At least, unlike Northern, they are providing replacement buses and being a bit more transparent too - actually telling passengers planning to travel on shorter services that they are cancelling their services to try and keep longer distance services operating.
Yep
That sounds good practice, totally opposite to my years in the power industry. There was little sickness with shift workers. If anyone went sick that job had to be covered by someone on a day off. Christmas time was definitely a sickness no-no. Unless you were dead you went into work.
Absolutly. Always best to have that kind of attitude towards genuine sicknesses. And there will of course be some staff off sick over new year along with max allowance of annual leave.
So why would they not just use that standard 'cancelled due to a shortage of train crew' message? Used almost daily, without the need to seemingly pressurise train crew into not being off sick.
.... comparative limited capacity of our Sunday timetable ....
that sounds like a gobbledegook way of saying we planned wrong timetable.
1/10 for their own timetable planning teams then, dropping them in it
Couldnt be further from the reality of it.
Stick with A Levels or the new starters won't stick around - will last 18 to 24 months and then move onto something with a bigger salary.
You say that, but at the end of the day isn't that the goal whether you've got a degree, or A-levels, or GCSEs, or no qualifications at all? Some jobs will always just be starter roles that people can come into with limited experience, gain the experience, and move into something 'better' (better is of course subjective). Aye, you'll get a subset of people who will go into that job and they're content at doing the same job for the rest of their living days, but it's more and more common now to leave jobs after a year or two to get more/different experience or better development opportunities, a better manager or just more money. And chances are when they do leave we'll still keep them in the industry anyway, they'll just move to another department or company so we aren't losing their skills, enthusiasm and experience from the railway as a whole.
GTR offer more than that even for industrial placement students in their planning unit - £29k plus better travel perks, and I suspect the quality of training received is better at GTR than at NR...
Train planning underpins service delivery, and the high levels of churn and lack of experience, particularly at Network Rail, have real implications for the reliability of the network. Mind you, I can't think of many other starter jobs in the operations function which give you the experience to progress and don't include shift work.
Almost certainly not permitted these days by the DfT that controls TOC expenditure.
I'd understand this at micromanaged OLR tocs - but for others - ie private businesses, surely this is overreach. Would be interesting to know what penalty a private TOC faces for a train cancelled, when they are banned from paying to entice in the staff they need. I try imagine a scenario where a TCS (train crew supervisor) cannot offer drivers & guards extra pay for staff to work overtime... the job would stop completely.
Depending on where and when the fair was held, you may well have just been talking to people on the graduate scheme who won't necessarily know technical details. Whenever I've bumped into NR people at careers fairs, that has been my impression. A bit disappointing that they didn't read up on the roles they were recruiting for, though!
