Massive own goal 2 by railway industry

[Metroland]

Yes, be interesting to see how many companies issue directives to never use rail services again.

I don't suppose that will stop NR giving themselves massive bonuses, or staff going on strike again for more money though.

 

[Old Timer]

I don't suppose that will stop NR ...... staff going on strike again for more money though.

That is a rather mercenary and provocative statement to make.

You alluded earlier on to having been to one of the internal NR meetings.

Does this suggest you once worked for NR ?

Either way, the treatment that NR propose to mete out to the Infrastructure maintenance staff, such as reducing their rates of pay, removing many of their former employment benefits (which are allegedly protected under TUPE) and generally lowering their conditions of service leave a somewhat nasty taste in the mouth.

Couple this with the increasing use of agency labour (who actually earn more) whilst proposing to deplete already undermanned Maintenance units, is simply a classic example of how not to manage Industrial Relations

I have deliberately stayed out of the various posts I have seen about it.

I suggest that your comment is both as much unwanted as it is unwarranted and does you little credit.

For the record I do have great sympathy for the NR staff who are to be affected by this, particularly when the costs of work taken in-house continue to rise exponentially whilst returning much less than under the previous Contracted out arrangements.

For the staff to have to pay the bill for this delightful piece of Political posturing is simply quite disgraceful.

 

[Metroland]

Yes I did once work for NR and what a fine bunch of hard working people they are.

It breaks my heart to see the railway getting so expensive in some cases, even the staff can't use it! There must be a better way!

 

[Old Timer]

Well we agree on something !

Personally I would like to see the Government stop using the Railways as a bottomless money bag.

They have failed to tackle head-on poor performance and have instead appointed as Franchisees, those who bankrolled the Party and /or are firends and supporters.

The one TOC who actually did make money was allowed to go to the wall through Political vindictiveness, and look who took over !

Car travel, which under the Conservatives had started to increase at above inflation, has actually become cheaper under Labour whilst rail fares have risen.

The current system of creating so called competitive rolling stock suppliers has ben a total failure, Labour have never taken them to task, and Railtrack / NR have disgracefully introduced acceptance criteria that is both unnecessary, expensive, and anti-competitive whilst at the same time actually creating greater risks at times than the ones it is supposed to mitigate.

Privatisation CAN work, remember that the Railways have spent more of their history under private as opposed to public ownership.

Political interference and idealological machinations, together with HM Treasury parsimony, and Civil Service incompetence delivered little to the Railways benefit under nationalisation.

A different form of Privatisation is needed, one that take Governmnet completely out of the frame, together with a massive reduction and removal of beaurocratic process.

Only then can Railways really have the freedom to price as they wish and live or fall by it.

 

[Swift-Deere]

A different form of Privatisation is needed, one that take Governmnet completely out of the frame, together with a massive reduction and removal of beaurocratic process.

Yes I agree, the gov needs to stay out its either nationalised or privatised, if its privatised the gov can pop up and say oh we don't like that so you can't do that, This franchise system is rubbish, its extremely short term and gives companies little control, the leasing system is silly companies should own there own stock and one thing i think is a must is that TOC's should be in charge of the engineering works of the tracks there trains on this would increase the quality of the work rather than having network rail who if an accident happens due to there bad maintains don't have to pick up the pieces, things worked fine in the old days of privatisation whether that was pre-big four or the big four.

 

[yorksrob]

Well we agree on something !

Privatisation CAN work, remember that the Railways have spent more of their history under private as opposed to public ownership.

Possibly, but only if the network as a whole starts turning a profit, with the mainline paying for the rest. Perhaps they should have privatised the whole thing in one like BA or BT, although it may not have produced the desired competition

 

[Metroland]

I'd love to have the big four back, but that means a big reduction in costs, the railways having a lot of freedom and road pricing at the very least.

At the moment the railways consume £5.5 billion of public subsidy, 5 times more than BR. With all that public money going in, the politicians can't resist interfering public or private.

Before 1955 they were self supporting, but haven't been ever since. In BR days subsidy was around £1 billion a year, and this pretty much carried on until the advent of NR, when costs have climbed and climbed.

Subsidy is no bad thing sometimes, it supports non commercial services on rural lines and off peak services - with implications for jobs, social inclusion and tourism. But it's kind of worrying, despite record passenger numbers (okay the freight is 1/3 of what it was) to see costs go up and up, they should be going down!

 

[Old Timer]

....despite record passenger numbers (okay the freight is 1/3 of what it was) to see costs go up and up, they should be going down!

Infrastructure costs are going up because NR is increasing the size of its Projects so as to "man-mark" the Contractors.

At a time when it is about to dismiss some 1,500 maintenance staff it still continues to feed the Project teams with staff who are neither competent nor capable of bringing any value to the party.

One can only listen in amazement at the money made by big conmsulting firms who offer project management but in the field simply cause confusion, implement beaurocratic processes and generally build small empires which eventually become bigger than the projects they are supposed to be monitoring.

WCRM which originally started off as a co-ordination unit grew into a massive administrative organisation which developed and implemented its own Engineering Standards and practices which were outside of the NR ones !

For all its faults at least Railtrack just let the Contracts and let the Contractor deliver. Now everything is second guessed and challenged by people who have little if any knowledge about the subject and in some cases were dismissed from the Contracting organisations for being incompetent or lazy or sometimes both !

It recently came to light that someone dismissed following a serious safety incident for which his lack of responsibility and management was responsible has reinvented himself within the Projects organisation on a new major project.

 

[Wyvern]

things worked fine in the old days of privatisation whether that was pre-big four or the big four.

We have to be very careful about comparisons with the "big four" or earlier private companies.

The railways depended very heavily on coal traffic which has largely disappeared.

The government has imposed conditions on railway companies from the very first "Regulation of the Railways Act" including Parliamentary trains.

Any reorganisation must produce a modern railway system working under modern conditions - mainly passenger carrying. And no other country has such a convenient integrated travel system as we have - for all that the fare structure is becoming ever more complicated.

Now that the US is waking up to rail passenger travel it will be interesting to see how they become organised, though much greater distances and therefore much greater dependence on air travel will be involved.

 

[Spartacus]

Plus the fact that the only way the just about bankrupt companies balanced the books was by ignoring the costs they had no control over.