Northern: DO NOT TRAVEL 24th & 31st December

[Class 170101]

Unfortunately the same can't be said of future contributions.

Do you mean future rertirees would be stuffed - hardly likely to encourage saving into pensions ands raise the issues I mentioned above in the longer term if so?

 

[muz379]

How do you calculate the uplift as a third?

I make it more like a sixth. I have calculated it as follows:

Current number of staff (ie number of staff required for 6 day working week)
= (6/4) * Number of staff per working day

Number of staff required for 7 day working week
= (7/4) * Number of staff per working day
= (7/4) * ((4/6) * Current number of staff)
= 7/6 * Current number of staff

Additional number of staff required
= (7/6 * Current number of staff) - Current number of staff
= 1/6 * Current number of staff

Fewer additional staff would be needed if the number of staff required on a Sunday is substantially less than other days. For example, if the Sunday timetable were half that of a weekday timetable the number of staff required for a 7 day working week would be nearer (6.5/4) * Number of staff per working day

Generally when negotiating to bring sundays inside the working week it is always the case that a maximum ratio of sundays is agreed , usually 1in3 weeks or 1in4 weeks , wheras for other days of the working week rosters are usually constructed which see you work 2in3 weeks . So if any agreement looks like that you cannot just roster sundays the same . Also once sundays are within the working week you would inevitably have a number of staff that would exercise their right to request flexible working to exclude themselves from sunday working and inevitably some of these requests would have to be granted . Calculations I have previously seen placed the figure between a quarter and a third uplift required to bring them inside the working week with the ability to reliably provide cover .

So why aren't Northern using Managers and others as contingency Guards as other TOC would if it was a strike day ?

At certain TOCs most Managers have to do whatever they're told to !!

That only gets you so far though and only with certain managers that have the required competencies , tbh ive also known managers refuse and nothing official tends to happen , there might be some leverage with managers that are looking at career progression but then generally you would find them more motivated to do what they see as "helping out" anyway .

 

[Topological]

It's down to marketing. The Trainline advertise that you can buy in advance for any train operator. Individual operators haven't successfully managed to convince average Joe that a Manchester to London ticket can be purchased from LNER or GWR, just like it can be purchased from Avanti. Average Joe doesn't want to sign up for an account with every operator they may wish to travel with. Some business people, in particular, will see the booking fee as better value than the time taken to sign up on another site.

Sadly symptomatic of so much that is wrong these days. The market is designed to assume people want to put some effort into finding the best deal, yet these days the effort of signing up is too much effort to even justify saving the Trainline booking fee. Followers of free market economics would thus conclude that there is a genuine willingness in the market to pay fees for convenience. There is not even an information failure because the fact that some sites do not charge a fee is advertised.

Hopefully, we will see proactivity on all sides, and rent extractions like the Trainline will be consigned to the history books in the way the market would have it. Certainly, I doubt anyone who genuinely advocates for the market thinks that rent extractions should go unchallenged.

None of this helps Northern generate the revenues for the extra staffing cost to bring Sundays into the week, but if a proportion of tickets were bought through Northern it would help a tiny bit.

 

[GardenRail]

I remember the trains in the 70s and 80s that were falling apart, but at least you got a service that was more reliable then than it is now.

You really didn't....

 

[jayah]

Correct me (someone outside the industry) if I'm wrong, but doesn't "committed Sundays" mean compulsory overtime, i.e. hours over and above the 4 days in 6?

I think covid was quite a reset for a lot of people as well , with it changing relationships with personal finances and peoples appreciation of their free time with friends and family .

And tbh even before covid , saturdays were always a struggle to get anyone to volunteer for overtime , especially in december with the sorts of behavoir you were expected to deal with from the inebriated once a year drinkers .


If only it were that easy to just "rewrite" contracts . In reality if you want to bring sundays inside the working week you need an uplift of staff numbers by about a third .

Your second proposal about making TOC employees susceptible to loss of livlihoods and pensions if a TOC fails would just make the industry terribly unattractive for people to work in meaning anybody with any experience and quality would just leave , there are already difficulties recruiting staff in some roles , including key ones to run an operation like planning and control .

There are very few recruitment and retention problems for the railway. It is far better paid work than most other transport work like buses or HGV driving and many jobs have long waiting lists of people joining. There has not long ago been a round of government induced redundancy, not done through natural wastage note, but voluntary redundancy.

The railway already has budget to pay the Sunday overtime. It isn't anything like the uplift of a third in headcount for several reasons, and would be even less if the ridiculously short 35hr / 4 day week was also increased.

 

[wilbers]

Ticket acceptance for tickets dated 24 December to be allowed to be used today only applies on Northern services. So if you have a ticket for, say, Shrewsbury to Sandbach, you can use it for Crewe-Sandbach today but have to wait until tomorrow to use it between Shrewsbury and Crewe!

Surely it must apply to the rest of the journey by default? They can't mean (even if its not specified) that you are allowed to depart on your journey, but not to arrive at destination (or vice-versa).

 

[newtownmgr]

Working remotely for office workers is only possible because many employers have adopted all the available technology options. Some were forced to in 2020, having tried to avoid implementing them before that.

Northern use Sprinter trains from the 1980s. If a guard takes ill part way through a service it's cancelled with the passengers thrown off. They rely on signallers being in remote signal boxes. Many remote Northern stations don't even have CIS. At some stations the only 21st century technology you see is a TVM and a CCTV camera pointed at the TVM. They are not a 21st century business and not operating on 21st century infrastructure.

Then perhaps the government needs to provide the correct funding for the railway. It’s not happened since they nationalised the railway in 1948 so please, whatever you do don’t hold your breath.

Correct me (someone outside the industry) if I'm wrong, but doesn't "committed Sundays" mean compulsory overtime, i.e. hours over and above the 4 days in 6?

Correct me (someone outside the industry) if I'm wrong, but doesn't "committed Sundays" mean compulsory overtime, i.e. hours over and above the 4 days in 6?

Yes committed Sundays are outside the 4 day week and paid extra.

You can go not available for them & providing rosters can cover the turn you will not work. If they can’t cover it you will have to work it. Obviously if the commited Sunday falls during annual leave you will be automatically not available. Even with companies with commited Sundays there will be some guards that will not be under the system depending on when they started.

 

[Red Rover]

Yes committed Sundays are outside the 4 day week and paid extra.

You can go not available for them & providing rosters can cover the turn you will not work. If they can’t cover it you will have to work it. Obviously if the commited Sunday falls during annual leave you will be automatically not available. Even with companies with commited Sundays there will be some guards that will not be under the system depending on when they started.




I know of a toc where some staff have to do 2 out of 3 Sundays thereby meaning they could be continuously working 17 days out of 21.

 

[Jan Mayen]

Yes committed Sundays are outside the 4 day week and paid extra.

You can go not available for them & providing rosters can cover the turn you will not work. If they can’t cover it you will have to work it. Obviously if the commited Sunday falls during annual leave you will be automatically not available. Even with companies with commited Sundays there will be some guards that will not be under the system depending on when they started.




I know of a toc where some staff have to do 2 out of 3 Sundays thereby meaning they could be continuously working 17 days out of 21.

I thought it wasn't allowed to do more than 13 consecutive days under Hidden Regulations? Or has that changed?

 

[JamesT]

Do you mean future rertirees would be stuffed - hardly likely to encourage saving into pensions ands raise the issues I mentioned above in the longer term if so?

The worst case if an employer goes insolvent and there’s a defined benefit pension not fully funded is it ends up in the Pension Protection Fund and those who haven’t already retired only get 90% of their expected benefits when they do.
But the more likely scenario being posited is that the defined benefit scheme is closed and a new more affordable scheme is opened for current employees. You would retain the benefits accrued up to that point, but further pension would be built up in the new scheme. So as @Starmill says, the existing pension would be safe.

 

[richa2002]

You really didn't....

Can anyone point to when BR told passengers not to travel on Christmas Eve?

 

[harz99]

You need to stop thinking of Northern as a big version of a self-isolated system like Metrolink. It's more like a road network where Northern provide the B roads, TPE and XC provide the A roads and Avanti provide the Motorway. Why do you think ASLEF called different strike days for Northern and Avanti recently? If Northern don't provide their part of their network, it affects revenue for other operators as well.

Actually i think referring to just "Northern" overall is erroneous when most problems appear to be Northern in the North West as evidenced by your post not mentioning LNER, the North East side seems to have far far fewer cancellations and staffing issues...

 

[Sly Old Fox]

Thats a good solution. Unfortunately that is termed ‘an attack on terms and conditions’ by some.

That is not true, and it’s also not what is being offered, as you well know.

Put Sunday inside the working week and you solve this problem once and for all. A majority of staff would be supportive of it these days.

 

[newtownmgr]

I thought it wasn't allowed to do more than 13 consecutive days under Hidden Regulations? Or has that changed?

It hasn’t.

 

[CaptainHaddock]

One thing that I don't think has been mentioned on this thread so far is the concept of selflessness.

If I were a Northern guard and realised that the consequences of me refusing to work overtime could potentially mean families not being able to enjoy spending Christmas Day together then I would willingly work my rest day, regardless of what additional financial benefits I might receive from doing so.

I'm not suggesting that overtime should be mandatory to prop up a dysfunctional rostering pattern but with Christmas Eve unusually falling on a Sunday I find it very sad that so many Northern guards in the North West seem to be thinking of themselves rather than others at this time of year.

 

[Sly Old Fox]

One thing that I don't think has been mentioned on this thread so far is the concept of selflessness.

If I were a Northern guard and realised that the consequences of me refusing to work overtime could potentially mean families not being able to enjoy spending Christmas Day together then I would willingly work my rest day, regardless of what additional financial benefits I might receive from doing so.

I'm not suggesting that overtime should be mandatory to prop up a dysfunctional rostering pattern but with Christmas Eve unusually falling on a Sunday I find it very sad that so many Northern guards in the North West seem to be thinking of themselves rather than others at this time of year.

I get that feeling, it’s why I’ll be working tomorrow, even though it’s not gone down well with family. But you can understand most people wanting to be with their families. It’s not their fault if they take a day off that they’re supposed to be off.

 

[stan claire]

Actually i think referring to just "Northern" overall is erroneous when most problems appear to be Northern in the North West as evidenced by your post not mentioning LNER, the North East side seems to have far far fewer cancellations and staffing issues...

As someone who commutes using Northern in the north west, whenever I go east it feels like they're a different TOC with the huge difference in reliability

One thing that I don't think has been mentioned on this thread so far is the concept of selflessness.

If I were a Northern guard and realised that the consequences of me refusing to work overtime could potentially mean families not being able to enjoy spending Christmas Day together then I would willingly work my rest day, regardless of what additional financial benefits I might receive from doing so.

I'm not suggesting that overtime should be mandatory to prop up a dysfunctional rostering pattern but with Christmas Eve unusually falling on a Sunday I find it very sad that so many Northern guards in the North West seem to be thinking of themselves rather than others at this time of year.

I know I'd be doing the same, I'd rather help out at least 100 people to get home for Christmas over stay in just to benefit myself. It's probably Northern's incompetent management as well. You're lucky to get a 5 minute delay never mind your train actually being on time!

 

[GusB]

One thing that I don't think has been mentioned on this thread so far is the concept of selflessness.

If I were a Northern guard and realised that the consequences of me refusing to work overtime could potentially mean families not being able to enjoy spending Christmas Day together then I would willingly work my rest day, regardless of what additional financial benefits I might receive from doing so.

I'm not suggesting that overtime should be mandatory to prop up a dysfunctional rostering pattern but with Christmas Eve unusually falling on a Sunday I find it very sad that so many Northern guards in the North West seem to be thinking of themselves rather than others at this time of year.

I don't think you've thought this through properly.

It is completely unfair to blame this on staff who are as entitled to enjoy their days off as anyone else, and it's ludicrous to accuse them of being selfish when any other year they'd be working on Christmas Eve and then back to work on the 27th; a situation that people who work in other sectors would find unimaginable. Who wouldn't want to enjoy the extra day off to spend with loved ones, especially if they're under no obligation to work it?

The blame lies squarely with the TOC/government for failing to adequately prepare for this situation and for allowing it to happen in the first place.

 

[northwichcat]

I thought it wasn't allowed to do more than 13 consecutive days under Hidden Regulations? Or has that changed?

Under general employment rules you're entitled to least one uninterrupted 24 hour period every 7 days and if that's not possible then one 48 period every 14 days. There are some exceptions e.g. if you're working on a shipping vessel. I'm not sure it prevents volunteering to do a shift on the 13th day. And that regulation doesn't prevent you from finishing a shift at 11am on Tuesday and starting a new one at 1pm on Wednesday i.e. you have a gap of over 24 hours but still work two consecutive days.

Rest breaks at work

Workers' rights to rest breaks at work - length of breaks, how your age affects rest breaks, exceptions to the rules for shift workers, young people, and drivers

www.gov.uk

 

[GardenRail]

Can anyone point to when BR told passengers not to travel on Christmas Eve?

Sorry, you said it was more reliable in the 70s and 80s. Not one specific date, Christmas Eve.

 

[Bluejays]

One thing that I don't think has been mentioned on this thread so far is the concept of selflessness.

If I were a Northern guard and realised that the consequences of me refusing to work overtime could potentially mean families not being able to enjoy spending Christmas Day together then I would willingly work my rest day, regardless of what additional financial benefits I might receive from doing so.

I'm not suggesting that overtime should be mandatory to prop up a dysfunctional rostering pattern but with Christmas Eve unusually falling on a Sunday I find it very sad that so many Northern guards in the North West seem to be thinking of themselves rather than others at this time of year.

Maybe we could extend the concept to other jobs aswell. Everyone could be so selfless that we all work over Christmas in case someone needs our service.

Under general employment rules you're entitled to least one uninterrupted 24 hour period every 7 days and if that's not possible then one 48 period every 14 days. There are some exceptions e.g. if you're working on a shipping vessel. I'm not sure it prevents volunteering to do a shift on the 13th day. And that regulation doesn't prevent you from finishing a shift at 11am on Tuesday and starting a new one at 1pm on Wednesday i.e. you have a gap of over 24 hours but still work two consecutive days.

Rest breaks at work

Workers' rights to rest breaks at work - length of breaks, how your age affects rest breaks, exceptions to the rules for shift workers, young people, and drivers

www.gov.uk

The poster was referring to the 'hidden' rules, a set of railway rules. For operational staff we are limited to 13 consecutive days in work

 

[QueensCurve]

I’ve not travelled on any trains for months now and quite frankly the way in which the railways are run today is a disgrace, epitomised by the above “news“ from Northern.

I remember the trains in the 70s and 80s that were falling apart, but at least you got a service that was more reliable then than it is now.

I feel really sorry for the customers who only have Northern and Avanti as the only applicable services available.

Yes. I fondly remember those days. The trains were often late, and TSRs used to breed on the WCML, but trains were very rarely cancelled.

 

[Topological]

Certain jobs have more emphasis on the service, and some jobs are easier to dip in and out of. I will be doing bits over Christmas rather than taking it as a full holiday, but that just means checking email and probably a little more depending on the issues raised. I would not use that as an argument that others should do full days physically at work because that is the nature of their job.

I admire @CaptainHaddock and wish that there were more who would do the same. However, I also believe that appropriate compensation should be paid.

 

[northwichcat]

The original warning is now extended to include

DO NOT TRAVEL ON ALL ROUTES FROM 16:00 Sunday 24th December

 

[GardenRail]

One thing that I don't think has been mentioned on this thread so far is the concept of selflessness.

If I were a Northern guard and realised that the consequences of me refusing to work overtime could potentially mean families not being able to enjoy spending Christmas Day together then I would willingly work my rest day, regardless of what additional financial benefits I might receive from doing so.

I'm not suggesting that overtime should be mandatory to prop up a dysfunctional rostering pattern but with Christmas Eve unusually falling on a Sunday I find it very sad that so many Northern guards in the North West seem to be thinking of themselves rather than others at this time of year.

That guard may have a family too. Why would they work, disadvantageing themselves to make strangers happy.

 

[Bluejays]

Certain jobs have more emphasis on the service, and some jobs are easier to dip in and out of. I will be doing bits over Christmas rather than taking it as a full holiday, but that just means checking email and probably a little more depending on the issues raised. I would not use that as an argument that others should do full days physically at work because that is the nature of their job.

I admire @CaptainHaddock and wish that there were more who would do the same. However, I also believe that appropriate compensation should be paid.

Good post, wheres the like button.


Personally I'd admire the captain if he was giving an example of him being selfless, but I think it's rather to easy to say 'if I were a northern guard i'd be working'. Harder to tell the wife/husband/ partner and or kids that as you leave them on their own on Christmas eve.

That guard may have a family too. Why would they work, disadvantageing themselves to make strangers happy.

Because us thickos are less worthy than others

 

[Horizon22]

Same with £100k, childcare falls off a cliff, plus you enter the "60%" tax band until you hit £125.1k when the tapering stops and you hit 45%. Anyway, way off topic, sorry!

Not so relevant for guards though!

Certain jobs have more emphasis on the service, and some jobs are easier to dip in and out of. I will be doing bits over Christmas rather than taking it as a full holiday, but that just means checking email and probably a little more depending on the issues raised. I would not use that as an argument that others should do full days physically at work because that is the nature of their job.

I admire @CaptainHaddock and wish that there were more who would do the same. However, I also believe that appropriate compensation should be paid.

Indeed. Some jobs might require you to log in for a bit from home, do a few emails, update some systems etc. Fairly chilled.

I’ve worked Christmas Day before (outside the railway) and it was one of the easiest shifts I’ve worked as everything was pre-planned and we were done earlier than usual and 200% of usual pay!

That’s a bit different to waking up very early / finishing very late, physically being on trains for 5+ hours when you are under no obligation to do so.

 

[muz379]

That’s a bit different to waking up very early / finishing very late, physically being on trains for 5+ hours when you are under no obligation to do so.

And because you'd be in the minority working you would be dealing with severe overcrowding and all of the hassle that goes with it all day .

 

[Horizon22]

And because you'd be in the minority working you would be dealing with severe overcrowding and all of the hassle that goes with it all day .

Yes I didn’t mention that but I did think about the fact this would be the case if there wasn’t loads of uptake.

 

[CaptainHaddock]

That guard may have a family too. Why would they work, disadvantageing themselves to make strangers happy.

Because if they don't work the trains get cancelled and as a consequence some people may not get to see their loved ones on Christmas Day.

I'm not suggesting Northern guards should spend the entire festive period at work; the fact there are no trains Christmas Day and Boxing Day means they'll all get at least two days off, arguably the two days most working people would want off.

And what's wrong with making strangers happy? At risk of sounding oversentimental, isn't that what Christmas is all about: goodwill to all men and all that?