ASLEF Strike LNER & Northern 1st March

[Snow1964]

I believe you are missing the point of what "Fixed rest days" are.

It means you have a roster where you can tell in 1/3/6 months time what days off you have in any said week.

I can see where confusion lies, Fixed is bad name, as term is used in some industries as usual/normal, rather than usage here of pre-defined.

Personally I have always been in the say what you mean camp, be precise, and don't try and shortcut clarity by using loose terminology that different people might intepret differently. Just causes distrust and anxiety.

The very fact that term is causing confusion on here shows how bad it is. Fixed Rest Days really needs to be replaced by scheduled non-work days, then everyone knows wont be expected to work. The only debate should be how far in advance is this advised, 2, 3, 4, 6 months or whatever is agreed etc

 

[PyrahnaRanger]

That’s good that she knows that and thank you. My trainee was not so lucky and has worked so hard with a young family to make this career change and is loving everything about it.

I’m glad to hear that your trainee stood up for herself, made the move over and has settled in well - it often strikes me that a lot of stuff that happens in the NHS relies on the fact many workers see it as a vocation rather than a career - for example when they ask for volunteers who are off-shift to come in and cover an emergency transfer to another hospital so they don’t have to take staff off the ward, and a surprising (to me!) number of people put their hand up to do it.

As an aside, I used to do some IT support work as a contractor for the NHS, and I know I was happy going over and above occasionally as you could see the impact on patients if systems weren’t working - nowhere else have I felt that compunction!

 

[whoosh]

While hospital staffing needs reforming, they operate on staff not having fixed day rest patterns. Some staff see it as a positive. For example, why have Sundays off every week if you want to get out and do things but find places are closed or close early on Sundays?

Improved Sunday services are now not a luxury, they are urgently needed. An increase in weekend lesuire travel has left Saturday trains at bursting point. While an increase in interest in outdoor activities post-COVID means there's high demand for travel to rural places on Sundays, but people are clogging up the roads due to a lack of trains. Want to walk the Middlewood Way from Macclesfield to Poynton and get the train back to the start point on a Sunday? Good luck with that! Walk a bit too slowly and you'll have a 3 hour wait for the next train. So you do it on Saturday instead when the trains are already rammed.

Time and 60-100% for NHS staff on Sundays. Just saying.

I hope any revision to terms does include committed Sundays, otherwise Northern will continue to fail to achieve their contracted level of service everytime staff don't feel like volunteering to work overtime.

Someone else has posted that there are (union agreed) contracts for rail workers that don't include fixed rest days. Sometimes I think the issue for these disputes relate to how change is managed, rather than proposed changes being unworkable. It seems the unions are reluctuant to any change (unless it's something they've requested) and train operators are reluctuant to providing good communication (to anyone, not just employees).

Reluctant to change? But yet Transport for Wales has agreed to implement Sundays inside the working week for Drivers hasn't it? Merseyrail has agreed that Driver Controlled Operation is to be implemented (Drivers in charge of station dispatch) hasn't it?
Like negotiated, agreed with the Unions, changes to Terms & Conditions to facilitate this, right?

I’m not saying that Sundays won’t be included, I think you misunderstood me. I’m referring to the rostering of rest days which is a seperate issue to commited Sundays. As regards no fixed rest days, I would be surprised if any of the main TOC’s operate with out fixed rest days for traincrew. The FOC’s & possibly the kind of Lumo etc may do.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 17 Feb 2024 ==


Anything that’s shown in a roster as a rest day is a fixed rest day, whether it’s the common Mon/Tues,Wed/Thurs,Fri/Sat repeating every 3 weeks or a disrupted pattern of mixed days either together or not. Either way a fixed rest day will be shown to allow for diagramming purposes.

What it appears they want to do is basically give you a roster on let’s say the Thursday telling you what days you are off etc the following week. That to me is unworkable as you are unable to book appointments,plan for personal events etc.

A fixed rest day pattern would mean I'd know what my rest days are in September 2025 - after timetable changes in June '24, December '24 and May '25. My Rest Days would follow a predictable repeating pattern.

 

[NEDdrv]

Conditionless 4%.. PLUS the backpay.. and yes I’m sure most drivers would say yes to that to move things forward finally

Might be splitting hairs but RMT offered 5% ASLEF offered 4% if I remember correctly

 

[whoosh]

Might be splitting hairs but RMT offered 5% ASLEF offered 4% if I remember correctly

Correct.

RMT have never been offered less than 5% year one.
They were offered 5% Year One, 5% Year Two with strings that some TOC had to adhere to, whilst others already had those conditions... but all were offered 5% Year Two regardless.

The offer in November/December 2023 to RMT was 5% Year One, with Year Two to be negotiated at local TOC level with changes to T&Cs at local TOC level.



ASLEF's first offer, before any talks took place (despite a year of asking for for pay talks), was 5% Year One, 5% Year Two, again with strings that some TOC had to adhere to, whilst others already had those conditions... but all were offered 5% Year Two regardless.

ASLEF's second offer, after pay talks took place in February/March 2023, was 4% Year One (and let's at this point just remember that some TOCs have their pay anniversary in January, some in April, some in May, and some in October - so RPI actually was significantly different as the months went by), 5% Year Two, with what ASLEF initially thought at the end of the talks, was any T&C change/productivity payments, to be negotiated at local TOC level, but got a phonecall the next day to say, "Oh, we got it wrong, Year Two is 5% for all the T&C changes [that some will have and others won't] as well."
So... a WORSE deal than the initial offer.

A WORSE DEAL THAN THE INITIAL (non-negotiated) OFFER.

Now why would they do that? Unless... they actually wanted to provoke Industrial Action, in order to substantiate their 'solution' of Minimum Service Levels (a Manifesto pledge), and once in (with cheerleaders from the sidelines), use the opportunity and precedent that has been set, to roll out to other workers in other areas of society.

Otherwise, why put SO much effort into not engaging, and prolonging this dispute?

 

[Mag_seven]

We appear to be drifting back onto the Aslef pay dispute which has been debated before in other threads and is in effective stalemate.

As regards to this dispute lets await further developments.

If anyone has issues with travelling on strike days and needs advice then they are of course welcome to start a thread in Trip Planning and Reports.