Read what I said: "As long as a contract including Sundays was basically a fair one." That criterion is the back stop that prevents awful working conditions being introduced. The idea of "headless chickens" is nonsense: there are very many different contracts within a TOC already and, just like with similar jobs in very many other places, it would not be difficult at all to have more than one type of contract for a driver. There are plenty of sectors where even each person is on an individual contract and there is no correlation between people at all, but they still get by. I agree that the railway probably can't work like that but it can certainly deal with more than one way of doing things. And if eventually there is some kind of pay deal on offer that requires everyone to work Sundays and it gets voted it, because there are now enough people who do have Sundays in their contract, then that's just about the world moving on. There is no guarantee of a job for life and even less is there one of no changes to existing arrangements. In a lot of sectors when change is needed - and I think this is a pretty poor way to recognise employee loyalty - people are essentially all made redundant and invited to "apply" for the job they already have. *That's* your race to the bottom but asking new recruits to work more flexibly isn't.
Don't get me wrong: I appreciate that losing control of the last day of the week that your job hasn't got first dibs on is a big thing, but there has to be some way to move towards the Sunday service not being such a uncertain operation.