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No I don't, so perhaps you could enlighten me with why ASLEF might think carrying out training is fine on Wednesday 4th but not on Thursday 5th. If anything people being told to restrict their non-essential activities should mean the virus is less likely to be circulating as much during the English 'lockdown' than they day before it starts.
I would have thought this point was glaringly obvious.
1. Shops will be open wednesday but closed thursday - Why is the railway any different ?
2. What is and isn't considered to be "essential" or where people can work from home.
3. Agreements have specific caveats. Thursday brings a huge change to how this country will function.
4. Things change
Employers were supposed to make workplaces as COVID safe as possible months ago and people have had to self-isolate for months, so any sensible train operator will have planned for some staff self-isolating in their training plan.
Part of being safe is social distancing. For a while now ASLEF have stated that there shouldn't be 2 persons in the cab. As the TOCs has started various "training bubbles" they have started to increase the availabilty of manual handling. The backlog at our training schools is quite high and even though measures were put in place the school jusrt cannot cope. Where Trainees are at the manual handling stage they are also struggling with availability of trainers. Not all trainers will allow someone else in the cab. Where they are only at the early stages and more classroom based, they are shutting down entire courses because they are not essential.
Really @ComUtoR ? A shop full of people buying non-essential goods is comparable to a lack of trained drivers running an essential public holiday that gets people to work! It changes on Thursday due to needing parliamentary approval, what parliamentary approval do ASLEF need to suspend training? Did you mean to say we drivers fancy a nice rest so our union is going to suspend the training so we get one? As Northern are unable to return to a full timetable in December and some services schoolchildren need aren't being reinstated in December ASLEF need a very good reason to postpone training any further, not just because other sectors are working from home as instructed by the government.
Really @ComUtoR ? A shop full of people buying non-essential goods is comparable to a lack of trained drivers running an essential public holiday that gets people to work!
The "logic" is the same. Day 1 everyone working, Day 2 with a snap of Boris' fingers everyone starts to stay home again and everything shuts down. My TOC isn't exempt from those working from home instructions. We have swathes of staff working from home. That includes the those in the training schools. Everythign non essential is pretty much about to close down again. HAvign a classroom of 10 trainees just isn't gonna happen. They have been trying, it isn't working. As lockdown gets more restrictive, so will the training.
Did you mean to say we drivers fancy a nice rest so our union is going to suspend the training so we get one?
They are doing it to protect people. How blind and angry can anyone be not to see that. Even with the covid protections in place people are still dropping like flies. The other problem is that because 1 person gets a confirmed case, that can shut down an entire class because everyone who comes into contact or is in that training bubble needs to isolate.
Everyone keeps reminding us that "the railway" shouldn't be a law unto itself. Well, you can't have it both ways. We either follow the goverment advice and drop non essential services, staff, and work from home where possible or give us a blanket exemption to do whatever we want.
Not forgetting that the more people working from home means that the service may reduce again. Therefore less staff are required, less Drivers are needed, and Trainees are surplus to requirement. Soooooo why put people at risk of infection and have staff hanging around where they are not needed.
Sounds like @peters passenger/customer perspective is a beef with Northern over a reduction in services really.
Absolutely @ComUtoR . It is to protect employees and stop it spreading like wildfire through the TOC. The capacity and facilities are just not available anymore to train the required number of drivers. Trainers and instructors are getting ill, or self-isolating because a family member is ill. Just to maintain current services, training rooms are being used as overspill messrooms for drivers to have a socially distanced break in. There is nowhere to put the trainees.
Back in April supermarkets fulfilled demand for online shopping by recruiting thousands of delivery drivers. Great! Takes 2-3 weeks to get them up to speed to solve that crisis. A train driver takes a year for a TOC to train, and it'll take even longer when classroom training resumes with 5 in that class instead of 10.
Really @ComUtoR ? A shop full of people buying non-essential goods is comparable to a lack of trained drivers running an essential public holiday that gets people to work! It changes on Thursday due to needing parliamentary approval, what parliamentary approval do ASLEF need to suspend training? Did you mean to say we drivers fancy a nice rest so our union is going to suspend the training so we get one? As Northern are unable to return to a full timetable in December and some services schoolchildren need aren't being reinstated in December ASLEF need a very good reason to postpone training any further, not just because other sectors are working from home as instructed by the government.
Not to want to make you any more bitter but I’ve been one of those having “a nice rest” for nearly 9 months now.
I’d love to be back at work, I didn’t put all that effort in for months in the class room so I could then sit at home. It frustrates the hell out of me but at the end of the day a union is there to protect its members, not to work in the public’s interest.
I'm due to start conductor training on the 23rd November. Got a call yesterday to confirm everything is going ahead, but with a change to the expected venue to accommodate social distancing etc. As well as training in a covid safe environment, we will be expected to be tested for Covid-19 at certain key points throughout the course.
Really @ComUtoR ? A shop full of people buying non-essential goods is comparable to a lack of trained drivers running an essential public holiday that gets people to work! It changes on Thursday due to needing parliamentary approval, what parliamentary approval do ASLEF need to suspend training? Did you mean to say we drivers fancy a nice rest so our union is going to suspend the training so we get one? As Northern are unable to return to a full timetable in December and some services schoolchildren need aren't being reinstated in December ASLEF need a very good reason to postpone training any further, not just because other sectors are working from home as instructed by the government.
You do realise driver instructors are active drivers themselves? Not having a trainee doesn’t mean they stop working, it just means they drive on their own. Meanwhile trainees are stuck at home on a much lower salary, which is not what any of them want (as per @Coach Carter above).
You can agree or disagree with ASLEF’s approach to COVID “safety” (I happen to disagree with it) but to suggest this is some kind of ruse to get drivers out of work is ludicrous. It’s also quite insulting to those of us who have been continuing to work throughout this pandemic while other workers have been paid by the government to sit around doing nothing.
The only change to working instructions from the PM ahead of the England 'lockdown 2.0' has been those who are clinically very vulnerable should not go to work and that certain businesses have to close. Those who can work from home have already been doing so for months, those who cannot have been going to work as normal with employers encouraged to make the workplaces as COVID secure as possible. Even if you argue the training is an educational establishment, not a workplace then the PM has not ordered for it to close, the PM has actively encouraged educational establishments to ensure they don't close. 'Lockdown 2.0' is very different to the original lockdown and based on what I've seen there's been very little change to the number of people using public transport since it started, as the number of people clinically vulnerable is very low and everyone else is still allowed to carry on working and going about other essential business during the 'lockdown.'
Everyone keeps reminding us that "the railway" shouldn't be a law unto itself. Well, you can't have it both ways. We either follow the goverment advice and drop non essential services, staff, and work from home where possible or give us a blanket exemption to do whatever we want.
It's unfortunate Northern decide seemed to class all peak time extras and 50% of off-peak services as "non-essential services" without proper consultation and then started making excuses about lack of properly trained drivers whenever people and groups stated they needed services reinstating for work or educational reasons.
Key workers (including all staff required to operate trains, buses and trams) have never been part of the work from home guidance, just like the supermarket staff are still in the supermarket and they aren't sitting at a desk at home, requiring you to talk to them via a video point if needed or sending a robot out in to the store to refill an empty shelf.
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You do realise driver instructors are active drivers themselves? Not having a trainee doesn’t mean they stop working, it just means they drive on their own. Meanwhile trainees are stuck at home on a much lower salary, which is not what any of them want (as per @Coach Carter above).
You can agree or disagree with ASLEF’s approach to COVID “safety” (I happen to disagree with it) but to suggest this is some kind of ruse to get drivers out of work is ludicrous. It’s also quite insulting to those of us who have been continuing to work throughout this pandemic while other workers have been paid by the government to sit around doing nothing.
You do realise one the two scenarios apply to those who have been furloughed:
1. They are at serious risk of redundancy or have now already been made redundant.
2. They have to be available to return to work at little to no notice and in most cases they are set up to work from home meaning they could be asked to start working in as little as an hour from when they get the call. It's a bit like drivers and guards sitting in a staff room for their shift and only being asked to work trains if there's sufficient demand for them to run and getting a 20% pay cut unless they are asked to work.
Also many of the people 'sitting around doing nothing' have been paid less than the minimum wage for the time they've spent on furlough, as the minimum wage act doesn't apply to furlough and it's perfectly legal for 80% of someone's salary to be below the minimum wage.
Obviously most people don't want to be sitting at home not working when they can earn more by working, as well as feeling that they are being useful by working. It sounds like the difference between furlough and ASLEF suspending training is the latter is a collective employee decision, not an employer decision.
'Lockdown 2.0' is very different to the original lockdown and based on what I've seen there's been very little change to the number of people using public transport since it started
The station car parks in the area I work (London commuting territory) had been getting busier since September, but since Thursday the numbers of cars have dropped off again noticeably on the the three weekdays we've had since it started. Passenger numbers have also dropped off a cliff, particularly in the evenings where some late night trains have gone from having a good load on them to leaving central London termini with just 1 or 2 on. This is just my experience of late shifts in/out of London since Thursday though - I don't have stats or experience network wide.
The station car parks in the area I work (London commuting territory) had been getting busier since September, but since Thursday the numbers of cars have dropped off again noticeably on the the three weekdays we've had since it started. Passenger numbers have also dropped off a cliff, particularly in the evenings where some late night trains have gone from having a good load on them to leaving central London termini with just 1 or 2 on. This is just my experience of late shifts in/out of London since Thursday though - I don't have stats or experience network wide.
What happens in London is rarely reflective of what's happening nationwide. Pictures being posted on Twitter have shown the busiest parts of London almost deserted, while streets in other cities have too many people moving around for social distancing to be maintained. It's also possible some public transport services will actually see an increase in usage due to hospitals getting busier (meaning more staff needed) and the Nightingale facilities being brought back into use. Any services which usually carry a significant number of airport passengers will obviously see the opposite effect.
Exactly, it's the new norm how they handle training now, I was saying before that this virus might go on for years. I have read a vaccine has been found so we will see, but at my toc its business as usual few more drivers that have been on long term sick have returned this week and are out with a instructor, some trainees have also returned to the handling.
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