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Transpennine Industrial Relations
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Committed Sundays that are outside of the working week is essentially overtime, if a staff member wants the day off, they will ask a colleague to cover it or ask rosters to cover it, if that can't be done then they have to do it, you can't take an Annual Leave day on a Sunday that's outside the working week.
I always felt that Sunday as committed but outside the working week was the worst of both worlds. Not counted as part of your salary for mortgage or pension purposes, no sick pay if you're unwell yet you can't book the day off, you need to try and find a swap or you have to work it. I would much rather have Sunday within the working week.
Committed overtime means that it is not part of your base pay or hours, but if you don't want to work it you have to find someone else to cover for you. You can't just say 'no thanks I'd like my day off' - so in that way it is forced.
A couple of ways . The following are fairly standard
1) spare turns , a roster will be put together to average the working hours (let's say 35) and the spare turns will be a set length sometimes an average of all turns and sometimes some other measure will be used . Either way in most places you can he marked to any job length off spare so you could he shown 8 hrs spare and given a 10 hour job .The two hours is paid as overtime but it's forced .
2) Sundays - fairly standard for Sundays to be outside the week but the roster will be show "booked Sundays" with people being obliged to work these outside their working week if no cover can be found
dk1
Veteran Member
It’s very rare as drivers that we have to do it at my TOC even if declined. Our duty managers will bend over backwards & offer lots of carrots to get the turn covered for us. Sometimes it’s as easy as getting another driver volunteer but there are those that will say they won’t be in regardless & very little can or is ever done about it in my experience.
As its committed overtime, you have to do the overtime as its contracted unless you find cover
It sounds like it is part of your contract rather than "forced".
It’s also not pensionable either!
That sucks, but I’m not sure what teachers’ pay has to do with railway industrial disputes. It sounds as though you’d like to see other people made worse off, rather than improving things for yourself.
Much to the very clear disappointment of many on here. The same people over and over again who are clearly triggered by the prospect of unions standing up for their members.
It has been clearly explained that, in this instance, Sundays are not part of the working week, but staff are effectively compelled to work them if cover cannot be found. That time is over and above normal contracted hours and additional payment is received. So it is absolutely “forced” overtime.
Robertj21a
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Agree with the 'working together is the way forward'. One continual problem is that Unions (usually the RMT) seem to occasionally take delight at threatening industrial action over seemingly fairly trivial issues - sometimes their own members clearly don't know why they're planning to strike.
I know the management can also be at fault but isn't it about time that the RMT improved too?
I am not referring to contracted hours, but your contract as in your T&C's.
So is it part of your contract?
75A
Established Member
See #522 Rostered Overtime
75A
Established Member
I don't know I've retired
Not disputing that it's part of the T's & C's .
But it is overtime in that it is outside the working week at some places , and at some places there is no choice about working it in some circumstances . Sounds pretty "forced" to me .
Not to mention traincrew fairly often don't have a "contract" T's and C's are made up of a combination of agreements some of them dating back to BR days .
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I don’t know what the exact contractual mechanism is, but why does it matter (my Sundays are inside, incidentally)?
It’s overtime, over and above the normal working week, which employees have no option but to work if they cannot find cover. If they do work it they will spend an additional day at work - and that has a big impact of lifestyle with railway shifts being as extreme and anti social as they are.
This arrangement effectively transfers the risk of short staffing onto the shoulders of the employees.
In industries where there is a defined way of assessing performance and not collective bargaining, there is a need to distinguish between good and bad performance. In order to reward good performance within an overall budget set at CPIH, some people need to get less than inflationary rises, and most likely nothing.
Of course, that isn't how the railway works but it is how other industries do. I absolutely agree that those at the bottom of the wage scales need to have inflationary increases, less so further up.
Railway wages have risen closer to the rate of inflation than many other industries.
I just wanted a straight forward yes or no to a straight forward question.
Falcon1200
Established Member
Although, unless staffing agreements have been drastically changed, staff surely knew that was the case when they applied for the job, and they were not forced into their particular role ? And is the additional pay for Sunday shifts not welcome to many people, money which would disappear if Sunday became part of the working week, with the compensation of more time off.
I was making the point that people who are outperforming in the private sector are likely to be offered above inflation pay rises, driven by market pressure i.e. a competitor will be able to poach them easily. But that's a bit off topic here.
There were NO committed Sundays when I started with my Toc, I voted against committed Sundays deal but people see £s and that's why I don't want Sundays as part of the working week.
Better pay offered by many tocs attracts drivers from the lower paid tocs, so some tocs are training tocs and others just poach drivers. So market forces are quite strong on the railways.
You should know by now that there's no such thing as straight forward on the railway .
The railway as an industry does tend to have above average staff retention so the chances of a number of staff having been there prior to agreements being changed is increased.
Extra money is welcome to some , but equally not others , as post #522 aludes to for some they'd rather have the day off for the renumeration on offer epecially those with family . Dependent on grade the base salary without Sunday is more than enough. I tend not to work that many Sundays because some of the work is undesirable , it isn't pensionable and I'd rather spend the time with family and friends . Plenty of young single new entrants who will lap them up though .
But what is the relevance of the contractual arrangements to the question of whether or not the overtime is forced? It has been explained above why this type of overtime is regarded as forced rather than voluntary.
It probably depends when people joined the industry, to be fair. Personally I have Sundays inside and I’m happy with that. As for the money side of things, it can be very lucrative, but personally I’d rather have all overtime as completely voluntary. The job can be difficult enough just on the basic hours.
The difficulty with that nowadays is that pay at the top is restricted in accordance with public sector policy however, apart from at a few places such as Eurostar, Lumo, Grand Central and Hull Trains, who can of course increase pay as much as they want.
I'd not count on Eurostar, Great Central or Hull Trains having the resources to increase pay at the moment given they haven't had the same sort of support offered to the franchised TOCs.
In order for any company to be able to increase pay, they need to have had the corresponding increase in their revenue. Using government support to pay for pay increases won't go down well with those taxpayers who themselves aren't seeing increases in their pay.
The money to pay for pay rises has to come from a genuine source of that money although I agree that there can be some smoothing out over time.
nedchester
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I really don’t understand when you work for an industry that is 24/7 that you should expect to contractually expect Sundays off. That sort of thing is for the dark ages.
Imagine calling for an ambulance and getting the message that the crew hadn’t volunteered to work Sunday! It’s bonkers. It’s that kind of thing that needs to be sorted out.
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Worth bearing in mind though that if the government wants to start going into the detail about how much public money is being spent in the industry , it's also going to have to be prepared for taking some of the flack behind the poor management and decision making that had led to some pretty poor outcomes for passengers . Yes rail staff will struggle to get public support if viewed as public sector workers . But the dft are going to have to acknowledge that they have played their part in underfunding the industry so there aren't enough traincrew to run anything resembling a service without overtime as just one example .
I'm not alone in the industry or as an interested party in thinking that the DFT with their patently poor understanding of operations is behind many of the woes the industry faces . Look at some of the recent threads on this board , the tannoy spam one (most announcements are DFT mandated) or the one about RRB and diversion route review (the DFT have been tightening the purse strings for at least a decade making it less viable to divert services) and those two things aren't even about the the serious and nuanced operational issues .
I'm not alone in the industry or as an interested party in thinking that the DFT with their patently poor understanding of operations is behind many of the woes the industry faces . Look at some of the recent threads on this board , the tannoy spam one (most announcements are DFT mandated) or the one about RRB and diversion route review (the DFT have been tightening the purse strings for at least a decade making it less viable to divert services) and those two things aren't even about the the serious and nuanced operational issues .
I think the problem, except for people who've built habits over the decades in terms of never working Sundays, which I can understand to a degree, is usually the naff strings attached. Busting up long weekends and the like. I had one weekend off in 9 on one roster I worked and it was absolutely rubbish.
irish_rail
On Moderation
But knowing plenty of my colleagues will happily choose to work the Sunday for overtime, why should I feel the need to be compelled to work Sundays?
It works the same in loads of industries. Let those that want to chase the dollar work the Sundays etc and everyone is happy. If occasionally not enough volunteer then its hardly the end of the world. Better diagramming would help to solve the problem and encourage more to volunteer in the first place.
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