Yesterday when travelling from Leamington to Oakham at 6pm in the evening, multiple trains on this route got cancelled 'due to staff shortages'. I have never seen such a pathetic excuse for such incredible disruption on this network.
I do not want to offend anyone, but if a train cannot run because of a staff shortage and that staff member is not off sick or with other issues, that staff member should be fired on the spot. I had to fork out a huge amount of money yesterday to go an alternative route.
Well this went down like a lead balloon hahahaha!
Ok we get you’re upset, the railway is incredibly frustrating at times and that’s very much due to mismanagement of it for years.
what I can’t quite understand is you say “if a train cannot run because of a staff shortage and that staff member is not off sick or with other issues, that staff member should be fired on the spot”.
This is a genuine question and not having a pop at you or anything like that.
What do you think a staff shortage is?
It’s not a staff member refusing to do the work they are contractually obliged to do.
It quite literally means there is not a person available to work that train.
Someone would have been rostered to work it, but they could have had a call that their mother has just died or they could have been assaulted by a member of the public earlier in their working day.
In the industry we have ‘spares’ people who’s days work is to come into the depot and have no planned trains to work but can do something should they be needed to a short notice.
Equally, if someone who has booked work (a full days worth of working trains if you like) and they book a day off (could be 6 months in advance, and are totally within their right to do. Holidays on the railway follow a strict number of rules and regulations agreed between the union and the TOC so that not too many people can book holiday on the same day and leave services uncovered)
then one of the ‘spares’ will be Allocated to their full day of work instead.
then if all the spares are used and someone calls in sick you’ve got no one spare to cover that work.
There are some nuances like cross deep to cover and rest day work but we won’t go into all the little details as it really starts to get complicated.