Train strikes
- Thread starter Warpaint
- Start date
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CrackingOwlSanctuary
VIP Member
Rail workers to strike for another two days in August
Workers at Network Rail and 14 train operators will now strike on 18 and 20 August, as well as 27 July.
www.bbc.co.uk
18th and 20th August too for RMT.
CrackingOwlSanctuary
VIP Member
Pushyplumb
VIP Member
Was just about to book a spa day at a London hotel for the 17th September. Luckily strike was announced before I hit the send button. It is OK for me. I will arrange something more local and drive but after 2 years of Covid I feel for the theatres, hotels and restaurants this strike action is causing especially the low paid workers struggling to get to and from work.
Folkevermore
VIP Member
The government are refusing to negotiate though, they don’t give a crap about low paid workers.
CrackingOwlSanctuary
VIP Member
ASLEF and RMT suspend upcoming strike action.
…. Not
Folkevermore
VIP Member
But the train operators are losing more money through strike days than they ever would’ve spent on payrises. Can’t believe they’re still refusing to negotiate whilst still making huge shareholder payouts
Pushyplumb
VIP Member
The ones suffering are the restaurants, theatres, tourist attractions and the poor souls who have to struggle getting into work. I've stopped making plans in London because you just don't know when a strick will be called.
PinkandTwinkly
Chatty Member
The work to rule over Christmas will be far more effective
The railway runs on overtime
A strike is easy to manage you just don't run anything and everyone knows in advance but losing odd signal boxes here and there will be a absolute nightmare for Tocs and passengers
CrackingOwlSanctuary
VIP Member
The government are pulling the strings because they want to axe thousands of jobs in the name of 'modernisation' aka get rid of loads of front line staff so passengers are reliant on apps and machines.
I've always found work to rule to be hard to implement in practice, there are always people who will work over either because they love a sweetener or because they are concerned about their job (for various reasons) and think never refusing to pull them out of the tit will count down the line, despite mountains of evidence to the contrary.
laughing
VIP Member
Folkevermore
VIP Member
They’re screwing over staff in more than just the monetary sense too. My partner works on the railway, and the general rule for their shifts in the past is that they will work approximately two full weekends plus an additional Saturday or Sunday out of a five week rota, and if they don’t have weekends of they will get two days off in a row in a week to allow for a proper rest.
He just got his new shift pattern options through. All of them have them working 4/5 weekends, and their days off in the week aren’t even together, so he’ll get say a Monday and a Thursday off instead.
no work life balance at all. He only earns £25k, does horrendously unsocial shift hours and he commutes to London for work too, so it’s honestly not becoming worth it anymore.
the old office job (government work) that he left four years ago now pays more, even though the railway was a pay increase for him at the time.
I think people have this belief that all railway workers earn big money, and are therefore greedy, but for most of them this isn’t the case at all.
He just got his new shift pattern options through. All of them have them working 4/5 weekends, and their days off in the week aren’t even together, so he’ll get say a Monday and a Thursday off instead.
no work life balance at all. He only earns £25k, does horrendously unsocial shift hours and he commutes to London for work too, so it’s honestly not becoming worth it anymore.
the old office job (government work) that he left four years ago now pays more, even though the railway was a pay increase for him at the time.
I think people have this belief that all railway workers earn big money, and are therefore greedy, but for most of them this isn’t the case at all.
CarmenGhia
VIP Member
My limited experience of union action is in a different field entirely, but I never participated for a few reasons. Chiefly because the union committee was a specific cliquey group of people with a very specific agenda, and because the manager who was bullying me out of my job was allowed a leading position. The bullying predated him knowing my choices regarding strikes and other actions.
Folkevermore
VIP Member
I’m a timetable planner and this comment shows you literally don’t understand how railways work lol, they had already published the amended timetables that have to go out by a certain date - they can’t be amended past that because of security risks.
Timetable planners also work Monday - Friday as it’s a normal 9-5 office job so we could not just revert the entire network by the Monday when we were told the strikes were off at 4:30pm on a Friday even if we did implement a last minute pull in the system. We all have jobs and families, and a lot of people have kids and other responsibilities so we’re not going to stay past our normal working hours, especially not for the wage we get paid. Timetable planning is also pretty complex and like fitting a huge jigsaw puzzle into place so it’s hard to plan a new timetable at a moments notice, especially when there are so many moving variables such as crew and stock diagramming to take into account.
As the strikes were already planned all of the rolling stock planning had been adjusted so we wouldn’t be able to get the trains in the right place to start their journeys from the depot.
Most railway operations are heavily reliant on overtime (which is paid at the normal hourly rate btw) and as they hadn’t bothered to arrange overtime on strike days, even if the issues mentioned above were resolved, there wouldn’t be staff to run the trains.
All services (at least on my network) we’re back to normal by the wednesday.
please also note train timetable planners work their asses off to try to get things moving, and haven’t been on strike at all this year (at least not where I work), so its kinda crappy that we work our arses off just to get mocked by the general public
CrackingOwlSanctuary
VIP Member
Folkevermore I am a Crew Planner so I know exactly what you are talking about, it can be hard to try and get these things across to people with little understanding of the railway. To be honest half of my headaches come from people who should have a good understanding of the railway sticking their oar into issues they dont understand, that's bad enough!
Had an email chain land in my inbox the other day that had been all round the houses about 'solving a problem' that I identified a fix for in 30 seconds purely by knowing what the actual plan was rather than trying to invent one outside my sphere of expertise.
The trains can be rubbish and are at the moment (for a myriad of factors) but I think it is easy to say 'lol why don't they just do X' when the whole system is complicated by it's very nature do to the layers of modernisation that have come in. That doesn't fit the narrative though, especially for politicians. Apparently the 'dinosaur' railway needs to 'get with the times' and make it easier for staff to perform different roles/sign more routes and traction. Like they did under British Rail, then
That's terrible, I'm sorry you had to go through that. Unfortunately unions aren't always infallible, and rail unions can fall foul of that the same as others (especially at local level). I know people who have become reps purely to feather their own nests but I also know decent reps and seen first hand proactive branches ensure that there can be no conflict of interest with management side being reps etc.
What I would always advise anyone in your position however is that as a member you are within your rights to seek advice from a neutral party within the union if you feel you have a grievance.
Had an email chain land in my inbox the other day that had been all round the houses about 'solving a problem' that I identified a fix for in 30 seconds purely by knowing what the actual plan was rather than trying to invent one outside my sphere of expertise.
The trains can be rubbish and are at the moment (for a myriad of factors) but I think it is easy to say 'lol why don't they just do X' when the whole system is complicated by it's very nature do to the layers of modernisation that have come in. That doesn't fit the narrative though, especially for politicians. Apparently the 'dinosaur' railway needs to 'get with the times' and make it easier for staff to perform different roles/sign more routes and traction. Like they did under British Rail, then
That's terrible, I'm sorry you had to go through that. Unfortunately unions aren't always infallible, and rail unions can fall foul of that the same as others (especially at local level). I know people who have become reps purely to feather their own nests but I also know decent reps and seen first hand proactive branches ensure that there can be no conflict of interest with management side being reps etc.
What I would always advise anyone in your position however is that as a member you are within your rights to seek advice from a neutral party within the union if you feel you have a grievance.
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