems over a weekend was the expectation, and other than expenses I didn't get paid any extra for it. Now you're talking about a railway industry in which you will get paid for working at weekends, which stopped being the case for me a long time ago. Would I want to do it if I were paid? No, I wouldn't either.
I had a colleague who drove to a customer on a Saturday for a planned day of work installing something. He drove home afterwards. On Sunday the customer "fiddled" with something and broke it, so he drove back again on Sunday and spent the day fixing (and padlocking) it. He didn't get paid a penny for either day. It was expected. But it was not normal.
And, yes, I'd sometimes take time off in lieu of working weekend days, that was easy to do which I know it isn't in railway operations.

 

[Mawkie]

It's an interesting discussion. Train Operators on London Underground have never done rest day work, or planned overtime. However, the latest "Trains Change" proposals (this week) from management are 10hr days, 6 hr driving times, and rest day working, as well as overtime tacked onto the end of a shift if offered. Seems backwards to me.

 

[irish_rail]

5 days of 3am alarms is more than enough for me thank you very much. This 6 day week the Dft are desperate to bring in, would be down right unsafe for safety critical roles. Its frankly absurd. Put Sunday into the woking week and then we have a reliable service 7 days a week. Compulsory overtime is a disgrace.

 

[endofthetunnel]

Working Sundays is not necessarily the same as working 6 days per week.

Signallers work Sundays and frequently have 3 or 4 rest days per week, if on 12 hour shifts. They can of course accept rest day works on all the free days.

The basic rosters should (and will have to) change if Sundays become compulsory days at work to ensure the correct rest periods rather than just adding an extra day.

 

[maniacmartin]

I don't work on the railway, and like Bletchleyite I believe safety critical staff should not be allowed to work 6+ days a week unless there is a genuine unforeseen situation that arises. For all that the railway bangs on about safety, they seem perfectly fine to have staff operating it on a lack of sleep which makes no sense to me. They should totally redo the rosters to make Sunday part of the working week, not just tack then onto the existing rosters.

My office job has at times been 6-7x 12-hour days a week for blocks of a few months when we've had a backlog of things to get through at work. No overtime for me as I'm not paid hourly. Eventually it wears you down though and you realise you're running on empty and need to reign in the hours to recharge. A permanent 6-day working week sounds like a recipe for burnout

 

[Parham Wood]

When I worked for the railway in the 70s working Sundays was always sought after by the S&T staff, so a 6 day week was the norm. Work was always saved up to ensure they had their Sunday. I think for most it was essential income. Personally I value the time spent at home with wife and children and always hated working more than 5 days a week, but fortunately I could afford it. I have better things to do in life than work! Most construction workers seem to work Saturday mornings but the situation is complicated as for many the work comes in chunks and for bricklayers there can be a lot of off time in winter due to the weather. I don't think that working more than five days a week should be the norm for traffic staff, it is just not healthy and can lead to errors.

 

[74A]

Most traincrew are on a 4 day week so working the Sunday will just bring it up to 5

 

[Undiscovered]

I do find it amusing that, in the modern world, people are praising the improved work life balance that a four day working week brings, yet for those of us who already work such a pattern, ( edit, and the myriad of early starting/late finishing times it entails) plus compulsory Sunday overtime every other week, we're simply not working hard enough and must work more...

 

[L401CJF]

At my TOC Sundays are committed (compulsory overtime if you like, one per month usually but occasionally 2). If you want it off, you can request it and there's usually a massive list of volunteers to take it. If not you are allowed to arrange mutual cover yourself. Failing that you have to work it. We are on a 4 day week, not much of a problem for me and I always work my own Sundays.

The booked Sunday is never on your long weekend.

They're wanting to bring Sundays inside the working week, understandably. The issue I have against it is exactly how many more Sundays we will end up working!

 

[66701GBRF]

I do not believe it should be permitted for safety critical staff to work rest days or significant planned overtime. To be safe, proper rest is needed.

I would choose not to do so.

Sunday should simply become part of the normal working week.

Fatigue is not that black and white

 

[142blue]

If it's being brought into the week then you should get an alternate rest day

Will you be getting paid for the Sunday when you are on leave or sick or do they shy away from that

 

[woolleywoods]

Hi totally agree shouldn't be compulsory, if you choose to do it then that would be personal choice, also depending on what you do it could put your safety at risk.

Many thanks Jon

 

[yorksrob]

I don't work on the railway and in answer to the OP's question, I think a six day working week is too long and suggests a lack of staff.

I think the whole country should be moving towards a four day working week.

 

[mac]

Be nice to work a 6 day week I'm a signaller and out of 23 days we only get 2 days off

 

[a_c_skinner]

We should be able to run a railway without relying on overtime and the whole working schedule should be rostered within employees normal working week.

 

[ComUtoR]

I think the whole country should be moving towards a four day working week.

Which 4 ?

 

[mikeg]

Which 4 ?

Rolling/allocated days off, rather than specific days would make far more sense.

FWIW I almost never have a weekend off but always have two days off week. I wouldn't have it any other way.

 

[Snapper37]

I work in IT, nominally 9-5 office sort of hours. On callout one week in three and lots of upgrades / patching / slots out of hours. This week I’m not on call, but patching Saturday night 22.00 to 04.00. Most weeks will include some sort of weekend work. When things go very wrong 24 hour plus shifts occur. Big change in recent years is the move to cloud computing, which at least means I’m not charging round the midlands doing things to physical computers. Annual driving has been reduced from 30k to 10k miles. I think we need a Union……

 

[Bantamzen]

Rather than responding to an ongoing thread I am following forum guidelines and asking the above in a new thread.

I have worked on the railways for 20 years this year.

For the purpose of my point in 2017 I worked 33 Sundays, each week I worked a Sunday I had only one one day off.

However in 2017 I also worked my other rest day 18 times.

So 18 weeks that year I had no day off that week.

The money was welcome at the time but in hindsight it was not a good renumeration.

Rest day work was (still is) 100% of basic rate and Sundays were (still are) 120%.

Now the Sunday optional nonsense is going to be formalised (not a bad idea) but every week in many grades it will become compulsory overtime so permanently on say, every third week you permanently only get one day off that week.

I ask the "normal" viewers to the forum who say, work Monday to Friday in whatever your job is how would you feel if your working week was added to and became 6 days ?

Are you actually being made to work 6 days a week under DfT proposals? I ask because in my civil service department we have gone from a 5 day working week 9-5 core times, to a 6 day week with core times of 8-8 Monday-Friday & 8-4 Saturday. That doesn't mean we work 6 days a week, but that we can be asked to work our standard hours across those core hours. I'm just trying to clarify if you are being asked to work more hours, or spread existing ones across more days in the week.

 

[Greenheart]

Where I work (office based), more people have been allowed to do 'compressed hours', which is essentially 36 hours completed over 4 days rather than 5. This has been inconvenient with the HR Manager no longer working Fridays. Personally, I don't consider most people will be at or near their best in hours 8 and 9.

My pet theory, which will be very unpopular and never be adopted, is that people are more effective on shorter days, meaning that the working week would be 7 days of 5 hours each.

 

[yorksrob]

Which 4 ?

It would depend on what's needed to cover the work.

 

[deltic]

We should be able to run a railway without relying on overtime and the whole working schedule should be rostered within employees normal working week.

Totaly agree.

 

[Harpers Tate]

In my opinion a 35-40 hour working week is fine. However, the Railway is a 7 day (x many hours depending on the where of it) operation and needs to have its staffing set up accordingly.

It seems to me that anyone who chooses to work in an industry that is a 7 x (20-odd) thing should do so knowing and accepting that there are no "special" days or hours.

The Railway needs to have its base staff level such that in all but extreme/rare contingency circumstances, there are enough personnel to provide for all roles throughout the operational hours of the week (or month) without routinely relying on overtime (and therefore including a contingency pool to cover for absences and other random events).

Every member of staff should expect to work a nominal 40-hour week (probably averaged out over, say, a 4-week period) accepting that this may include weekends and public holidays, and that those hours may include those often termed "antisocial" - with no extra remuneration for either. Rotas will be known a reasonable time in advance so that staff can plan their lives. Rotas will be arranged as far as possible to take account of different staffs' personal circumstances; some will prefer a solid shift; some will prefer a split shift; some will prefer to have their days off midweek. Some will prefer 4 x 10 hours approx; some will prefer 5 x 8. And so on.

 

[yorksrob]

Where I work (office based), more people have been allowed to do 'compressed hours', which is essentially 36 hours completed over 4 days rather than 5. This has been inconvenient with the HR Manager no longer working Fridays. Personally, I don't consider most people will be at or near their best in hours 8 and 9.

My pet theory, which will be very unpopular and never be adopted, is that people are more effective on shorter days, meaning that the working week would be 7 days of 5 hours each.

Too long a working day won't work (I find this myself), however if people don't have adequate time away from work, they will soon end up burnt out and unproductive.

 

[mike57]

As a former "normal" worker I would say that I would not expect a normal working week to become 6 days, but on the other hand I worked in a job in which I was expected to work unpaid overtime,

I would never work unpaid overtime, I think its a 'con' or worse. I left one job about 30 years ago because a large amount of unpaid overtime was part of the culture. I basically walked out, with another engineer, one of only two occasions in over 50 years that I have done that. My parting comment was "Based on the hours I am expected to work I could earn more flipping burgers" Not quite true but not far off. Since then I have always been paid by the hour, and when negotiating a contract I will make sure travel time is included, if I am travelling 6 hours to a job site that is detrimental to me and advantageous to the business so they pay me.

We should be able to run a railway without relying on overtime and the whole working schedule should be rostered within employees normal working week.

Bearing in mind a lot of railway work is safety crititcal I agree, everyone needs days off. Obviously in a 7 day a week operation these days off are not always going to Saturday and Sunday, but I also think they should in so far as is possible be consecutive. I realise a lot of people work overtime for financial reasons, but I do think there should be sensible limits imposed to avoid burnout/exhaustion. I know daily hours are limited, are there limits to days worked without a day off?

The problem is once overtime becomes endemic the business cut back on recruitment and training and then one minor blip can send the whole operation spiralling into oblivion (TPE...). A properly resourced operation is key to reliability, when things go wrong limited overtime can recover things, if everyone is already working large amounts of overtime then there is no reserve to call on.

 

[Narrowgauge725]

Having worked, safety critical, for an organisation that had 7 day working we had a rolling shift pattern that covered 7 days but had rest days. For any organisation that ‘offers’ a 7 day service the basic shift pattern SHOULD include all 7 days with suitable number of rest days.

 

[M&NEJ]

The Railway needs to have its base staff level such that in all but extreme/rare contingency circumstances, there are enough personnel to provide for all roles throughout the operational hours of the week (or month) without routinely relying on overtime (and therefore including a contingency pool to cover for absences and other random events).

I agree.

I don't work on the railway and in answer to the OP's question, I think a six day working week is too long and suggests a lack of staff.

I agree.

To me, the key here is having a basic staffing level that gives employees a five-day week and passengers a seven-day railway. Full stop.

 

[Philip]

Sunday is not a normal timetable day on the railway; there might be more services than before but it is still a reduced service with different patterns and hardly any services before 8am. And a '7 day timetable' isn't currently in the pipeline - Sundays will continue to run to a separate reduced timetable, albeit with more services, so for this reason I don't think it needs to become part of the working week. A 'committed overtime' arrangement is probably more suitable as there will be plenty of takers.