Southern DOO: ASLEF members vote 79.1% for revised deal

[BestWestern]

What an utterly ridiculous comment. And I'm anti extension of DOO.

Go and talk to some DOO Drivers. Many of them share that very view I can assure you. Have a watch of the recent rail industry RED safety film, the one featuring a relatively minor fire on board a DOO commuter train. The one in which, due to a lack of on board staff, passengers self-egressed onto a live running line and one of them was killed. Go and ask some experienced staff if they've seen it, and what they thought the moral of the story was. Yes, the industry continues to acknowledge that it really is a very poor way of doing things, despite the DfT pushing its cost cutting exercises regardless and pretending that it's all okay. It really is a joke.

 

[Dr Hoo]

For ease of reference, amongst a 700+ page thread, is it possible to re-post a link to the RED that is accessible to those us now outside industry employment?

When was the passenger egress fatality, please? Presumably there was an RAIB or HMRI report?


Thanks

 

[BestWestern]

For ease of reference, amongst a 700+ page thread, is it possible to re-post a link to the RED that is accessible to those us now outside industry employment?

When was the passenger egress fatality, please? Presumably there was an RAIB or HMRI report?


Thanks

I don't have a link I'm afraid, though they tend to crop up on YouTube from time to time. The incident involved a young lad who was standing on the adjacent running line and was hit by an oncoming train. I'll endeavour to find some details of the actual incident and will post them if I can.

 

[ComUtoR]

I don't have a link I'm afraid, though they tend to crop up on YouTube from time to time. The incident involved a young lad who was standing on the adjacent running line and was hit by an oncoming train. I'll endeavour to find some details of the actual incident and will post them if I can.

It's on youtube and posted on this forum somewhere.

 

[fredk]

What is this tosh & drivel you continue to spout about evil guards? Southern would not dream of saying it. It is your invention to stir the pot. Please try to develop your kind side.
This coming week could be very important. ASLEF & GTR have been really responsible & probably taken much flack from each other,thinly disguised as joshing,during these painful meetings.
Fingers crossed that they develop a solution that could be a template for English/Welsh DOO. But don't hold your breath. And do not frighten the few Southern OBS who might naively fall for your postings. They have families & aspirations & none of them are evil as you enjoyed implying they are viewed.

I wonder how much Govia pays you to post here

 

[infobleep]

The three anti DOO posters here who always say the same thing,usually in quick succession,have misunderstood xdm. He/she refers above to trains able to run now without a second person. Trains which would have been cancelled before DOO,if the guard was ill or late. Obviously trains are still being cancelled on Southern because, understandably, drivers don't want to do overtime,also because of Network Rail's daily crippling problems & because of other issues. It remains the fact that trains are running which would have been cancelled if RMT had had their way. In the long term, the "future" referred to by xdm, whether Southern is run by the government,another company or TFL, trains will continue to be DOO. After all,the last big expansion of DOO was under TfL on the London Overground & all other TfL services are DOO. The words, guard,conductor or OBS, do not exist at TfL railways. So, long term far fewer southern trains will be cancelled. XDM is right. Fortunately I am far away from Southern & its tensions but we will have them soon in Yorkshire. Having read this forum from start to finish & discussed it with drivers & others I think DOO is safe,slightly lower cost &, as above shows,more reliable & will benefit the passengers & the railway. What is not to like if you are a passenger? I hope ASLEF & Southern settle soon but these record length talks seems bad news. Also for the predictions I made a few days ago.

All I can say to that is that when I've travel on South West Trains, I've not had Trans cscenlled due to a lack of a guard, as far as I can remember. They have been cancelled for many other reasons, just like on Southern, where other reasons have cancelled trains. What does this tell us?

In my mine that if Southern employed enough conductors, trains wouldn't have been cancelled.

 

[infobleep]

That's what the OBS is for, and can focus on it rather than mucking around with doors.

Well I don't seem to. See. OBSs doing that. I don't always hear them. Either. I admit I don't use Southern trains every day but enough to see someone.

I'm more likely to see someone on a South West Trains service and all their services employ guards. LOL!

 

[6Gman]

So how do you think they operate on Thameslink etc ?

On a wing and a prayer.

 

[6Gman]

So how do you think TfL have operated through the Chilterns to Amersham or the Essex wilds to Epping for the last 30 years. Or BR through the empty fens to Kings Lynn. In fact most places around London have been served safely by DOO trains for years. If you think Mayor Khan,who runs TfL, will reinstate guards if he were to take over Southern, sweet dreams!

I refer the Hon Member to my previous reply.

I don't like DOO, and I suspect the general public would prefer to have a safety-trained member of staff available were the driver to be incapacitated. *


* Note 1. I can accept DOO on non-passenger #, and on certain locations where there is prompt and ready access in the event of a mishap. But not on the BML.

# Note 2. I was a member of the project team which introduced DOO(NP) on the WCML.

 

[Phil.]

On a wing and a prayer.

Like they have for the past thirty odd years - if you're including the section between Bedford and London.

 

[Robertj21a]

Where are we with the talks between ASLEF/Southern at the TUC etc ? - as there's been no announcement I assume they are continuing this week ?

 

[infobleep]

What is this tosh & drivel you continue to spout about evil guards? Southern would not dream of saying it. It is your invention to stir the pot. Please try to develop your kind side.
This coming week could be very important. ASLEF & GTR have been really responsible & probably taken much flack from each other,thinly disguised as joshing,during these painful meetings.
Fingers crossed that they develop a solution that could be a template for English/Welsh DOO. But don't hold your breath. And do not frighten the few Southern OBS who might naively fall for your postings. They have families & aspirations & none of them are evil as you enjoyed implying they are viewed.

Aspirations to continue being a conductor no doubt, which were dashed by GTR and the contract they agreed with the government.

 

[Andrew32]

Where are we with the talks between ASLEF/Southern at the TUC etc ? - as there's been no announcement I assume they are continuing this week ?

Still talking, no news is good news as they say

 

[XDM]

Where are we with the talks between ASLEF/Southern at the TUC etc ? - as there's been no announcement I assume they are continuing this week ?

Yes. To both sides' credit they have been leak proof. But the length of time is worrying. Some observers assumed it was going slowly because the Southern deal could be a template for Welsh/English DOO. But apparently this is not the case. One reason for the days of talks may be that everying has to be approved/discarded/amended by two sets of lawyers to make the deal legally watertight after Aslef's costly legal failure. If there are any cross words between the parties they are dismissed as typical joshing. Not so sure. The talks could still fail. Whelan was reported,FT, at the start of the talks saying that his ASLEF would never accept more DOO. May have been negotiating bluff,may not.

 

[LowLevel]

What is this tosh & drivel you continue to spout about evil guards? Southern would not dream of saying it. It is your invention to stir the pot. Please try to develop your kind side.
This coming week could be very important. ASLEF & GTR have been really responsible & probably taken much flack from each other,thinly disguised as joshing,during these painful meetings.
Fingers crossed that they develop a solution that could be a template for English/Welsh DOO. But don't hold your breath. And do not frighten the few Southern OBS who might naively fall for your postings. They have families & aspirations & none of them are evil as you enjoyed implying they are viewed.

That post reads like something written by Lord Haw Haw old boy - I was almost expecting to read 'This is Berlin calling' by the end of it

If you think anyone is falling for anything and that these hundreds of pages on here actually mean anything you're dafter than you seem!

All I know is I've watched 'non safety critical onboard staff' being shafted by their employer for years at various TOCs - do you really suggest that people should base their livelihoods on promises made by these guys?

 

[Carlisle]

All I know is I've watched 'non safety critical onboard staff' being shafted by their employer for years at various TOCs

If that's the case then the unions really should have been far more active in taking up their particular cause, (assuming some were members) it can't merely be used as justification for the months of industrial action Southern users have had to endure

 

[BestWestern]

If that's the case then the unions really should have been far more active in taking up their particular cause, (assuming some were members) it can't merely be used as justification for the months of industrial action Southern users have had to endure

That reads as a massive contradiction to me? What else do you suggest the unions should do? Ask nicely if the management would mind terribly just letting people get on with their jobs?!

 

[LowLevel]

If that's the case then the unions really should have been far more active in taking up their particular cause, (assuming some were members) it can't merely be used as justification for the months of industrial action Southern users have had to endure

I believe the conversations usually go 'we are going to make you redundant/change your hours/force you into a different job you don't want'.

The union/staff say 'no, we don't want this, it's a silly idea'.

The company say 'tough, if you don't like it, we will just carry on regardless and you need your wages too much to hold out for long'.

I've watched London Midland make their entire NSCOS contingent redundant and re employ a select number on different terms and sack all of their catering staff, Gatwick Express go from being an Intercity branded service with a Senior Conductor to totally DOO, EMT have decimated their assistant ticket examiners and replaced many on board catering staff positions with contractors from Rail Gourmet on minimum wage. The list goes on.

Trust and cooperation is earned. There's nothing there from either the company or union sides to build on.

Yet when they do work together they do great things. The business maxim shouldn't be 'respect the front line', it should be 'respect the front line unless you want to cut them back a bit in which case totally ignore them because you must be right'.

The industry is, sadly, a bit of a joke in more ways than one.

 

[KTHV]

It's on youtube and posted on this forum somewhere.

Here it is:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=afB5uXl8kQE

 

[O L Leigh]

What an utterly ridiculous comment. And I'm anti extension of DOO.

Oh, I don't think so.

O L Leigh

 

[starlightEXPRESS]

Have a watch of the recent rail industry RED safety film, the one featuring a relatively minor fire on board a DOO commuter train. The one in which, due to a lack of on board staff, passengers self-egressed onto a live running line and one of them was killed.

A 'making of' video has been posted on YouTube, which I think shows at least part of the film that you are referring to:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gwn2QFuUhAY

I'm not sure that I'd describe this as a 'relatively minor' fire, given the quantity of smoke in the passenger area and the fact that flames are clearly visible. (I'm aware that this will have been created for the video using pyrotechnic special effects.) I suspect that there is little to be learned from this particular edit... Can anyone post a link to the full video?

EDIT: Apologies, whilst typing someone else linked to the full video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=afB5uXl8kQE

When was the passenger egress fatality, please? Presumably there was an RAIB or HMRI report?

It's not clear to me whether this is a reconstruction of a real incident, or whether it's a scenario invented for the purposes of this video. There was a similar incident at Maidenhead in 1996, when a Swansea-bound HST caught fire, but this was not DOO:
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/train-death-prompts-call-for-new-fire-escape-drill-1324341.html

British Rail has been asked to improve emergency procedures on all its trains following criticisms in a report into a fire on board a train in Maidenhead, Berkshire, last year.

One man died in the incident on 8 September, when he jumped out of the train into the path of an oncoming train, after fire broke out on the high- speed train travelling from Paddington to Swansea.

 

[fredk]

Perhaps you mean this incident where a FCC train got stranded in a tunnel, PA system failed and driver had to walk through and tell everyone what was happening, then people were opening the doors and getting off. Next when the rescue train arrived the train departed with doors open and people on the lineside.

RAIB report: https://www.gov.uk/government/uploa...a/file/410841/120523_R072012_Kentish_Town.pdf

Edit: Just reading through that again, what a mess. Really proves the need for a guard in a situation like this. How can one person be expected to deal with such a ****storm is beyond me.

 

[O L Leigh]

Scenarios for RED videos are not invented. The reconstructions may not necessarily be entirely faithful to the incidents themselves (the reconstruction of the "trap and drag" at Huntingdon showed a train with a guard on it), but this is generally for the purpose of drawing out the pertinent lessons that they want us to learn or to make it applicable to all.

O L Leigh

 

[BestWestern]

The fatality happened, I believe. It was featured in one of the CIRAS newsletters I seem to recall.

 

[infobleep]

Scenarios for RED videos are not invented. The reconstructions may not necessarily be entirely faithful to the incidents themselves (the reconstruction of the "trap and drag" at Huntingdon showed a train with a guard on it), but this is generally for the purpose of drawing out the pertinent lessons that they want us to learn or to make it applicable to all.

O L Leigh

If the incident had a train without a guard then doesn't that need to be in the RED video because one needs to learn without a guard being there. I've never seen a RED video so I may be wrong and it might not matter.

 

[Chrisgr31]

Where are we with the talks between ASLEF/Southern at the TUC etc ? - as there's been no announcement I assume they are continuing this week ?

It does seem surprising that Abellio can lose a senior staff member for well over a week without any warning whatsoever.

 

[O L Leigh]

If the incident had a train without a guard then doesn't that need to be in the RED video because one needs to learn without a guard being there. I've never seen a RED video so I may be wrong and it might not matter.

I thought it odd too at the time, but I guess the purpose is that there's something for all traincrew to take from it. Otherwise guards looking at it might just dismiss it as a DOO problem.

O L Leigh

 

[Dr Hoo]

Thanks to those who have re-sourced the video links and clarified the reference to the uncontrolled passenger egress from the HST that led to a fatality at Maidenhead in 1996.

 

[313103]

I've watched London Midland make their entire NSCOS contingent redundant and re employ a select number on different terms and sack all of their catering staff, Gatwick Express go from being an Intercity branded service with a Senior Conductor to totally DOO, EMT have decimated their assistant ticket examiners and replaced many on board catering staff positions with contractors from Rail Gourmet on minimum wage. The list goes on.

The industry is, sadly, a bit of a joke in more ways than one.

I did make the suggestion before being totally and wrongly quoted that the modern railway is going down the casualisation route. It is all being done for one thing and one thing only and that is to save money on staff costs. We all know (even those who kid themselves otherwise) that if your role is not essential it will either go completely or farmed out to a sub, of a sub, of a sub contractor where everyone will be on the minumum wage, with no sick pay, no paid annual leave and no pension scheme therefore the company will always be spending vast sums to recruit because when people see it for it really is they will leave in the hope that they can find somewhere more permanent where they could improve their lot in life.

You are right though about the industry being a joke though, i would say its the laughing stock in the western world.

 

[Goldfish62]

Go and talk to some DOO Drivers. Many of them share that very view I can assure you. Have a watch of the recent rail industry RED safety film, the one featuring a relatively minor fire on board a DOO commuter train. The one in which, due to a lack of on board staff, passengers self-egressed onto a live running line and one of them was killed. Go and ask some experienced staff if they've seen it, and what they thought the moral of the story was. Yes, the industry continues to acknowledge that it really is a very poor way of doing things, despite the DfT pushing its cost cutting exercises regardless and pretending that it's all okay. It really is a joke.

Two of my friends are DOO so I don't need any more education on their views, thanks. I would suggest that you look up the OED's definition of "on a wing and a prayer".