And I think this is the bit that is easy to overlook. I only spent 5 years or so in the Civil Service (in a specialist grade), in that time I realised that pay was not about what was realistic for the job but was about how much money HMT let the department have. We had a lot of skilled specialists, then HMT cut our budget so we had both a pay freeze AND removed progression up the salary band- quite a few staff left (I was amongst them).
I hope the whole issue of cutting Network Rail Maintenance and Ops staff doesn't get lost in the headline "it's about pay" message. There's some really worrying things proposed for Maintenance, I remember Phase 2b/c being bad but this is a whole league on from that. The difficulty is that bean-counters (including HMT?) do not understand the cost of reliability. Nor is the lack of staff in the signalling grade (vacancy level) helping.
I recall that in one particular part of Network Rail maintenance that I dealt with a few years ago, there was a cycle: reliability of S&T equipment would deteriorate, delay minutes stack up and be costly. So, more staff would be got and put on preventative maintenance. Lo and behold, over 6 months or so the reliability would improve until the delay minutes were minimal. About 6 months after that, the bean-counters would demand getting rid of a bunch of S&T preventative maintenance staff because the delay minutes were down so obviously they were not needed any more..........
The concept that in preventative maintenance, your goal is "nothing" (no failures, no delay minutes) so your success is measured in being at "nothing" seemed totally beyond their comprehension.
The whole idea of "remote monitoring" as a staff cost-cutter has been kicking around for over a decade now. It suffers from some practical flaws: (1) You still need staff to attend the pending failure before the item fails; (2) the technology is simple on one level- the comms and sensors. But the challenge is what the sensors measure- what is the "about to fail" signal in the equipment? How long do you get after the signal starts before it fails? What is the lead-time of the possibly-obsolete part to fix the kit? And with a variety of equipment, you need to establish that for all the different types of kit. This is currently in the heads of skilled staff who over time build up this knowledge, but replacing the slowly-built "local knowledge" in the heads of staff isn't that simple. Then you have to somehow manage the big data output and convert it into a work regime.... and do all this whilst running trains. To (slightly mis)quote Ben Goldacre, "I think you'll find it's not as simple as you thought."
[I am sure there is room for cuts in Network Rail, but as I've said, not in Ops or Maintenance front-line staff and their local management/support. Possible economies might be from looking at the Projects regimes (the big projects don't seem able to understand/manage costs compared to other utilities) and also the amount of double-staffing in areas like Track Renewals (where too often there is a NR person as well as a contractor person doing the same thing where one would do). Similarly, integrating TOCs more could/should reduce senior management without a deleterious impact on the front line- how many TOC MDs are really required when DfT is running the show for example?]
Unfortunately, I fear you may be correct.
Indeed. At the start of my career, I spent a number of years in Local Government (in a rural local authority) before getting a Civil Service post. I worked in a Highways department- dealt with roads and transport including bus subsidies. Watching how budget decisions were made by the Elected Members was instructive. All departments competed for the fixed amount of funds from that years settlement- cash from council tax, business rates and the govt Revenue Support Grant (RSG). Council tax was capped and the RSG was whatever HMT decided we could have (in accordance with applicable formulae of the day for local govt funding).
The winners of the argument were inevitably those with (a) Statutory Duties to discharge and (b) the most emotive argument. Which meant that if it was a bit more money for schools vs enough to maintain the Highway in a good state/subsidise a rural bus service, I can assure you the the Highways dept lost out every time, we always got the absolute bare minimum. See, there's more votes in books for schools than there is in fixing potholes (or subsidising rural bus services). We tried every which way to argue our case. We tried to explain the role of transport as a social enabler. We mostly failed to get that message across.
And that's the situation the railway is now in. It's reliant on govt subsidy- which is not of itself a problem because transport infrastructure is a massive enabler of social mobility and access to services for all. However, when competing for funding out of a limited pot (and the pot is always limited) against the NHS, schools, defence and social care (etc), the railways will lose. BR had this same problem. (Roads tend to to a bit better on the national scale because the government takes so much tax from fuel- 75% or so of a litre of petrol/diesel being tax- and because some 90% or so journeys are by car). Where there is an uplift, too often it is earmarked for a vanity project or covering cost over-runs on existing projects.
Like others I am not trying to make political statements, just looking at where we are on a practical level. I believe that railway staff have a bunch of genuine grievances which need addressing, and that the picture is much more nuanced and complex than "merely" wanting a pay-rise. Whether or not RMT tactics address the grievances remains to be seen. Nor am I convinced it would be much different with Labour in govt as I suspect the way this will play out will be driven in large part by HMT. Also take into account those persons at the top with careers to build in GBR (can't imagine you will get promoted by openly defying HMT.....).
It is with a deep sorrow that I follow this thread, it's difficult to see an outcome that won't hurt a lot of people both within the industry and outwith it.
TPO
