I said something similar a few pages back. In fact I've been saying it for a while. The RMT needs public opinion on it's side because it'll give them a bigger clout with Northern. But the RMT seem to have gone down the all guns blazing, shoot first, ask questions later approach.
The thing is I don't think it's DOO but DCO.
Use all the semantics you want . If the train runs under sole operational control of the driver and can run without the second member of staff then the parts of the rulebook that are relevant are ones for DOO-P .
Indeed a point I made to him pages back and he never bothered responding . S/He Has absolutely no idea what they are going on about and has spent too much time listening to the table banging mess room lawyers who never actually know anything anyway .
I believe Northern will have to have an OBS on their services. So no "can run". Technically they can but officially they cannot.
To be fair, last year during the Christmas Shopping period, the service was so poor that a strike might actually improve the perception of the company if people abandon the railway.
I doubt that the Unions other than RMT, which are not in dispute, would tolerate this? There are a lot of staff at Northern who are in Unions other than RMT. If Northern were to insist on keeping these talks on hold they would likely find themselves in dispute with all of the Unions.
That's exactly the problem. So if Northern advise people not to travel by rail, people should really take that advice seriously. I expect the timetable that's offered could be reduced even further too. The chaos of people being left behind by full trains causes reputational damage. No trains or no travellers = no people caught up in said chaos.
What makes you believe that Northern wish to introduce a model like with an OBS as a necessity so the train can run ?
It has been made clear that passengers using those services have not been given advice not to travel, or even really informed of disruption. Many will have been sold an Advance ticket long after the strike was announced.
If there are no trains, you will not be using the trains.
Given that last year there were a large number of people who could not physically board trains due to the numbers traveling on December weekends, if people are asked not to travel and then find an alternative, they will be less disappointed resulting in less bad press. If final trains are leaving Manchester at 1700 and Northern have run a timetable earlier in the day which has brought people into the city centre, they will expect to get home. What are they going to do when hundreds and hundreds of people are left behind by the last train and the station is overcrowded?
I appreciate that , but some of those passengers would have undoubtedly been displaced passengers from Northern who had been given advice about the expected disruption , that incident that made the news occurred about an hour and a half after the last Northern service for the day .
I appreciate the situation last year , I was working during it . Weekends in december present a significant operational challenge with a full service . With a reduced service it is just a recipe for disaster .
But that's the whole point I'm making. Most people will use a bus or their car to complete their journey instead. It's the opposite of what we want, as supporters of the railway, but it's the only real alternative.
