Thanks all for the insights
Re rostering. Obviously it would be better to recruit more staff. Without that, if i understand correctly, staff work 8-ish hour shifts, plus, if they choose, 4-ish hours overtime, and certain moves are covered permanently on overtime? This is how it was in Royal Mail 30 years ago, dunno about now. If this is correct, how feasable would it be to rearrange it all so that the last (few), and indeed first (few) trains are covered on standard shifts, and all overtime is in the middle of the day, on the end of earlies/beginning of lates? Or as someone suggested, cover them on night turns?
This must all be worked out with full cooperation with, and approval from, the people who will actually be working the shifts - and their unions, to provide support and also ensure a level of solidarity and publicity. Which brings me to
The whole "scab" culture is something that should be left back in the 1980s where it belongs. If it still exists today it needs stamping out because it did the TU movement no favours, and caused way more damage than it solved.
Absolutely, levels of hate towards "scabs" need to be kept in check - everyone has their reasons, aswell as a right to opinions - but perhaps rather than look at it as whether or not a person joins or breaks a strike, look at it as having solidarity with their colleagues (customers of a business need to look at this aswell*). After all, you would appreciate solidarity if you had a grievance. And as others have said, if you benefit from a change in working practices or whatever but haven't sacrificed for it (remember, people don't get paid while on strike), you can understand people having an issue.
*It does need to be acknowledged, however, that strikes are not necessarily always the best PR move, especially in our bought and paid for mainstream media driven world. Years ago when benefit staff went on strike and claimants didn't get paid, someone suggested what they could instead have done was issue maximum payouts. That way claimants would be totally on their side, rather than simply hating them even more than they did anyway. This could perhaps manifest in the railway as simply letting people travel free. Tactics like this would not only garner much more support, but may be listened to by the desired people a little bit sooner. Anyway, drifting off topic...
Back to this current issue, one or two people suggested the government, for whatever reasons, may be happy for more people to use cars (or planes) rather than trains, thus potentially little incentive to intervene here. I had been wondering the same, but also if there could perhaps be an element of the age old tactic of running something down, or atleast not improving it, so as to bribe people into accepting or even demanding whatever alternative is put on the table. In this case possibly to quell opposition to HS2?
