Mgameing123
Member
Could they perhaps do 10 car?
== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: ==
I would trust it but I’d give hours to spare.
Last edited:
-
Our new ticketing site is now live! Using either this or the original site (both powered by TrainSplit) helps support the running of the forum with every ticket purchase! Find out more and ask any questions/give us feedback in this thread!
Why should I trust rail travel?
- Thread starter Shrop
- Start date
== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: ==
Sponsor Post - registered members do not see these adverts; click here to register, or click here to log in
R
RailUK Forums
Llanigraham
On Moderation
Some maybe, but certainly not for Network Rail employees.
Llanigraham
On Moderation
Sorry, read your question incorrectly.
Yes I think TfW have brought Sundays into the working week for drivers and guards, but don't know about their signalling staff at Taffs Well.
London Trains
Established Member
- Joined
- 9 Oct 2017
- Messages
- 1,216
That wouldn't be possible as the platforms along the WLL (including Clapham Junction P16/17) are only long enough for 8 coaches.
There's a fundamental catch here. Implicit in your comment is the expectation that staff will just work whatever's required to deliver the job. My contract of employment is an agreement between me and my employer about my duties, including the hours. As an employee, I have family commitments, leisure interests, external responsibilities and simple need for downtime.
While I despise the determination of parts of the rail industry to retain Sunday working as "optional", and have serious issues with the degree of demand for money to bring Sundays into the working week, I respect the right of rail staff to work in line with their contract, rather than be expected to work extra to fill shortages.
This is not fundamentally a money issue, but a respect one. And a railway industry that respects its staff more might then start to respect us passengers more, and treat us as customers rather than self loading cargo.
LlanishenBull
Member
I think this analysis is spot on. If a TOC appears mainly interested in saving money at the expense of customers it's not going to lead to a motivated staff force.
If I worked for XC or GWR, for example, I'd try my best I'm sure but if my top company management palpably display little interest in delivering a quality service at all times then it's going to feed that attitude down the line.
Whilst surprisingly bad journeys can happen, it's important to bear in mind that surprisingly good ones can as well.
I recently travelled on a trip from Sheffield to Norwich on a 170 with a downgraded first class saloon. Got a comfy single seat all the way !
I recently travelled on a trip from Sheffield to Norwich on a 170 with a downgraded first class saloon. Got a comfy single seat all the way !
So the suggestion is to pay people to be on standby?In many industries, if a member of staff isn't available for an essential job, and the company knows about this many hours in advance, they call up a replacement member of staff who is on standby. It's not rocket science!
If this isn't done, or worse the company is run in a manner where it isn't practical, then it's a sorry reflection of modern society.
What it does do, is it explains why rail services are a good deal more successful in some countries than they are in the UK
I can already see the Daily Mail headline: "Overpaid Drivers paid even more - to stay at home!"
Snow1964
Established Member
I suspect the suggestion is more you have trained backups doing another task, which can step into the breach, leaving another task which is not so time critical temporarily uncovered, or covered by someone else.
When I worked in Trading, there was always cover to do critical reporting and booking, and a second and third person trained to cover for emergency staff cover. I vaguely remember one day about 6 people had to swap tasks because last minute illness during holidays left only one person knowing a role, and others had to swap to backfill as that persons cover was away. In swapping to cover, another person had to be covered etc.
Not a case of paying someone to sit around, it is being able to pull cover from another less critical task that doesn't leave a critical one uncovered. But it of course means multiple extra staff having role competencies.
Shrop
Established Member
- Joined
- 6 Aug 2019
- Messages
- 1,350
I disagree. This is not implicit in my comment. I'm simply expressing a hope that staff would have customer interests in mind and not rush off home immediately their shift has ended, if they know that numerous people will be left stranded by their doing so.
I would like to think they would be prepared to work slightly extra to avoiding stranding people, AND that their employers would reward this too, as appropriate.
No one doubts that, but there is a sensible middle ground.
== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: ==
Our son in law is a pilot - he's paid a certain amount to be on standby. Now think about this - imagine your pilot for your holiday flight calling in sick over 12 hours before your flight, and your airline knows about this.
Would you be dismayed if they had no-one on standby? It's not all that different, and we were heading for a holiday ourselves ...
Last edited:
My experience is that rail staff are very good at working an extended shift when things go wrong, but that the issue is with whether they come on shift in the first place when their employer relies on rest day working. At that point my criticism is not of the individual employee, but the way that their employer and union have, together, created a situation in which blame gets liberally shared around.
I don’t think this is about money in the wallet, and I don’t think it’s about rail staff not caring. But for on train roles, most of the time, there isn’t the “please could you cover an extra half hour” option.
But, coming back to the original question, I do consider that undermines public confidence in rail and is bad for the industry as a whole.
XC do have standby duties built into their Rosa’s.
dk1
Veteran Member
Does anyone seriously care what the Daily Mail prints?
Severnia333
Member
I go Bristol - Portsmouth roughly weekly. It's pretty good (if not super fast) but they do often seem to chop the Filton to Cardiff end off if any delays!
Most rail staff do, but you also have to remember that this is a job, not one's life work. Sometimes, people do either want or need to go home, especially if they have family or childcare commitments.
TOCs do the same - people are kept on a spare turn.
Shrop
Established Member
- Joined
- 6 Aug 2019
- Messages
- 1,350
Yes, it's a job. That job is to serve customers and to do what is reasonable to get them where they want to go.
If a train load of customers arrives where you are near to the end of your shift, and there are no other members of staff to assist them, do you walk away when they might be stranded and just need a bit of information?
I reiterate, there should be a reasonable balance. Customers left stranded after paying for a journey which is delayed through no fault of their own, should not be expected to sympathise with there being no staff just because someone might be 5 minutes late getting back to their family.
Your stance seems to be pretty unsympathetic towards delayed customers.
Then, whatever industry you are in, your managers have utterly failed you.
If managers repeatedly put people in such an impossible situation, and events noted on this forum suggest they do, it is managers who need to be held to account not the poor souls left alone to sort it.
dk1
Veteran Member
To be fair if we are at the end of a shift and our taxi is waiting then we just jump in it. It’s home time.
Llanigraham
On Moderation
There is also the fact that seems to be ignored, that in some, possibly many cases, working on after shift end might not be allowed. I can think of several incidents on my line when signallers have rung in sick before their shift time, but the resident on duty will have completed their 12 hour shift and so can't continue until or if a replacement can be found.
I can personally vouch for it as I was once invloved in that situation and we had no option but to stop all trains between Hereford and Shrewsbury for, I think, 3 hours until a relief signaller could be found.
I am quite sure the same applies to drivers and guards.
As does Network Rail, but if the relief staff are already in use elsewhere, what other option is there but to stop the service?
Shrop
Established Member
- Joined
- 6 Aug 2019
- Messages
- 1,350
Not quite. It's the staff on the ground who need to sort things out. But ... it's the managers who need to account for all of it, including rewarding their staff properly, and ensuring that passengers get reasonable help.
Managers who haven't experienced the problems that many, many passengers have, really don't deserve to be in their jobs, as they demonstrably have insufficient competence.
Llanigraham
On Moderation
Can you explain how you expect staff on the ground, be they drivers, guards or signallers, to sort this out without consultation with management?
I really don't think you understand how the railway works or the legislation that affects our employment.
It depends. If it's 5:30pm and my daughter needs picking up from nursery at 6pm, sorry - I'm going to pick up my kid. If i have nothing better to do, sure, I might stay if the overtime is paid. If I have £50 tickets for a 7:45pm kickoff in the football, I'm going to leave, see you tomorrow.
People are entitled to a life outside of work.
We aren't really talking about five minutes though, we are talking about covering extra jobs, as this whole debate was about Sunday working and drivers unable to cover entire turns which led to disruption.
I also like the implication in "5 minutes late getting back to their family" like someone else (a wife) has primary caring responsibility towards the children and you (a man) would just not be an essential part of that. A lot of family units just aren't like that any more. Mine isn't, and it wouldn't make me a worse member of staff if I went back to working on the railway.
Last edited:
It does. For obvious safety reasons.
And in other cases it just moves the problem to the folllowing day when staff don't have their required rest period to their next booked work.
In my diagramming days I would have all the following week's work out to the depots on Thursday afternoon. And from Friday morning the phone calls would come in : "Crewe here - we can't cover jobs 1201 and 1204 on Saturday, nor 2200, 2202 and 2206 on Sundays" etc etc
And so there would be lengthy efforts to find other depots available to cover. Resources are finite and sometimes jobs simply cannot be covered.
It was bad enough then, and worse now given changes in route/traction knowledge.
Whereas in BR days, many staff reps kept a record of Sundays (and rest days) worked to share them fairly, such was the demand. When I offered a freight depot a 14 (?) hour short rest mileage turn on a railtour they said they’d ask staff reps - Who said they’d raffle the job!
Different times.
They don't, dedicated standby turns are covered by Rest Day Working.
I do not trust the railway to give frank and honest explanations to passengers about the precise reasons for delays or other serious lapses in service, on and off track. I can see how they might even lie, in situations where they knew they could not be caught in a lie.
I certainly do not trust a word that ever comes out of a union official's or whistleblower's mouth anymore, and that's mainly because of how obvious it's been that the messaging during disputes between managers and unions has been a grand game of who can lie the hardest, and get away with it.
Typically the union can. Which of course affects the attitude of their bosses in the delivery of a public service, which is after all what the unions claim they have been fighting for all these years. A genuine public service.
I am not confident of a culture change with GBR either, so it might be interesting to see how this new law requiring candid honesty in public office works with GBR, if it even apllies.
That said, it's genuinely hard to feel sympathy for people essentially complaining about the failure of their pretty cheap means of getting to their pretty expensive holiday. And then getting fully compensated for a mere hour's delay!
The ease with which it's being assumed that a single driver just failed to turn up for work is telling. What if the rostered driver had a genuine reason for absence, duly notified in good time, and the reserve driver then had a genuine emergency? How many spare drivers are needed to ensure cruise passengers never have a reason to complain? Oh, and it's a railway, so complaining about having to change trains with heavy suitcases is a stretch.
This is how I want GBR to be judged. Every single screw up you make, should be assessed as follows. If there was a passenger travelling at short notice to do something as tragic as have a last meeting with a dying close relative, and it wasn't remotely possible for them to drive or fly for reasons of practicality or (extremely) unreasonable cost, is the reason you failed to get them to their destination in the time advertised, defensible?
Or is it, as is often the case, petty or stupid or Kafkaesuque? Were you truly prepared for all forseeable scenarios? Is the reason for your failure so bad, so embarassing, you'd dare to even lie to the person? Did you do everything someone would do, if they thought that even just one passenger of possibly hundreds affected by a disruption travelling for that terrible reason, was caught up in that situation?
Some things are just inexcusable to normal everyday people, let's call them rail travellers. Doctors going on strike. Climate protestors blocking ambulances. Denying a last chance to see a dying relative because a "public service" union is all powerful and a government is immeasurably cruel.
Certain things live long in the memory of the innocent victims of other people's disputes, shaping their view of humanity. Lest we forget.
This has never happened to me, but merely reading about it happening to someone else, disgusted me. I would not trust anyone who wore that uniform or repeated their misson statements. Never.
I certainly do not trust a word that ever comes out of a union official's or whistleblower's mouth anymore, and that's mainly because of how obvious it's been that the messaging during disputes between managers and unions has been a grand game of who can lie the hardest, and get away with it.
Typically the union can. Which of course affects the attitude of their bosses in the delivery of a public service, which is after all what the unions claim they have been fighting for all these years. A genuine public service.
I am not confident of a culture change with GBR either, so it might be interesting to see how this new law requiring candid honesty in public office works with GBR, if it even apllies.
That said, it's genuinely hard to feel sympathy for people essentially complaining about the failure of their pretty cheap means of getting to their pretty expensive holiday. And then getting fully compensated for a mere hour's delay!
The ease with which it's being assumed that a single driver just failed to turn up for work is telling. What if the rostered driver had a genuine reason for absence, duly notified in good time, and the reserve driver then had a genuine emergency? How many spare drivers are needed to ensure cruise passengers never have a reason to complain? Oh, and it's a railway, so complaining about having to change trains with heavy suitcases is a stretch.
This is how I want GBR to be judged. Every single screw up you make, should be assessed as follows. If there was a passenger travelling at short notice to do something as tragic as have a last meeting with a dying close relative, and it wasn't remotely possible for them to drive or fly for reasons of practicality or (extremely) unreasonable cost, is the reason you failed to get them to their destination in the time advertised, defensible?
Or is it, as is often the case, petty or stupid or Kafkaesuque? Were you truly prepared for all forseeable scenarios? Is the reason for your failure so bad, so embarassing, you'd dare to even lie to the person? Did you do everything someone would do, if they thought that even just one passenger of possibly hundreds affected by a disruption travelling for that terrible reason, was caught up in that situation?
Some things are just inexcusable to normal everyday people, let's call them rail travellers. Doctors going on strike. Climate protestors blocking ambulances. Denying a last chance to see a dying relative because a "public service" union is all powerful and a government is immeasurably cruel.
Certain things live long in the memory of the innocent victims of other people's disputes, shaping their view of humanity. Lest we forget.
This has never happened to me, but merely reading about it happening to someone else, disgusted me. I would not trust anyone who wore that uniform or repeated their misson statements. Never.
Still normal. But irrelevant if there are fewer volunteers than vacant turns. When TfW offered guards Sundays at double time there were usually plenty of takers.
Perhaps that’s the crux of this? Employers/DfT wanting the penny (flat rate for xtra days worked) and the bun of never employing enough staff to put everything in the base roster?.