Rail industry preparing for national strikes

[Fokx]

Not before the rail industry has lost a huge amount of revenue and public confidence.

That can take years to recover.

That is the assumption but that’s not correct. If you use the last two years as an example, the industry has recovered much faster than was expected across the board.

Infact they’ve recovered too quickly and there isn’t enough staff or rolling stock to run a full timetable at nearly every TOC and it’s causing issues in itself.

Recent industrial action at TPE hasn’t seen a dramatic drop in passenger numbers, infact they’ve increased in some weeks. Season ticket numbers and commuting is seeing a small increase, and leisure travel is rocketing despite service cuts, service removals and less frequent services

 

[Gems]

Chaps, Don't be hoodwinked by the subsidy sob story. There isn't a railway network in the world that isn't subsidised. It's all Tory smoke and mirrors.

 

[dk1]

I guess I'm the exception then. I haven't used a mainline train since March 2020 and now I'm back in the office, I'm enjoying the warmth of my car, travel when I want to, a guaranteed seat, no cancellations and I'm able to avoid delays with Google Maps.

Carry you on then. No need for this to bother you.

 

[Nicholas Lewis]

All whilst the rich get richer, new billionaires getting created each year, multi-nationals avoiding tax and energy companies are making excessive profits.

Billionaires don't travel by train just ordinary folk trying to do there job and make a living like railway staff. This is why I hope RMT use the mandate to strengthen their hand in negotiations initially and DfT recognise they need to be realistic.

 

[TUC]

I do hope the outcome of any strike is to make it clear the unions how little we are dependent upin rail, especially outside London. People just getting on with life would be a very healthy reality check.

 

[cactustwirly]

You’ve just had two years practice of not doing that, I’m sure you’ll survive one day a week without trains.

You’ll live (and develop other pleasures)

Yes, probably finding other modes of transport.

Commuters won't be tempted back to a railway on strike, this is when the railway needs to tempt back commuters.
You have TOCs like Southern removing 46 trains without any replacement, because there aren't enough passengers to justify them.

The railways are already massively subsidized compared to pre pandemic.

Train crew are already paid very well for the jobs they do, I don't see why the taxpayer should stump up for payrises when there are more important things to spend it with. Ie supporting people through the cost of living crisis who genuinely need it.

Ofc if the railways were fully supported by the fare paying passenger, then I wouldn't have a problem.

 

[zwk500]

Oh come along now. Let's be honest. The government have been totally incompetent. They and their cronies have blocked any form of pay negotiation. All they had to do was get around the table. Inflation is at 10% and rising.

Let's be realistic - the Government is provoking this fight. Much like they did with Guards on Southern. How'd that go?

 

[A0]

That is the assumption but that’s not correct. If you use the last two years as an example, the industry has recovered much faster than was expected across the board.

Infact they’ve recovered too quickly and there isn’t enough staff or rolling stock to run a full timetable at nearly every TOC and it’s causing issues in itself.

Recent industrial action at TPE hasn’t seen a dramatic drop in passenger numbers, infact they’ve increased in some weeks. Season ticket numbers and commuting is seeing a small increase, and leisure travel is rocketing despite service cuts, service removals and less frequent services

Fine - if you think the rail industry can take its customers for granted. The evidence of what happens to organisations which do that is out there. People will change their behaviour, companies are now geared up for many people to work from home. The impact of a strike will be negligible compared to what it would have been 10 or 20 years ago.

 

[Watershed]

So, how long might it be until a strike will happen?

Days? Weeks? Months?

At least 14 days' notice of a strike is required. Of course it's possible that people will already start refusing to work overtime/rest days now that the result has been announced, with deleterious consequences for the service (as has happened over at ScotRail).

In reality I would expect the first strikes to be announced for mid-June. And to continue for months.

 

[ungreat]

Providing evidence for something qualitative like that is nigh on impossible.

Yes, I definitely provide a better passenger experience on my guarded trains than on DOO ones if the various letters of commendation for personal interventions over the years on my file are anything to go by - everything from identifying and dealing with vulnerable people to managing accidents out in the sticks to helping deal with a train on fire (thankfully just about ECS having kicked the passengers off it).

Dissatisfaction with the availability of staff on the train is far higher on DOO TOCs in the last full Passenger Focus survey than on TOCs with on board staff, which suggests that it is an important measure - the main guarded TOC coming anywhere near is WMR which is well known for having nearly invisible guards on various routes for various reasons - you can note what you like about that against the previous plans to introduce DCO there and whether that may change service standards in ways either positive or negative.

If staff availability wasn't something people were concerned about you'd expect it to be a lower figure, when it's actually one of the bigger negatives.

Id sooner have a guard than a pay rise. I hate DOO. 23 years of it with current TOC. 12 years before with a guard . I prefer my mate at my back

 

[43066]

It's easy, with hindsight, to criticise the process by which Covid recovery funds were allocated - but we shouldn't lose sight of quite how quickly the world shut down and something had to be put in place to prevent a huge number of business failures. Inevitably when things are done in a rush, quality suffers - but there was a need for an "at pace" response.

I’m afraid I don’t agree. Much of the Covid response was utterly reckless and a sign of complete political cowardice. It’s probably more embarrassing to try to recover it as it would expose the negligence of the decision making. So easier just to write it off and not open the Pandora’s box.

Just like when we discussed ROSCO profits, you’re notably relaxed about billions being frittered away, but incredibly fiscally conservative when it comes to low paid railway grades getting a pay rise!

 

[142blue]

DEFEND JOBS, PAY & CONDITIONS - AVANTI WEST COAST



I write to advise you that the ballot has now closed and the result is as follows: -



Are you prepared to take strike action?



Number of individuals who were entitled to vote in the ballot: 1931

Number of votes cast in the ballot: 1422

Number of individuals answering “Yes” to the question: 1330

Number of individuals answering “No” to the question: 89

Number of spoiled or otherwise invalid voting papers returned: 3



Are you prepared to take industrial action short of a strike?



Number of individuals who were entitled to vote in the ballot: 1931

Number of votes cast in the ballot: 1422

Number of individuals answering “Yes” to the question: 1375

Number of individuals answering “No” to the question: 38

Number of spoiled or otherwise invalid voting papers returned: 9

 

[Gems]

Let's be realistic - the Government is provoking this fight. Much like they did with Guards on Southern. How'd that go?

How did the Northern guard strike go?. This time you have the whole railway fighting. Don't hold your breath.

 

[Peregrine 4903]

At least 14 days' notice of a strike is required. Of course it's possible that people will already start refusing to work overtime/rest days now that the result has been announced, with deleterious consequences for the service (as has happened over at ScotRail).

In reality I would expect the first strikes to be announced for mid-June. And to continue for months.

Months? I doubt that, not sure people can afford to do that. And don't think the government would allow that to happen. Either they will stop the strikes or put in anti union legislation by that point to prevent it.

 

[CFRAIL]

The railway industry is a high wage economy. This is a fact. Guards on min. £35k (SWR) and TfL forklift driver on £47K

Certainly not minimum 35k at my TOC

 

[class ep-09]

Signallers on Monday
PWay on Tuesday
Drivers on Wednesday
Guards on Thursday
Platform Staff on Friday
ECO on Saturday

Nobody works on Sundays anyway.

Railway Chaplains on Sunday

 

[TUC]

At least 14 days' notice of a strike is required. Of course it's possible that people will already start refusing to work overtime/rest days now that the result has been announced, with deleterious consequences for the service (as has happened over at ScotRail).

In reality I would expect the first strikes to be announced for mid-June. And to continue for months.

That's fine. I'll get on with life. I might or might not choose to catch a train when they choose to come back to work. Rail really is just one travel option for many of us,

 

[ANorthernGuard]

How did the Northern guard strike go?. This time you have the whole railway fighting. Don't hold your breath.

Bravo lol

 

[DanNCL]

So which one is it, if the railway is so essential, it should be treated like it is, but I’ve never felt so undervalued, over the past 2 years.

The railway is recovering? Definitely, but you would never know that, when you look at my local line, the train service is no better than it was during Covid, and as someone that works on the railway and uses it for leisure, it’s driven me away from using the services, in all honesty, unless I really have to.

Of course I support the strike action, but it’s disappointing it’s got to this, I don’t want to see mass walkouts and the railway being brought to a standstill, I have immense pride in my job, and for me the past 2 years, have been some of the hardest, I remember being scared to go to work at one point, not for my own health but for the health of my family.

If the ballot had been action short of a strike, no OT/no RDW especially on the NR, then there may as well be a strike anyway, the train service would be decimated in places, given how heavily reliant TOC’s/NR are on it!

It's essential for many people, and more importantly when it comes to NR it's essential for freight.

It's not essential for an ever increasing number of people who can and will vote with their feet.

I don’t know which part of the UK you are currently in but where I am the trains are mainly full and standing, and not just peak times.

The day after ‘normality’ I sent 4 full and standing reports from the 6 trains I worked that day. One of the highest complaints currently at my TOC is capacity issues (after cancellations)

They're often full and standing here too but that's not because people are returning en masse (apart from LNER which is a noteable outlier), but rather because capacity has been cut, and because services are frequently cancelled and people all get packed onto the following service.

That’s what public transport is, that’s why it exists.

It doesn't exist to provide the bare minimum it exists to provide a reliable public service that can be depended on. The reality now is that, for many, the railway can no longer be depended on.

RMT GTR voted for action short of a strike and against striking.
RMT Isle of Wight Island Line voted against strike and against action short of a strike.

Thank god some people have seen through the RMT's lies/value their customers more than their unions.

Does anyone know how LNER and XC have voted? I have no shadow of a doubt that TPE will have voted for all out action considering they're already striking on Sundays.

Under 30k on Northern

I'll admit I expected it to be higher than that.

Oh come along now. Let's be honest. The government have been totally incompetent. They and their cronies have blocked any form of pay negotiation. All they had to do was get around the table. Inflation is at 10% and rising.

If you want to see incompetence. Look to a government who's amazing leader between getting Pissed and telling lies, openly admitted he signed the NI protocol believing the EU would never hold him to it.

There Sherlock is your villain's. Not workers who turned up for work during a pandemic to be coughed, sneezed and in some cases spat at.

The government are indeed incompetent, and the RMT have timed this announcement just in time to distract people from the Sue Grey report, counderproductive if you ask me. But then so is nearly everything the RMT do.

Is there any proof that the DFT are the ones refusing to negotiate? Because as far as I understand there's been at the very least an equal lack of willingness to negotiate from the RMT too.

I guess I'm the exception then. I haven't used a mainline train since March 2020 and now I'm back in the office, I'm enjoying the warmth of my car, travel when I want to, a guaranteed seat, no cancellations and I'm able to avoid delays with Google Maps.

Indeed and many others will no doubt take the same decision as you already have.

Infact they’ve recovered too quickly and there isn’t enough staff or rolling stock to run a full timetable at nearly every TOC and it’s causing issues in itself.

They haven't got enough staff because they haven't managed themselves properly. They had the staff before the pandemic and almost all of them are still on the rosters.

 

[dk1]

Id sooner have a guard than a pay rise. I hate DOO. 23 years of it with current TOC. 12 years before with a guard . I prefer my mate at my back

Hear Hear

 

[ar10642]

They’ll be back.
Regardless of this fantasy where passengers leave in droves, they come back as they don’t have a choice. People don’t use the train because they want to, they use it because they have to and it’s quite often the most time saving and efficient way to travel across the UK, wether it’s one stop or twenty

Even the hypothetical man who buys a car for his commute, will still return to the train as soon as his car is in for repair or as soon as he wants to go to see a football game or have a night on the town.

Not if they can't rely on it to actually get them there. I personally worked with an office full of people that was practically attached to Haywards Heath station, parking was expensive and lots of people took the train. When the Southern DOO strikes happened, many of them switched to driving even parking a 15 minute walk away and never went back, because that was better than being left stranded by the railway.

 

[MadCommuter]

Why are you bothering with a railway forum then if you hate trains so much?

I came looking for information and view points that you don't get in the mainstream media. I never used to hate trains, and actually still don't, it's just that the world has changed and the railway ticketing system hasn't, so using peak time trains for commuting, isn't worth it for me. That has forced me to look at other options.

 

[Fokx]

Fine - if you think the rail industry can take its customers for granted. The evidence of what happens to organisations which do that is out there. People will change their behaviour, companies are now geared up for many people to work from home. The impact of a strike will be negligible compared to what it would have been 10 or 20 years ago.

The people who can work from home are already doing so and won’t be impacting. You’d be surprised at the number of railway staff who are still working from home.

Leisure travel is the cash cow, not commuter traffic

 

[Philip]

Well I for one and very angry right now.

We need strong anti-strike legislation immediately - Too late for now but it is not right that the RMT can hold the country to ransom whenever they feel like it without any regard for the people that you are harming.

Another Summer down the drain - thanks lads - at least that is tomorrow sorted to cancel all of my plans.

Workers have rights and striking is one of them, if they're unhappy with the way they're being treated by the bosses. Perhaps you should direct your anger towards the government for bringing this about in the first place, rather than the railway workers.

Striking isn't even of much benefit to my ticket office role - if anything it will do more harm than good, but I support the action to be taken by the traincrew and signallers, they've had enough and it's up to the government now to re-evaluate and come back with something more reasonable.

 

[Wivenswold]

I fear a Unions v Tories battle on the horizon to match the Miners Strike in the early 80s. They need something to distract us from.....well, it's a long list for another day.

With the railways coming back under tighter DfT (and therefore Treasury) control don't put it past them to slog it out with railway staff and just start taking an axe to branch lines, stations and services because of those "greedy unions".

On the other hand, it could be a further PR blunder for No.10 and could topple the Government. I guess the narrative will depend on what the tabloid press barons decide is best for their profit margins. I hope the workers win this time.

 

[ainsworth74]

Well, they've got their mandate and no-one can argue it isn't a strong one. Personally I'm just sad. My gut feeling is that this will not end well. This Government and in particular the Treasury I can't see having any inclination to do anything other than offer perhaps a modest pay increase (well below inflation). I suspect anything else will require job cuts or productivity improvements. I hope I'm wrong and that the HM Treasury are bluffing and now having had their bluff called will do a deal. But I doubt it.

I suspect that HM Treasury will be rubbing that hands in glee at the opportunity to finally do something about the blasted railway and that bottomless pit of money (in their mind) that it consumes. I have no doubt that they're probably still irritated that whilst they were able to force pay freezes or 1% rises on the public sector the railway was able to get above inflation rises back during the worst of austerity in the early 2010s. Equally I'm sure that they're still rankling at the millions that they poured into the industry during Covid. I have no doubt that given their time again they'd have told all the TOCs to just furlough staff and not bother running anything other than a true skeleton service over most routes (enough perhaps to keep up route and traction knowledge with staff shuffling on and off furlough in sequence, see Eurostar for the example). Then there's the bunch of shysters that make up the actual Government. I have no doubt that they'll be ecstatic at the opportunity to have a good punch up with a Union. That's some nice juicy red meat to feed to their base and to the Daily Mail et al to distract from their mates ransacking the country and all the booze fuelled parties that were definitely work events.

Hopefully I'm just pessimistic and this will all work out okay in the long run. But right now? I can't help but feeling that even if a short term deal is secured in the long run the Treasury will finally be able to manoeuvre things to do real damage to what it sees as a blackhole eating it's money.

 

[nedchester]

This will be the Tories Miners dispute for 2022.

I hope I'm wrong but they've been waiting for this fight for a while.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 24 May 2022 ==

Well, they've got their mandate and no-one can argue it isn't a strong one. Personally I'm just sad. My gut feeling is that this will not end well. This Government and in particular the Treasury I can't see having any inclination to do anything other than offer perhaps a modest pay increase (well below inflation). I suspect anything else will require job cuts or productivity improvements. I hope I'm wrong and that the HM Treasury are bluffing and now having had their bluff called will do a deal. But I doubt it.

I suspect that HM Treasury will be rubbing that hands in glee at the opportunity to finally do something about the blasted railway and that bottomless pit of money (in their mind) that it consumes. I have no doubt that they're probably still irritated that whilst they were able to force pay freezes or 1% rises on the public sector the railway was able to get above inflation rises back during the worst of austerity in the early 2010s. Equally I'm sure that they're still rankling at the millions that they poured into the industry during Covid. I have no doubt that given their time again they'd have told all the TOCs to just furlough staff and not bother running anything other than a true skeleton service over most routes (enough perhaps to keep up route and traction knowledge with staff shuffling on and off furlough in sequence, see Eurostar for the example). Then there's the bunch of shysters that make up the actual Government. I have no doubt that they'll be ecstatic at the opportunity to have a good punch up with a Union. That's some nice juicy red meat to feed to their base and to the Daily Mail et al to distract from their mates ransacking the country and all the booze fuelled parties that were definitely work events.

Hopefully I'm just pessimistic and this will all work out okay in the long run. But right now? I can't help but feeling that even if a short term deal is secured in the long run the Treasury will finally be able to manoeuvre things to do real damage to what it sees as a blackhole eating it's money.

Exactly this.

 

[zwk500]

How did the Northern guard strike go?. This time you have the whole railway fighting. Don't hold your breath.

I'm on your side, just so you know. But I'm not holding my breath because it's obvious this is a fight the government want. There will likely be no winners. By the time a deal is agreed to end the dispute inflation will have risen faster than the pay offer so it will be meaningless.

 

[ar10642]

Let's be realistic - the Government is provoking this fight. Much like they did with Guards on Southern. How'd that go?

Lots of wasted time and the RMT lost.

 

[43066]

This will be the Tories Miners dispute for 2022.

I hope I'm wrong but they've been waiting for this fight for a while.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 24 May 2022 ==


Exactly this.

Remember, like it or not, you’re one of the miners!