Why aren't West Midlands Trains (aka London Northwestern Railway) running ANY services on Sunday 4th February 2024?

[stephen rp]

and of course a vast difference driving a bus on local roads, and driving a train to wherever, with route knowledge, traction knowledge, competence/rules/appendix etc.

Pity about that low bridge...

 

[scrapy]

An additional observation:

For yesterday:

Industrial Action

ASLEF, the trade union representing train drivers, has announced strike action on Friday 5th April, and an overtime ban between Thursday 4th to Saturday 6th April and between Monday 8th to Tuesday 9th April. There will be no West Midlands Railway services on Friday 5th April. Please see below...

www.westmidlandsrailway.co.uk

As staff aren't obliged to work overtime and are exercising that right, aren't WMT obliged to provide rail replacement buses for cancelled last trains and if they are unable to provide trains on Sundays? I doubt the government will do anything if they don't though, given they've allowed Northern to suspend services on 24 Dec and 31 Dec without providing rail replacement buses.

TOCs are being pressured by the DFT to cut costs, DFT setting fees paid for replacement transport and encouraging reduced provision. So I very much doubt the government will pressure the TOCs to increase spend on transport especially where they vcan blame the unions. The fare paying passenger is not a concern for the government.

 

[stephen rp]

They're more formally known today as MS, Member of the Senedd. They're the parliamentarians rather than the government.

AS in Welsh?

 

[12LDA28C]

Am I correct that union subs are a rate per member per week? It is thus in the union bureaucracy's interest to have as many members as possible, and "overtime" is against this, regardless of whether members want/need the money.

In the USA union dues are a percentage of total pay. It is thus in the union's interest to have their members make as much money as possible, and higher earnings are what is desired.

This is correct, ASLEF members pay a fixed weekly sum, dependent on their annual (base) salary, overtime is not taken into consideration. And indeed, the Union's position is that overtime and Rest Day Working is undesirable and only agreed at each individual TOC when certain conditions are met.

 

[infobleep]

Of course. Not sure why we get compared with everything from that to working for the NHS.

That is until people in the NHS go on strike. Then suddenly they don't compare you or at least Grant Shapps doesn't.

 

[Class 170101]

Sometimes a small independent in one town, will be happy to assist another based 20 miles away if they are a vehicle or driver short. On the railways we wouldn't expect to see Northern using a spare driver or/and unit to run an additional Liverpool to Manchester service because EMR are unable to provide their scheduled service.

Depends actually

Greater Anglia in the past borrowed Class 158s from EMR if the Class 158s were sitting spare.

EMR have also asked XC to cover their 23:20 Nottingham to Leicester (2L88) if there has been disruption using an ECS (presumably 5M85) instead of a bus / cancellation.

GA also covered 20:52 Norwich to Nottingham as far as Ely to maintain connections when it used to be the last train across the Thetford route.

 

[Llanigraham]

They might have borrowed the units but I doubt they took the staff as well, as I doubt they would have had the route knowledge required.

I know in the signalling grades that when part time work was looked at one of the problems was in the regular training that was required. That always occurs during Monday to Friday and fitting those days into a p/t roster was found to be too difficult.

 

[dk1]

They might have borrowed the units but I doubt they took the staff as well, as I doubt they would have had the route knowledge required.

If you are referring to GA then no they didn’t. The East Suffolk Link of drivers at Norwich signed class 158s right up until the legacy fleet was withdrawn in late 2019 as the 05:36 Norwich-Lowestoft & return was booked for a class 158.

 

[Silverlinky]

I don't believe WMT drivers have Sunday working in their contract. From the looks of it WMT have rostered all their drivers within contract Monday - Friday this week to try and run a decent service (which for the most part they have from my travels).

Correct, NO WMT/LNR Drivers are contracted to work Sundays. Rostering is done over the other 6 days with 4 of them at work and 2 of them off. Long weekend (F-S, M-T) restdays appear every three or four weeks. A simple roster would show a Driver working Mon-Thursday then having Friday, Saturday, Monday and Tuesday off, then working Weds-Sat the following week, then M/T, F/S the third week with Weds/Thursday off, then back round to Mon-Thursday again.
Roughly one week in four Drivers would have a "rostered Sunday"..... and most would work these although all have the option to go "not available" and all have the option to work every Sunday going if they wanted to by volunteering for the non-booked Sundays.

Although rostered they are non-committed and treated as overtime (attracting an enhanced rate of pay), and within ASOS (action short of a strike where non-committed overtime is outlawed) that explains why NO drivers were in work today.

Pretty much every other grade has worked towards committed Sundays, many senior conductors now have a commitment to work their Sundays as a result of contract changes brought about through a past pay deal, Drivers t's and c's have not been touched at all really over the years, even to the point where the ex Central and ex Silverlink conditions still have not been harmonised after the best part of 20 years.

 

[Towers]

The post you're quoting specifically deals with that though, it says so in it. There's actually a fair amount of latitude in some of the relevant contracts.

Even if they had zero it's still relevant because no pay for Sunday and none for the strike day encourages more volunteers to the other days, within the usual times.

The post by @Sleepy that you repied to was challenging the suggestion by @james_the_xv that the TOC in question had rostered all it’s drivers “Mon - Fri” at short notice, which suggests that rosters had been altered to specifically exclude Saturday. As correctly pointed out, that isn’t allowed; drivers rostered to work on a Saturday with a weekday off cannot simply be instructed to work on the weekday and have Saturday off instead, which was how the post in question reads!

 

[PyrahnaRanger]

LGV / PCV DCPC competency is not in the same league as a Train driver competency.

The DCPC was and still is an EU money making gimmick. There isn't even a pass or fail. Or even any tests at the end.

You’re required to sit in a classroom for 7 hours a day for 5 days and listen to an ex-copper going on about how good they are. It like a speed awareness course.

I can’t comment on your first statement, as I’ve never done either. As for the second, I think it’s a fairly commonly held belief in the industry, but the fact remains I didn’t sit those hours so I’m no longer allowed to drive a vehicle with passengers on it.

Pity about that low bridge...

Had this happen when Stagecoach got new deckers in Carlisle. Driver refused to take it on a certain route as there was a low bridge it wouldn’t fit under. There was a bit of a disagreement between the driver and the traffic manager, until the driver was given an instruction to take the vehicle or lose his job. The bus was eventually turned into an open topper. The two things may or may not be related to the height of the bridge

 

[LAX54]

Pity about that low bridge...

a fairly common incident.

 

[Carlisle]

a fairly common incident.

Whilst we probably hear of a few incidents per year UK wide, I wouldn’t say it’s fairly common for Double Deckers to have their top deck removed by low bridges

 

[43066]

Pretty much every other grade has worked towards committed Sundays, many senior conductors now have a commitment to work their Sundays as a result of contract changes brought about through a past pay deal, Drivers t's and c's have not been touched at all really over the years, even to the point where the ex Central and ex Silverlink conditions still have not been harmonised after the best part of 20 years.

Committed Sundays is the worst of all worlds, though, and not really something to aspire to “working towards”. I’m sure ASLEF would be open to negotiating to bring Sundays inside and doing it properly, just as they have agreed on many other parts of the network.

 

[Starmill]

The post by @Sleepy that you repied to was challenging the suggestion by @james_the_xv that the TOC in question had rostered all it’s drivers “Mon - Fri” at short notice, which suggests that rosters had been altered to specifically exclude Saturday. As correctly pointed out, that isn’t allowed; drivers rostered to work on a Saturday with a weekday off cannot simply be instructed to work on the weekday and have Saturday off instead, which was how the post in question reads!

I don't see that in what the poster was claiming, however, on a re-reading I can understand the problem. In which case, fair enough, I'll allow the poster to add clarity if they wish.