BBC reporting that Agency staff could cover strikes under law change

[Ivor]

Can a TOC decide which worker they will get or do they just ask the agency and then someone turns up ?

I’m an agency worker of several years & to answer your question an agency is asked to fill positions normally weekly by the TOC if staff is required & “then someone turns up”

On the very rare occasion a TOC manager or supervisor may request a certain agency worker that they’ve been pleased with previously.

TOC management can contact the agency to say “we don’t want that person here again” hopefully that’s also rare but I have seen it happen.

 

[cactustwirly]

So wait, the RMT haven't yet got to the point of an offer but have balloted members on industrial action? As a long standing union member, and having spent many years as a rep I would be seriously uncomfortable asking fee paying members to lose wages without at least a clear ask or on an actual offer.


No you are not, and neither is the rest of the public. That will be dealt with in 2024, assuming of course that the opposition can muster some form of alternative, which sadly at the moment they are not. However in the meantime there is the stark reality that the pandemic spending still has to be accounted for. And believe me, public sector spending is the first place they will look to in order to try and rebalance the books. Let's face it, they have no problems in losing 93K jobs in the civil service, do you really think they are not going to look at what they probably see as an expensive train set for more savings. I mean everyone has a car right, so where's the harm?

Exactly I can see the D word coming in, after they have passed through anti strike legislation. It would be very easy for them to implement and there would be very little the RMT could do.

 

[Starmill]

It’s not drivers who are striking!!!

Not immediately, but Hull Trains and Greater Anglia drivers have announced strike action.

 

[cactustwirly]

Indeed.

The privatisation fiasco has baked in artificial costs such as train leasing which look unlikely to be addressed anytime soon.

I wouldn't say they are artificial costs, the alternative is buying the carriages outright. The cost is still there.

 

[brad465]

I completely agree. The government have deliberately engineered this whole situation and the RMT are playing right into their hands by calling three days of strikes in a week, something that will cripple a lot of people financially.

The railway runs on overtime. An overtime ban would have been much more effective and harder to plan contingency for. Even an overtime ban for two weeks of every four week pay cycle.

Let's say these strikes go ahead and the government don't budge, then what? What's RMT's plan B? Another week of strikes? An overtime ban AFTER they've just skinted all their members?

This isn't the 1980s. Most railway staff don't live in council houses any more. We are in the middle of a cost of living crisis and it won't take much for the strikes to crumble. Maybe two weeks for the cracks to show and three weeks for them to collapse altogether. No more. Anyone would be stupid to believe otherwise.

The government want further legislation to undermine trade unions, they want to make massive cuts on the railway, and the RMT leadership are handing the opportunity to them on a silver platter. They are not boxing clever at all, and are leading the members over a cliff with this suicidal strategy.

I hope common sense prevails before next week, but I doubt it.

"And then they came for the trade unionists, but I didn't speak up because I'm not a trad Unionist..."

No you are not, and neither is the rest of the public. That will be dealt with in 2024, assuming of course that the opposition can muster some form of alternative, which sadly at the moment they are not. However in the meantime there is the stark reality that the pandemic spending still has to be accounted for. And believe me, public sector spending is the first place they will look to in order to try and rebalance the books. Let's face it, they have no problems in losing 93K jobs in the civil service, do you really think they are not going to look at what they probably see as an expensive train set for more savings. I mean everyone has a car right, so where's the harm?

From past experience they won't save money cutting the civil service, they'll hire some contractors in who get paid more money than the civil servants before. Whether the same applies here though cost wise is another story, but there's also the fact we know how "well" agency staff work turns out from P&O.

 

[irish_rail]

I think what it really means is that companies such as LSL, DRS and West Coast could be contracted in by TOCs to operate services for them on strike days. Of course that’ll make little difference with the signallers on strike!

I rather suspect the Aslef members in those operators you mention won't be prepared to become scabs. The idea drivers can be replaced by agentcy types is cloud cuckoo stuff. Same with signallers. Probably guards as well. Its typical Boris bluff and agency guards if they did happen would backfire terribly as every single incident would be seized upon by the driver . The agency staff wouldn't last 5 minutes without FULL training.

 

[alistairlees]

Actually if you look at other skilled jobs that have a proportion of agency staff, such as medical (not just nurses, its even doctors now), you find a good number of fully qualified staff there who previously got training and experience as employees, but no longer care for all the associated baggage of lower pay, excessive internal politics, etc, that direct employees get stuck with.

Yes, but doctors' and nurses' training is not location, route or vehicle-specific. It is universal - once they have been trained, and assuming they maintain their competency, then they can practice anywhere - certainly in the UK and (with a little bit of extra training) elsewhere in the world.

This is not at all the case with railway duties. Unless there are agency staff sitting around who are trained on routes, traction or locations, then they will be unable to use agency staff. I get that agency staff can be (and are) used for some roles, e.g. some station duties, including despatch - though I have seen some fairly lackadaisical despatch practices by such staff.

 

[Mojo]

In reality all agency staff are going to be able to do is provide customers with information they probably could have found out themselves on the web anyway.

 

[O L Leigh]

Actually if you look at other skilled jobs that have a proportion of agency staff, such as medical (not just nurses, its even doctors now), you find a good number of fully qualified staff there who previously got training and experience as employees, but no longer care for all the associated baggage of lower pay, excessive internal politics, etc, that direct employees get stuck with.

Agency spend in the healthcare sector is actually a massive issue right now. Of the various options available for covering shifts, agency staff is by far the most expensive. Most hospitals are looking at ways of driving this down by better use of existing resources.

But that’s off-topic.

 

[D1537]

You assume this legislation is primarily aimed at the railway unions. I don't think it is.

Bingo. This isn't aimed at rail workers, even someone as clueless as Shapps will be aware you can't replace safety critical workers with agency staff.

This is almost certainly aimed at other sectors which the government is also planning to fail to give pay rises to.

 

[Hellzapoppin]

Long term use of contractors can be expensive but for short term it's very cost effective.

 

[C96]

How can the RMT be unrealistic when no offer whatsoever has been tabled. Listen, let's put away our prejudices whatever they may be. I'm no RMT fan as I have pointed out on here time and time again. But in truth we have been offered no pay rise now in three years. We were all very tolerant during the pandemic and accepted they were difficult times. We turned up for work whilst 90% of the population were paid 80% of their wage for sitting on their backsides and polluting Bournemouth beach. I certainly won't be lectured by those who benefitted from furlough.
But you have to also remember that pay inflation over the whole economy in the past three years has been near 15%, we have seen nothing of that. We now have inflation at 9% and rising. We are taking a serious pay hit no matter how you look at it. If we were offered 5% it would only be the equivalent of 1.66% per each of the three years, but it would be better than nothing.

You need to stop thinking asking for a pay rise is greedy. It is not greedy if you are willing to accept half the inflation rate. That is tolerant of the economic position of the country. But this lot in power seem to think Oliver Twist was the devil.

You bring up about lack productivity due to furlough, however you miss the point that during the pandemic a reduced timetable was in place whilst retaining fully staffed numbers. Therefore whilst not on furlough, a lot of standbys (at home) were increased, instead of working.

 

[yorksrob]

I wouldn't say they are artificial costs, the alternative is buying the carriages outright. The cost is still there.

It is, but leasing represents a far greater cost over the lifetime of rolling stock than buying outright.

 

[Captain Chaos]

I think some people are misinterpreting what schapps said about not doing overtime following strikes.

From the bbc…https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-61773437

“Meanwhile, writing in the Sun on Sunday, Mr Shapps warned rail workers who plan to strike this month that they will not be able to work overtime on subsequent days to top-up pay they will lose as a result of taking part in the action. It is is understood this is because rail companies may decide to run restricted timetables after the strike days.”

So, basically, no overtime on the days immediately after because we will likely be operating a different timetable and will have more staff than we need anyway. That truly is the hottest of hot air I've seen coming out of someone's mouth in a while. I mean, yeah, obviously...

 

[Craig1122]

Given the number of sectors suffering from labour shortages at the moment, who are these hundreds if not thousands of agency workers currently just sitting at home waiting to come to work on rail strike days?

 

[DynamicSpirit]

How can the RMT be unrealistic when no offer whatsoever has been tabled. Listen, let's put away our prejudices whatever they may be. I'm no RMT fan as I have pointed out on here time and time again. But in truth we have been offered no pay rise now in three years.

Inflation has also hovered very close to zero for the last 3 years, until it started rising 6 months ago.

We were all very tolerant during the pandemic and accepted they were difficult times. We turned up for work whilst 90% of the population were paid 80% of their wage for sitting on their backsides and polluting Bournemouth beach. I certainly won't be lectured by those who benefitted from furlough.

I doubt it was 90% of the population. And yes, you had to work when other people didn't, but it presumably meant you kept job security on a full salary when many others didn't. A good many other people lost their jobs. Most of those who are self-employed or run their own businesses would have endured a lot of financial difficuilties. A number of companies - and quite a few small businesses - went bust. You're playing a rather dangerous game if you start down the 'we had it worse than everyone else' route.

You need to stop thinking asking for a pay rise is greedy. It is not greedy if you are willing to accept half the inflation rate. That is tolerant of the economic position of the country. But this lot in power seem to think Oliver Twist was the devil.

Even half the inflation rate means that you're expecting the taxpayers and passengers (who ultimately fund the railway) to pay more for it. Where do you think the money is going to come from?

 

[adc82140]

"Commuters acting as guards" Some of you lot crack me up.

There genuinely was a madcap idea to have "commuter guards", although it had nothing to do with strike cover. I believe it was early SWT, and the idea was that they would go along closing all the doors on the slammers at Waterloo to save time. I'll see if I can find any reference for this, it may well of course have been a newspaper getting the wrong end of the stick.

Edit: Here we are. I stand corrected it was Great Eastern, not SWT:

Commuter rail guards plan is quietly dropped

A railway company's scheme to employ regular passengers as guards on its trains has been quietly dropped.

www.independent.co.uk

A railway company's scheme to employ regular passengers as guards on its trains has been quietly dropped.

Although Great Eastern Railways officially insists it is keeping open the option of training regular passengers to look after safety, it has assured unions the plan will not go ahead.

 

[Wolfie]

Also worrying is the fact that the Government are proposing to impose reduced timetables on non strike days to prevent staff recouping their losses on overtime.

So not only do we have a strike on some days, we have the Government imposing an overtime ban the rest of the week.

Shapps clearly has no consideration for passengers as I can't see many of us supporting reduced timetables on behalf of the Treasury.

I predicted that. HMG wants to win this fight and was never going to make it pain free for anyone who strikes.

 

[gazzaa2]

You know, it is so blindingly obvious what the government's game plan is it would almost be funny if it where not so serious. Of course they are not going to be able to bring in agency staff to cover critical roles during the strikes. But they could quite easily change how recruitment going forward works, so instead of directly hiring staff to work on the railways they could instead ask agencies to do so instead. And it already happens in the public sector.

An under siege Johnson is relishing a re-run of the Miner's Strike.

 

[yorksrob]

I predicted that. HMG wants to win this fight and was never going to make it pain free for strikets

They seem extremely relaxed about throwing passengers under the bus as well.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 12 Jun 2022 ==

An under siege Johnson is relishing a re-run of the Miner's Strike.

The thing about the miners strike was that the government stockpiled coal beforehand, so the general public weren't affected by power cuts etc.

This won't be the case for a long drawn out rail strike.

 

[gazzaa2]

I have read, that the government is going to ban overtime, to the strikers, on following days of the strike, so they cant recoup lost wages.

It's a difficult one as the railways are run on overtime, but it's a lot easier to strike if you can just make the pay up on other days.

Northern for example were on strike every Saturday for ages (the worst day to work funnily enough) but could still make up pay through the week.

 

[Need2]

Even half the inflation rate means that you're expecting the taxpayers and passengers (who ultimately fund the railway) to pay more for it. Where do you think the money is going to come from?

That isn’t mine or any other employee’s problem.
A pay rise of 50% of the inflation rate is still a cut in basic living standards.

 

[theageofthetra]

Why do you think?

It's a corrupt industry?

 

[DynamicSpirit]

That isn’t mine or any other employee’s problem.
A pay rise of 50% of the inflation rate is still a cut in basic living standards.

Sure, it's a cut in living standards. But there's a good reason that: Thanks to various things (including, most obviously, Ukraine and Covid), we cannot currently as a country maintain the same living standards that we had a few years ago: We are almost all suffering from that. Nationally, the 'pie' that we all share is a bit smaller than before.

By demanding a pay rise - even one that's less than inflation - the Unions are, in effect, demanding that their workers, uniquely, should be partially protected from that shrinking pie - which obviously means that they are, for practical purposes, demanding that everyone else takes an even bigger hit. (Which will manifest itself in any rail pay increase feeding through to either higher inflation or higher taxes or higher Government borrowing (which itself will lead to higher inflation or higher taxes in the future).

 

[ungreat]

People will believe that agency staff can be train crews.

 

[43096]

A few years back on a GA strike, an infill conductor opened the doors on the wrong side at Cromer

And regular guards have never done this...?

 

[DorkingMain]

So wait, the RMT haven't yet got to the point of an offer but have balloted members on industrial action? As a long standing union member, and having spent many years as a rep I would be seriously uncomfortable asking fee paying members to lose wages without at least a clear ask or on an actual offer.

Speaking to several friends at other TOCs and from my own experience, the messaging has basically been "You're getting nothing, deal with it - we can't afford it, the railway has no passengers anymore".

Therefore I'm doubtful it would have ever got to the point of an "offer" without the ballot / action

 

[Geeves]

The hired hands they brought in years ago to try and water down the station grades are now also in the RMT.

 

[irish_rail]

Sure, it's a cut in living standards. But there's a good reason that: Thanks to various things (including, most obviously, Ukraine and Covid), we cannot currently as a country maintain the same living standards that we had a few years ago: We are almost all suffering from that. Nationally, the 'pie' that we all share is a bit smaller than before.

By demanding a pay rise - even one that's less than inflation - the Unions are, in effect, demanding that their workers, uniquely, should be partially protected from that shrinking pie - which obviously means that they are, for practical purposes, demanding that everyone else takes an even bigger hit. (Which will manifest itself in any rail pay increase feeding through to either higher inflation or higher taxes or higher Government borrowing (which itself will lead to higher inflation or higher taxes in the future).

Thats utter bull I'm sorry but saying that union demand rises and everyone else loses as a result is utter tosh. Most people have experienced some form of payrise in the past 3 years, only the railways have had none. So if anything, it is all those payrises for sometimes pointless jobs outside of the railway , over the past 3 years, often for people who sat at home on furlough , that is leading to no money in the kitty for rail workers.

 

[43096]

Also worrying is the fact that the Government are proposing to impose reduced timetables on non strike days to prevent staff recouping their losses on overtime.

So not only do we have a strike on some days, we have the Government imposing an overtime ban the rest of the week.

Shapps clearly has no consideration for passengers as I can't see many of us supporting reduced timetables on behalf of the Treasury.

It's not about the Treasury. It's about turning the screw on those on strike so they get hit in the pocket. Rest day working and overtime agreements can be terminated by either side: it's a tactic the unions are happy to play, so it's fair game for the Government, too.