Shows exactly what happens when a company refuses to recruit staff and try to run things with over reliance on voluntary overtime. ASLEF have been trying to get Sunday in the working week for a while but the TOCs don't want to hear it.
Is that right? Usually it's the company who are begging to have mandatory sundays and then Unions who won't go for it! ASLEF did allow it at FGW though to be fair. Optional sundays is the first thing that most TOCs who still have it would abolish!
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The whole railway system costs a bomb, and it boils down to **** poor management. This was evident under BR, as it is today.
However it is far, far worse in today's confused system, as every company requires it's own squadrons of management, back office staff, and general army of pen-pushers doing the same as their comrades in the next company's offices next door. Then we have the bank-owned ROSCO's, charging eye watering sums of money to lease assets which once belonged to the railway. We have ATOS charging a fortune to lease TOC's it's antiquated, knackered and unfit for purpose revenue equipment, which those TOC's have no choice but to pay for. We have the well reported problem of having to call in the contractors at three figure sums to change light bulbs or fuses, we have Network Rail taking on major work at stations, taking their cut and then handing the contract on to somebody else to do, and so on...
But never mind, what we'll do is sack all the front line staff who actually make the wheels turn, cos they're all greedy b*stards who don't deserve a decent job :roll: