Saturdays and Sundays should be inside the working week for drivers at all TOCs (not just some as at present)

[greyman42]

I don't think Sunday should require the same timetable as other days of the week.

Saturdays and Sundays are as busy as any weekday on the ECML.

 

[Magrar]

.

 

[dk1]

All three Greater Anglia driver groups will have Sundays in the working week by the end of 2027. This was overwhelmingly accepted at vote for a 19% pay rise over two years and will increase the establishment slightly at all depots. It’s quite ironic as GA is head and shoulders above the rest for running a very reliable service now with committed Sundays.

 

[greatkingrat]

No I’m not syaing that. I’m saying that the Saturday service cannot be accommodated by uis g only drivers that are able to be rostered on a Saturday, ie the company is not entitlted to roster Saturday like a ‘normal’ day.

At London Overground, drivers can be rostered for max 26 Saturdays a year, so there will be fewer drivers rostered on a Saturday than on a weekday. I think Elizabeth Line have something similar as well.

 

[317 forever]

Is it known with each TOC whether Sunday is included in the rota or just available as overtime?

 

[Bald Rick]

Is it known with each TOC whether Sunday is included in the rota or just available as overtime?

It’s known for every TOC!

 

[Class 317]

Saturdays and Sundays are as busy as any weekday on the ECML.

Indeed they can be. I was more referring to Tuesday to Thursday being a little quieter on most longer distance routes.

 

[Krokodil]

There are many low paid workers out in society who serve your train drivers 7 days a week. i don’t begrudge their salaries but using the tax reason, which you have oversimplified to make a point, does no credit to the issue being debated.

The tax situation is very relevant. It's also relevant to the NHS's woes - many GPs have decided that they'd sooner work part time than pay high marginal tax rates. Ultimately, if you're earning a decent wage, why bother working overtime (and be stung for tax on the enhanced rate - if there even is one) if you could just spend time with your family? Many overtime merchants discovered during the pandemic that they actually quite liked their wives and children.

I suspect OP probably just wants TOCs to run the advertised Sunday service, and not have multiple cancellations every week!

But how is the OP proposing to solve the issue?

 

[Starmill]

Who opted to make some days optional for staff in order to keep employee numbers down?

I would have thought this one was fairly self-explanatory to be honest? BR didn't run on Sundays on loads of service groups. This actually continues to this day on a surprising number, unfortunately.

Thus, having drivers and guards employed to cover Sundays when their trains never ran was unnecessary.

There are many low paid workers out in society who serve your train drivers 7 days a week. i don’t begrudge their salaries but using the tax reason, which you have oversimplified to make a point, does no credit to the issue being debated.

Many workers are entitled to choose to lower their incomes to avoid higher marginal rates of income tax. Not just train drivers. It's most common in the form of annual leave purchase schemes for office staff, and lots and lots of big corporates will permit this. That's before you even consider people who work short weeks of their own free choice for health reasons, for coping with life events, or just because it suits their boss to offer it temporarily and they liked the sound of it. Many staff stay on part time in place of taking their retirement in order to assist training their replacements too. They all get this tax advantage out of the deal.

Surely this is a win for all in this situation.

Not really, unfortunately. Increasing the number of drivers by 15-20%, say, takes several years to recruit and have them all qualified. Even if you can justify that, you still need to find the one-off money to do the expanded recruitment and training, and you need to wait until it's complete before you receive the benefits. No doubt this is a key sticking point for GWR. Transport for Wales went down this road and it cost them so much money they are having to descope some of the timetable changes it was meant to support. There are also big savings on pensions, uniform, assessments and other ancilliaries if your staff work a longer week rather than needing more of them.

 

[mrcheek]

The tax situation is very relevant. It's also relevant to the NHS's woes - many GPs have decided that they'd sooner work part time than pay high marginal tax rates. Ultimately, if you're earning a decent wage, why bother working overtime (and be stung for tax on the enhanced rate - if there even is one) if you could just spend time with your family? Many overtime merchants discovered during the pandemic that they actually quite liked their wives and children.


But how is the OP proposing to solve the issue?

I think the idea is to ensure staff are rostered on Sunday as part of their normal working day, like most other people are in service industries

 

[Krokodil]

I think the idea is to ensure staff are rostered on Sunday as part of their normal working day, like most other people are in service industries

So how do you do that? You're either going to have to cut services on the other days to free up crew, or recruit and train an extra 20% or so to eliminate the reliance on overtime. That costs money.

 

[mrcheek]

So how do you do that? You're either going to have to cut services on the other days to free up crew, or recruit and train an extra 20% or so to eliminate the reliance on overtime. That costs money.

Oh well, I suppose we best not bother then, just run a fifth rate unusable service every Sunday.
Obviously its not going to happen overnight, but it can be done gradually.
After all, shops employed extra staff in order to open on Sundays. Bus companies and taxi firms seem to manage it too. And the airlines.
So why cant the rail companies?

 

[Class 317]

So how do you do that? You're either going to have to cut services on the other days to free up crew, or recruit and train an extra 20% or so to eliminate the reliance on overtime. That costs money.

It does cost money but also grows revenue.

 

[Starmill]

Oh well, I suppose we best not bother then, just run a ****ty unusable service every Sunday.
Obviously its not going to happen overnight, but it can be done gradually.
After all, shops employed extra staff in order to open on Sundays. Bus companies and taxi firms seem to manage it too. And the airlines.
So why cant the rail companies?

A lot of them would have a longer base working week.

 

[Krokodil]

Oh well, I suppose we best not bother then, just run a ****ty unusable service every Sunday.
Obviously its not going to happen overnight, but it can be done gradually.
After all, shops employed extra staff in order to open on Sundays. Bus companies and taxi firms seem to manage it too. And the airlines.
So why cant the rail companies?

Because the rail companies are in the vice-like grip of HM Treasury who are not going to spend money freely.

It does cost money but also grows revenue.

How much by? Not enough to cover the difference in costs.

 

[35B]

Yes but your explaination comes across (and i know you don't mean it this way) as being the fault of the workers.
The fault clearly sits with the tax situation, the thresholds and the fact that successive governments have kept them significantly low for so long, that 15 years worth of inflation, without the thresholds moving in any meaningful way, have created this situation. The 100k tax cliff was created in 2011, didn't affect so many people back then. Not moving that cliff edge up at all, not a penny, in 15 years has lead to consequences.

Which is true in general where people need to consider the value of working more versus other things they can do with their time. It's why, despite ideological hostility to it from many, the Laffer Curve is a valid explanation of behaviour.

However, and back to the OP, those same economic calculations will make employees reluctant to trade the possibility of overtime and/or knowing their Sundays are free for a 7 day shift pattern without getting something in return. And, even assuming that they do so, there will be extra costs as the workforce needs to rise to cover the additional certain workload - simple (over simple?) maths suggest an establishment increase of c. 15% would be required.

Put those into the mix, and it's easy to see why the issue's not been addressed in so many places.

Which is a pity, because it absolutely ought to be.

 

[al78]

Or maybe the OP needs to consider the tax situation. Overtime is such now, that many of the regular overtime workers will regulate how much overtime they do, so as not to get robbed by the marginal 60% tax scam at 100k (not unique to train drivers).
Which means doing less overtime. So when in the year do you think someone would chose to do less overtime? Summer of course. Thank the lib/lab/con establishment for this tax rip off!

Earning more gross income results in a higher take home pay regardless of the emotive "60% tax scam" label, your take home pay might go up more slowly going over £100k but it doesn't actually decrease.

 

[cle]

I can't comment on the specifics of pay and OT but I would say that for new members of staff, it should be a given that this is a 7 day operation, and career. That's a choice you can make when you enter the railways.

Could establishing a 7 day standard working week mean more staff needed? Maybe. It might also just see more mid-week days off as things are balanced out over the week.

It would be good to move to a Sat/Sun/Holidays standard timetable so there are two for the week. Maybe include Friday on that, and cut some peak services on commuter. Not on long distance though!

Long distance services (and those to more leisure-heavy destinations, like Southern and GWR, or locals out of Exeter, Norwich) - or Thameslink/EL serving airports through city centres - see a ton of weekend demand.

Of course many services to Essex, Kent and Surrey are far quieter, but the off peak timetables should be run all week.

 

[Krokodil]

Could establishing a 7 day standard working week mean more staff needed? Maybe. It might also just see more mid-week days off as things are balanced out over the week.

There's no "maybe" about it. If you want to bring Sundays into the working week without cutting the weekday service (and there's precious little that most operators could cut in practice) then you need an extra 16% in your complement. If you want to minimise Rest Day Working in general then you need to go even higher and employ enough staff to run a seven day service without recourse to overtime.

 

[RT4038]

There's no "maybe" about it. If you want to bring Sundays into the working week without cutting the weekday service (and there's precious little that most operators could cut in practice) then you need an extra 16% in your complement. If you want to minimise Rest Day Working in general then you need to go even higher and employ enough staff to run a seven day service without recourse to overtime.

It wouldn't be quite that high a %, because most lines have reduced or no service on Sundays, particularly on Sunday mornings. Could there be a 10% cut in the number of driver duties on weekdays and Saturdays, by selective service cuts and possibly the remaining being longer in those places that this would be practical? Some people will think it impossible and others not so. Or possibly half of the Sunday duties in the roster initially with a 5% selective cut of weekday/Saturday drivers duties, with the other half covered as overtime until the necessary staff can be recruited and trained ?

 

[30907]

Oh well, I suppose we best not bother then, just run a fifth rate unusable service every Sunday.
Obviously its not going to happen overnight, but it can be done gradually.
After all, shops employed extra staff in order to open on Sundays.

Did they? Or did they simply re-roster staff away from the quiet midweek days to the weekends?

Bus companies ...seem to manage it too.

Where? All the operators I know about operate a significantly reduced service on Sundays.

 

[dk1]

Oh well, I suppose we best not bother then, just run a fifth rate unusable service every Sunday.
Obviously its not going to happen overnight, but it can be done gradually.
After all, shops employed extra staff in order to open on Sundays. Bus companies and taxi firms seem to manage it too. And the airlines.
So why cant the rail companies?

Rail companies have a very strong union presence with conditions that have been agreed by management over many many years.

 

[Krokodil]

Where? All the operators I know about operate a significantly reduced service on Sundays.

And forget trying to catch a bus on New Year's Day. You can however usually catch a train.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 10 Aug 2026 ==

Rail companies have a very strong union presence with conditions that have been agreed by management over many many years.

More importantly it suited the operators just fine for many years to run on minimum staffing, filling gaps with overtime. It's more expensive to employ enough staff. However that approach slowly ceased to work as increases in base salaries improved, making overtime less attractive, while triggers such as the pandemic made many reconsider how much time they spent at work.

 

[35B]

Rail companies have a very strong union presence with conditions that have been agreed by management over many many years.

More to the point, those were set at one time and the market for rail travel has changed dramatically

 

[dk1]

More to the point, those were set at one time and the market for rail travel has changed dramatically

Its all settled down quite a bit to be fair. Far better than I thought it would. Traincrew don’t give up their T&Cs easily. It’s got to be made worth their while. Negotiations will be ongoing for many years to come.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 10 Aug 2026 ==

And forget trying to catch a bus on New Year's Day. You can however usually catch a train.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 10 Aug 2026 ==


More importantly it suited the operators just fine for many years to run on minimum staffing, filling gaps with overtime. It's more expensive to employ enough staff. However that approach slowly ceased to work as increases in base salaries improved, making overtime less attractive, while triggers such as the pandemic made many reconsider how much time they spent at work.

That is very true. As an ex-roster clerk from the early 90s the Sunday book used to be top heavy with those making themselves available to work. Fast forward 30 years and I’m on the other side driving trains and the contrast is stark. Both drivers & guards Sunday book is now full of names making themselves not available to work. As a colleague recently put it, nobody is hungry anymore.

 

[bramling]

I can't comment on the specifics of pay and OT but I would say that for new members of staff, it should be a given that this is a 7 day operation, and career. That's a choice you can make when you enter the railways.

Could establishing a 7 day standard working week mean more staff needed? Maybe. It might also just see more mid-week days off as things are balanced out over the week.

Unfortunately this isn’t a simple problem to solve.

In an industry where people hang around for a long time, even if you did this for new entrants you would be waiting decades for the effects to filter through. In the meantime, you then have a “two-tier” workforce, which despite new people being fully aware what they have signed up to, is still likely to be divisive.

Unfortunately people just don’t like working weekends. No matter what ones does to try and reconcile this, everything will come back to this.

 

[John R]

Not necessarily @al78. If you have young children then there is an immediate total loss of childcare benefits at 100k, which means an effective significant drop in net income at that point.

So many earners who think they are at risk of just tipping over that threshold will be heavily incentivised to make sure they stay below, allowing for any other income they have (eg savings interest).

Don’t forget also that many of the younger drivers could have student loans, and pay an additional 9% on any earnings. So their effective tax rate is 71% between 100 and 125k. Very easy to decide not to bother working at that point.

 

[Bald Rick]

I can't comment on the specifics of pay and OT but I would say that for new members of staff, it should be a given that this is a 7 day operation, and career. That's a choice you can make when you enter the railways.

That is already the case for some operators where ASLEF have agreeed to it.

At at least one other operator I am aware of, ASLEF have point blank refused to consider it.

 

[Starmill]

Recruiting an enormous number of extra drivers and other staff is not a panacea. It's risky and takes a long time. It costs a lot up front, it's a permanent commitment to covering the on-costs of employment roles, and there's no guarantee of improvements in performance for several years. If you want to uplift the timetable to gain more revenue to partially offset this cost, it's even further into the future as this cannot be done until everyone is certain that the new resourcing plan can be covered. And then it has to wait for a suitable timetable change, and takes time to build up new patronage.

People love to whinge about the Treasury, and many such complaints are valid. But frankly if the best you can do is say "we're going to spend a few million quid this year and next, and in five years time we expect an extra 24 trains a week and a 1 point reduction in cancellations" or similar, then you can hardly blame them for rolling their eyes at you and moving on. The places that have got it signed off tend to be the places where industrial relations are in a decent enough state to bring it in alongside small productivity improvements, or in places where productivity is already excellent. Unfortunately, poor performance slowly begets worse industrial relations, which then creates a negative feedback loop where performance deteriorates further. Then you end up with Northern at Blackpool North.

 

[SynthD]

Don’t forget also that many of the younger drivers could have student loans, and pay an additional 9% on any earnings. So their effective tax rate is 71% between 100 and 125k. Very easy to decide not to bother working at that point.

Are there drivers who have graduated recently enough to have large loans, rose to a level where they have a salary reaching the allowance drop off, and haven’t paid off their loans? It seems that’s trying too hard to find a problem, where the problem is that they are taxed on income over one hundred thousand pounds a year like anyone else. The majority in the middle don’t have an experience like that. Maybe they should arrange schedules around the new and average drivers who want to work overtime on Sundays and therefore rest on Saturday and Monday. Don’t arrange it on seniority, if that is the case anymore.