Unite Network Rail Strikes Off

[zwk500]

Really!?

But upthread I was assured by @greyman42 that the government hasn’t announced any redundancies, and that that RMT is completely unreasonable for opposing DOO and wanting guarantees.

In a sane world, the RDG and RMT would identify lines for the introduction of DOO and sign an agreement that the current Guards would be continue to be rostered until natural moves took the complement down to a minimum number, at which point they'd be redeployed to other roles/services that retained Guard operation. AIUI the DOO clause inserted at the last minute was for *all* lines, which isn't a reasonable response and was an attempt to broadside the deal.

And to be fair, AFAIK the government hasn't announced any compulsory redundancies, not least because they wouldn't be the ones firing people, but I'm now out of the loop so don't know if any binding guarantees on redundancies have been given.

 

[Taunton]

I don't have a great knowledge about UK union finances, nor of USA rail unions, but did understand that one mainstream difference is that in the UK dues payable are a fixed fee per member, possibly in several bands by trade, whereas in the USA it is a percentage of pay (and notably much higher than the actual percentage in the UK). Thus the union's management financial desire (quite separate to that of any members) is in Britain to have as MANY members as possible, and to thus resist any efficiency scheme that reduces the future size of the workforce, whereas in the USA it is more about maintaining and increasing high incomes for the members.

I am guessing that a significant part of the issue with guards being portrayed as "redundant" instead of becoming higher-paid drivers (which to an outsider seems a perfectly reasonable career progression to offer, especially given the continuous shortage of drivers) is that historically they have been in separate unions.

 

[43066]

AIUI the DOO clause inserted at the last minute was for *all* lines, which isn't a reasonable response and was an attempt to broadside the deal.

Absolutely. It’s odd that people can’t accept that.

In a sane world, the RDG and RMT would identify lines for the introduction of DOO and sign an agreement that the current Guards would be continue to be rostered until natural moves took the complement down to a minimum number, at which point they'd be redeployed to other roles/services that retained Guard operation.

Indeed.

And to be fair, AFAIK the government hasn't announced any compulsory redundancies

And they never would make such an announcement, of course. However that is no indication of whether redundancies may or may not take place, which is the union’s prime concern, and of course the overarching intention of DOO is to reduce costs…

I am guessing that a significant part of the issue with guards being portrayed as "redundant" instead of becoming higher-paid drivers (which to an outsider seems a perfectly reasonable career progression to offer, especially given the continuous shortage of drivers) is that historically they have been in separate unions.

Guard to driver isn’t a “career progression” at most places. Driving is a completely a different job and not all guards are suitable to become drivers for various reasons. Failing the selection twice also means a lifetime bar from driving.

 

[Taunton]

Guard to driver isn’t a “career progression” at most places. Driving is a completely a different job and not all guards are suitable to become drivers for various reasons. Failing the selection twice also means a lifetime bar from driving.

Was it not common on the Underground, in the days when trains had two crew, for guard to progress to driver? Sure, not everyone could. But many would.

 

[Annetts key]

On Thursday, Network Rail said that there could be further discussions. However, these would be on points of clarity as they intended on steamrolling modernising maintenance changes through. Is it just me, or does that show complete arrogance.

If your employer were to say that they intended to force through changes, what would you do?
Of for those who are self employed, or no longer working, if an organisation that you have a written contract with said that they were changing the terms in their favour regardless of any objections from you, what would you do?

 

[Carlisle]

Was it not common on the Underground, in the days when trains had two crew, for guard to progress to driver? Sure, not everyone could. But many would.

I’ve heard similar from former LU staff. Guards did the shunt driving in depots too

 

[43066]

Was it not common on the Underground, in the days when trains had two crew, for guard to progress to driver? Sure, not everyone could. But many would.

Possibly. But that was a long time ago, no national tests are required for LU (note even a LU driver would still need to pass these before driving for a TOC). As I said, you only get two goes at those, and it’s game over.

It will be a viable route for some, but by no means all. It won’t be anything like a certain enough path to assuage concerns around redundancies, or the current guard role being reduced to something not much different to a trolley host.

I’ve heard similar from former LU staff. Guards did the shunt driving in depots too

In the 70s guards on the mainline unofficially did a fair bit of driving(!). What happened decades ago isn’t that relevant to how things are done now.

 

[12LDA28C]

Guard to driver isn’t a “career progression” at most places. Driving is a completely a different job and not all guards are suitable to become drivers for various reasons. Failing the selection twice also means a lifetime bar from driving.

Indeed although many ex-guards do become drivers if they have the ability to successfully pass the psychometric tests. Especially in London and the South East where there are a variety of TOCs to choose from within a limited radius.

 

[Mag_seven]

There appear to be a few posts here discussing Brexit which is off topic for this thread.

All posts of a Brexit nature can be posted here

Brexit matters

I cannot find an open Brexit thread on the website so have opened this one for all and sundry to use.

www.railforums.co.uk

Thank you

 

[Carlisle]

In the 70s guards on the mainline unofficially did a fair bit of driving(!). What happened decades ago isn’t that relevant to how things are done now.

Indeed, but I understand this was a proper post called ‘driver guard’ happy to be corrected if I’ve got it all wrong

 

[LowLevel]

Merseyrail has guards officially in the line of promotion to driver but they're unusual.

To be fair it is probably one of the more common internal moves elsewhere, but there are still plenty of long serving guards, who didn't make it through the tests repeatedly. Of course there are plenty who like being guards too.

I've never actually applied myself, which is often met with some degree of surprise when asked "why aren't you driving/managing/training" - you need good guards too, and I happen to enjoy it at present!

 

[ComUtoR]

Merseyrail has guards officially in the line of promotion to driver but they're unusual.

Do Merseyrail Drivers need to pass the psychometrics ?

To be fair it is probably one of the more common internal moves elsewhere, but there are still plenty of long serving guards, who didn't make it through the tests repeatedly.

We don't get that many internal applicants and even with internals we still get a lot of failures.

Of course there are plenty who like being guards too.

I've never actually applied myself, which is often met with some degree of surprise when asked "why aren't you driving/managing/training" - you need good guards too, and I happen to enjoy it at present!

Our Guards / OBS are generally happy in their jobs and have zero interest in becoming Drivers. It takes a special kind of person to be a Guard and most do a spectacular job.

 

[fishwomp]

I don't have a great knowledge about UK union finances, nor of USA rail unions, but did understand that one mainstream difference is that in the UK dues payable are a fixed fee per member, possibly in several bands by trade, whereas in the USA it is a percentage of pay (and notably much higher than the actual percentage in the UK). Thus the union's management financial desire (quite separate to that of any members) is in Britain to have as MANY members as possible, and to thus resist any efficiency scheme that reduces the future size of the workforce, whereas in the USA it is more about maintaining and increasing high incomes for the members.

I am guessing that a significant part of the issue with guards being portrayed as "redundant" instead of becoming higher-paid drivers (which to an outsider seems a perfectly reasonable career progression to offer, especially given the continuous shortage of drivers) is that historically they have been in separate unions.

I've been wondering about this. RMT would lose revenue if guards transitioned to driver roles and switched union.

RMT subscription income, across all its membership, was £18.4M in 2021 (Nov/Dec '22 edition of RMT News: https://www.rmt.org.uk/news/rmt-news/)

Their fees are £300 a year for anyone on over £23k (https://www.rmt.org.uk/about/join-rmt/) - and about half that for anyone on less. Membership is about 80,000 - the "R" in RMT is the most significant part of their membership.

10,000 guards (guessing, and happy to be corrected - TOC RMT members is a good bit over 20,000 in total but includes 10,000 cleaners probably largely on reduced rate subscription). £300 each a year per guard - that's £3M. A gradual decline in numbers would be a painful prospect for RMT.

18,000 balloted this month at Network Rail across signallers, maintenance and other roles - even the voluntary severance scheme (5% of NR employees) would've cost RMT £300k in lost fees - or 2% of its membership dues..

Also, if you can't get a pay rise for your members, you'll have trouble increasing the fee by any higher percentage to recoup that decline and inflation which are needed to pay RMT's own staff (who can themselves go on strike!)

On the other hand, for ASLEF - as a union that'd be great as their fees would increase, but for ASLEF members who may be earning a lot from overtime - the members would earn less of that if there were no driver shortage! The railways would benefit a lot from a passenger perspective if crew numbers didn't mean reliance on staff volunteering for overtime. Not sure that merging ASLEF and RMT would be a good idea..

 

[43066]

Our Guards / OBS are generally happy in their jobs and have zero interest in becoming Drivers. It takes a special kind of person to be a Guard and most do a spectacular job.

Part of the issue is that the very qualities that might make someone excel in one of those roles may well cause them to underperform in the other.

A gregarious guard who enjoys interacting with people might find it difficult to spend hours in silence on their own concentrating. Similarly a lot of drivers gravitate to the role specifically because they don’t want to spend their working day interacting with idiots passengers.

 

[Carlisle]

Similarly a lot of drivers gravitate to the role specifically because they don’t want to spend their working day interacting with idiots passengers.

Join one of the FOCs

 

[43066]

Join one of the FOCs

Appreciate the unrequested careers advice, but I’m happy where I am, thanks.

 

[LowLevel]

Do Merseyrail Drivers need to pass the psychometrics ?



We don't get that many internal applicants and even with internals we still get a lot of failures.



Our Guards / OBS are generally happy in their jobs and have zero interest in becoming Drivers. It takes a special kind of person to be a Guard and most do a spectacular job.

I believe Merseyrail drivers are the same as elsewhere, yes. Perhaps not a role for everyone given the work they have but still, people there seem to be pretty happy with their lot by and large. People from Merseyside are a different breed (I don't mean that in a derogative way either!).

We have quite a few internal applicants from the likes of guard or supervisor roles, as well as platform staff. They have a reasonable success rate I think. Certainly at our "out depots" a majority of new drivers are now recruited from their guards. I suppose you know who you're getting and at a small depot that's important. More externals at the big depots but we've still got plenty of guards waiting for a course. I suppose your TOC has DOO working and perhaps the guards might be more reluctant to move towards the "inners"?

Certainly where I am it's a more traditional form of crew working where the guard has plenty to do with operating the train and works very much alongside the driver so you get to know each other very well. There's only a couple of hundred of us in each grade all in so faces tend to be familiar. Being at a smaller TOC has it's benefits. I can ring the controllers having foreseen an issue occurring, explain my views to them and how I think the issue might be sorted and they'll be happy to act on them based on what they know of me and my experience and that's quite satisfying in it's own right - I love problem solving and try to be proactive about it.

There tends to be a very distinct divide in guards here - those who see it as a stepping stone to being a driver, and those who genuinely enjoy the role for what it is.

 

[Railwaysceptic]

Was it not common on the Underground, in the days when trains had two crew, for guard to progress to driver? Sure, not everyone could. But many would.

I know (knew, in fact) a woman who worked at a London Underground station and progressed to becoming a LU driver.

 

[ComUtoR]

I know (knew, in fact) a woman who worked at a London Underground station and progressed to becoming a LU driver.

There is a difference in getting a new role/job, being promoted, or career progression.

Any internal applicant is free to apply for a Driver job at my TOC and I suspect many others. They must all pass the same progress as anyone else so no job is guaranteed and neither are you promoted into it.

I'm certainly curious how it works in Merseyrail and would be interested to learn more.

 

[LowLevel]

There is a difference in getting a new role/job, being promoted, or career progression.

Any internal applicant is free to apply for a Driver job at my TOC and I suspect many others. They must all pass the same progress as anyone else so no job is guaranteed and neither are you promoted into it.

I'm certainly curious how it works in Merseyrail and would be interested to learn more.

The guards still do psychometrics but they only recruit drivers internally. Guards who pass and are appointed then complete their training and work in a hybrid role where they cover guard and driver turns as and when required until they're given a full time driver position. It's like the old days of being a "passed man" under BR, basically, but their guards are effectively Trainman G (guard) rather than Trainman D (secondman).

For a mostly enclosed network with a single type (effectively) of rolling stock and guards who don't undertake revenue duties it seems to have suited all parties quite well.

 

[Lemmy99uk]

Similarly a lot of drivers gravitate to the role specifically because they don’t want to spend their working day interacting with idiots passengers.

Sadly, that comment is indicative of the contempt that some in the industry hold for their customers.

 

[LowLevel]

Sadly, that comment is indicative of the contempt that some in the industry hold for their customers.

To be fair, you don't recruit train drivers for their social skills, the gent in question has a guard for that

You can either have someone who is happy being locked in a small box for hours and largely forbidden from any form of company or distraction, or you can have someone gregarious - the combination is very rare indeed as long as the grumpy sod is committed to getting the idiots/customers/fare paging passengers to their destinations in one piece and in as timely a fashion as possible, and is committed to looking after them if need be if it goes wrong, then they tick the necessary boxes.

 

[Annetts key]

Sadly, that comment is indicative of the contempt that some in the industry hold for their customers.

And do you have the same opinion for all the other railway staff behind the scenes who also don’t normally interact with passengers/customers/public, such as signallers, engineering grades (both fleet maintenance and infrastructure maintenance or renewals), electrical and plant engineering, OHL staff, the list is quite extensive. I can assure you, some of these people definitely don’t fall into the customer friendly category. But as long as they perform their job to the requirements, it does not really matter.

 

[43066]

To be fair, you don't recruit train drivers for their social skills, the gent in question has a guard for that

You can either have someone who is happy being locked in a small box for hours and largely forbidden from any form of company or distraction, or you can have someone gregarious - the combination is very rare indeed as long as the grumpy sod is committed to getting the idiots/customers/fare paging passengers to their destinations in one piece and in as timely a fashion as possible, and is committed to looking after them if need be if it goes wrong, then they tick the necessary boxes.

Couldn’t have put it better .

 

[zwk500]

Sadly, that comment is indicative of the contempt that some in the industry hold for their customers.

A lot of the staff who want nothing to do with customers are 100% dedicated to making the trains run safely on time, which is after all precisely what the customer wants.

 

[Bald Rick]

I do wonder if passengers have come somewhat immune to rail strikes? The RMT for better or worse are most associated with rail industrial action, it's not quite the same for say nurses or paramedics because they so rarely strike so it makes much more impact when they do.

Many have.

In any event, it’s not going to be such big news after Monday, as Ambulance strikes / Border force strikes etc will be taking the headlines.

If your employer were to say that they intended to force through changes, what would you do?

Make sure I read up about it, in detail, myself. Employers making changes to working practices is hardly unheard of. In fact it happens routinely in every industry.

However, these would be on points of clarity as they intended on steamrolling modernising maintenance changes through.

To be fair, there have been formal discussions for months, and informal discussions for the best part of a year. The principles have been set out for a long time and explained at length.

 

[43096]

Sadly, that comment is indicative of the contempt that some in the industry hold for their customers.

To be fair, you don't recruit train drivers for their social skills, the gent in question has a guard for that

You can either have someone who is happy being locked in a small box for hours and largely forbidden from any form of company or distraction, or you can have someone gregarious - the combination is very rare indeed as long as the grumpy sod is committed to getting the idiots/customers/fare paging passengers to their destinations in one piece and in as timely a fashion as possible, and is committed to looking after them if need be if it goes wrong, then they tick the necessary boxes.

Having contempt for passengers (or not) - or to flip it the other way and call it customer service - hasn't really got anything to do with social skills, but is about attitude. There's lots of people in companies who don't have direct contact with customers, but that doesn't (or shouldn't) stop them thinking in terms of the customer in what they do. The customer is, after all, the reason any business continues to trade. Without them, there is no job.

The bit in bold isn't contempt for the customer, it's delivering the service for the customer.

 

[High Dyke]

No, it's accepted through collective bargaining.

It's the same issue with non-frontline colleagues, for whom a payrise is seemingly dependent on a deal being agreed with the RMT - even though there's no reason that the two couldn't have been uncoupled, as happened at Network Rail with bands 1-4.

I really feel for everyone who's caught up in the collateral damage.

Normally (I can't be certain NR would follow) with collective bargaining, an employer will "recognise" a single TU for each "trade group", i.e. a clearly defined group of workers. The terms and conditions for each trade group will follow the agreement with the recognised TU for that trade group, regardless of which TU individuals are members of themselves.

Whether to join a TU and which is, of course, personal chchoice

NR stated that due to the "collective bargaining laws" some affected TSSA members would not get the payrise before Christmas, as was intimated by NR. People are now complaining that they voted to accept under false pretences.

On the matter of Christmas rosters, then agreements outline the appropriate pay for Bank Holidays. Signallers have been given the agreed 14-days notice that Christmas Day they are booked off, not required. The same should apply for the 26th, but because of the industrial dispute, Senior management have ordered signallers to be rostered for a full shift. That way, they won't have to pay those that don't report for work.

 

[Bald Rick]

NR stated that due to the "collective bargaining laws" some affected TSSA members would not get the payrise before Christmas, as was intimated by NR.

It has always been the case that all unions would have had to accept the deal for everyone to be paid before Christmas. Unfortunately, any staff groups represented by RMT in some form (even if also represented by TSSA) cant be paid. Don’t forget that NR doesn’t know who is in which union (or indeed isn’t in a union at all).

 

[YorkshireBear]

It has always been the case that all unions would have accepted the deal for everyone to be paid before Christmas. Unfortunately, any staff groups represented by RMT in some form (even if also represented by TSSA) cant be paid. Don’t forget that NR doesn’t know who is in which union (or indeed isn’t in a union at all).

And for good reason too. It's a shame for those in TSSA but they can't really complain....