It is a tricky one isn't it? I can well see (sticking to the big railway) that if you're say an LNER driver where you spend hours bombing down the ECML with only a handful of station stops then doing that for 8.5 hours for four days will be, of course, mentally taxing but is a very different kettle of fish to say a Northern driver working out of Leeds on the electric services out to Skipton/Ilkley/Bradford where actually doing the hours over five days may well be the better bet from a managing your ability to focus and concentrate and be rested. On LU it is of course even more extreme. An LU driver probably does as many or more station stops in one day as an LNER driver does in a week!
But, even then I can see the appeal of your working week just being four days long. I've not worked on the railway or done shift work anywhere else but the best I ever felt at work was when I was working part-time Monday to Thursday. That three days off a week was really quite remarkable for how much more energy and mental capacity you had. But then I wasn't spending 8.5 hours doing dozens of station stops in tunnels having possibly started or finished my day at 3am...
That's of course quite apart from any other Ts & Cs that this might be attacking. I remember I was supportive of the set of strikes on the big railway a few years ago when they wanted to make it so that people wouldn't know one week to the next what their rest days or spare turns were going to look like meaning you couldn't actually plan anything unless it was booked as leave. Crackers. If LU are up to similar tricks here then I have to say hopefully the RMT can block any nonsense like that.
I think the above is all a reasonably fair summary.
Essentially there’s the different positions:
(1) those drivers who would prefer 4-day week (tend to be newer drivers / those living further out)
(2) those drivers who don’t want it (tend to be more established ones / those living nearer in)
(3) TFL who I think it’s fair to say are using this as a means of bringing in other things, which results in some crossover with (2).
Note that (1) and (2) aren’t necessarily totally aligned with ASLEF / RMT, although the two unions have adopted opposing positions.
For what it’s worth, I’m with RMT on this one. TFL have done too many botched change programmes in recent years, so with that track record if I was a driver I simply wouldn’t trust them. It doesn’t help that one of the people who is a protagonist of this has a reputation for every single thing that he has ever touched turning out to be a disaster.
Logistically I can’t see how it would work splitting out the two groups who do and don’t want the change - is it reasonable for example to expect 5-day people to cover increased rates of sickness amongst 4-day people who find the change burns them out? Bear in mind TFL has never been great at performance management, so you can bet issues will be left to fester rather than competently dealt with.
Realistically, drivers moan today when they have an 8-hour duty (8.5 hours including the meal relief), so I can imagine how longer duties would be received!
As for some of the other things being floated around. Overtime/RDW is more of an opportunity to mask the fact that TFL have failed to keep on top of recruitment/training over recent years, and using Covid as an excuse is wearing a bit thin now we are 6 years on. Then there’s booking on by iPad, which to be honest is bordering on laughable - yeah TOCs do similar stuff, but they don’t generally have trains running every couple of minutes, if LU is trying to emulate TOCs then it points to a fundamental lack of understanding of how their operation actually works - there’s plenty of threads on here discussing meltdowns on TOC services during disruption, look at what happens on GTR for example!
It will certainly be interesting to see how all three camps are reconciled, if it’s possible.
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