The current situation with the industrial disputes are:-
TPE Fair Deal For Conductors Dispute
This dispute is in regard to low pay level for sunday working. Pre-COVID TPE conductors were receiving an enhanced sunday flat rate. This was regardless of turn length or start time. since this was binned sundays have reverted to Time +1/5. so for a 5 hour shift, £90. Take off 11% NI and 20% Tax. £60. Pension and other deductions may zap a further tenner Then minus another tenner for fuel and something to eat during your shift. £40. Now add your hour commute there and back and another hour getting cleaned, dressed into uniform etc, so you have lost a sunday with family, friends etc for less than £50 Its not financially worth the effort of coming in for that shift. Staff were therefore cherry picking certain shifts because they were 9-10 hours long or awaiting appeal emails to cover certain trains from A to B and requesting 10-12 hours worth of pay to cover individual bits and it was a real mess. Flat rate eliminated this and made all shifts worth losing the day for. All that was requested was an increase in Sunday pay in line with other TOCs incentivising staff to work sundays or bring the flat rate back. It benefits the company as well as the staff.
The dispute also involves the introduction of ticket scanning. With the loss of on board ticket sales and the associated commission it was planned to incentivise staff with a 2p payment per ticket scanned. The ticket had to have not already been scanned by another member of TPE staff to count. Again this was pre-COVID and was supposed to have been introduced on return. Again the benefit of the company in data capture and preventing re-use and fraud through photoshop cannot be ignored, and was supposed to incentivise staff to actually carry out checks. Other TOCs have introduced scanner payments and would have brought TPE in line.
the dispute also involves new technology payment with rostering apps replacing traditional pen and paper leave requests, shift swaps, rest day work availability etc and automating these. Again the benefit to the company cannot be ignored due to the reduction in man-hours processing rostering changes and it was the unions view that a one off bonus payment for introducing new technology should be made to staff.
This dispute has now been live for 6 months and as a result has to be re-balloted to keep this “live” and ballot papers are currently being distributed
As a result conductors were refusing to work sundays, with no rest day work agreement in place conductors were also working to rule, which basically means only your rostered hours and diagrams and +15 minuted for late running, not a minute more And no rest day working. Conductors were also refusing to use integrale and were not scanning barcoded tickets.
national pay and
conditions dispute
This revolves around a number of issues which include the potential of Driver Only Operation being rolled out across the network, the demise of ticket offices moving staff onto platforms and catering roles which would be fulfilled by demoted train managers in dual-purpose roles. The issues here is the overall reduction in staff as with southern the requirement to run without the On Board Supervisor still remains in place and the number of station staff being reduced overall. There is also the reduction in maintenance staff levels which could lead to another grayrigg/potters bar/hatfield incident. The lack of any pay rise in line with inflation
The unions are not opposed to changes in working practices and modernisation, in fact they encourage it. Sunday has always been an aspiration to be brought within the working week, some TOCs Sundays are purely voluntary, others including TPE are mandatory rostered overtime, hence why there are issues getting Sundays covered and companies have relied on the goodwill of staff wanting to cover work on sundays and rest days (you know, that 1919 rule which states staff don't have to work on their days off - and quite frankly why should anyone HAVE to? Its their day OFF!) And thats where rest day work agreements come in to play.
The state of the disputes are as follows
RMT
TPE Fair Deal For Conductors
Due to the national dispute the work to rule was withdrawn allowing staff to work sundays and rest days if they wished. This was intended to negate the effect of losing wages during national strikes, however the continued refusal to adopt Integrale and no scanning barcoded tickets still remains in place.
National Dispute
Now Trevelyan has taken over from Shapps, as an opposer to ticket office closures there have been meaningful discussions take place in how to resolve the deadlock, however strikes are still taking place and remain staunchly solid despite the current economic climate
ASLEF
with there currently being no rest day work agreement ASLEF drivers for TPE are working to rule and not working on their days off. While there is spare cover for most shifts, some overnight, early and late turns do not benefit from spare crew coverage.
This has now created the situation where there are spare crews available, but because the trains cannot get on and off the depots or because theres a crew missing on part of one of the diagrams journeys the entire diagram is cancelled, leaving more crews spare or pass riding to pick up other services but this in itself brings problems if the pass ride is also cancelled. If trains are cancelled the previous night before 10pm they are classed as pre-planned and therefore do not count on the performance stats and the company still gets paid by the DfT. Theres no incentive for the company to resolve the dispute meanwhile the DfT keeps bankrolling it.
In my opinion this is The worst part of nationalisation met with the worst part of privatisation, and with GBR now on hold there doesnt look like any end to the current status quo any time soon. believe me this is not what staff want or where they want to be.
So we know at least one of the cancelled TPE services from Newcastle this morning, the 0743, had a guard, did that service also have a driver and a unit? If it did, there isn’t any good reason for it to have been cancelled.
Think the the problem here stems from no driver being available to bring the train set off Doncaster, therefore didnt run with the booked driver and conductor from York at 06:18 to be in position for the 07:43 off Newcastle.
Of coirse what would have made sense was to have utilised the crews and the 06:40 set brought off heaton for the 07:43 departure. something that would have been worked on by the dedicated traincrew controller in control. However, simce the traincrew controller was taken out of control and moved into rosters creating a centralised resourcing team, those controllers no longer have any idea what is going on in control and the route controller now takes care of redirecting train crew. They themselves however dont have the full crew plan available to them so cant necessarily see o know where the train crew are in relation to where they should be which also causes issues. Also from experience control dont like having units off their booked diagrams as it causes issues later in the day positioning for depot examinations etc. which i kind of understand but then that leaves the unit controllers reluctant to make any service retention alterations, its easier just to kill the whole diagram