atraindriver
Member
Agreed. Same with guards, too, and all the TOCs I've worked for since privatisation have struggled with station staffing as well.In my 35yrs on the railway there has never been adequate staffing no matter what they do with drivers.
And at my current depot the roster (created by management, not by the union as it used to be) is done in such a way that it's not at all unusual to have several spares sat in the messroom on morning shifts while late shifts are covered by rest day work, or vice-versa. Even if the morning spare drivers were willing to move out of their time band to cover one of the open p.m. turns, it would only defer the problem to the next day as they then wouldn't be able to catch their booked (running) turn as they wouldn't get 12 hours rest between shifts (and when it's p.m. spares and a.m. turns, they wouldn't have got 12 hours rest from their previous booked turn).