I see that First Capital Connect is having difficulties providing services again today.
Thousands of rail commuters in south-east England are facing a second day of disruption because of a row over pay.
Nearly half of First Capital Connect’s 400 Thameslink services on its Brighton to Bedford route will be cancelled as many drivers refuse to work overtime.
Now I know that CF has already had a rant about this dispute when it caused disruption last weekend. It is easy to simply blame the unions as he has done, but it takes two to make a dispute and if the unions are to blame for causing the disruption, the employer is to blame for giving them such an easy target.
A little background is in order here. The rail industry has a long tradition of relying on overtime working. I recall my early days in a signalbox. Upon qualification, I was immediately expected to work my rest days, such was the cultural expectation. Indeed it went deeper than that – overtime was necessary to fulfil the roster. Also, Sunday is not a part of the working week, relying solely on overtime to fulfil the service. Sunday was covered (and presumably still is) by rostered overtime. That is, one was expected to work it. You could, if you so wish, not work it but the expectation was that you would find a replacement. In practice, this is not normally a problem as there will usually be someone ready to grab a Sunday as they want the extra money. The downside to this arrangement for the company is exposure to a mass refusal to work – and there’s nothing they can do about it as overtime is voluntary – and for the individual (well, at least for me) is that rest days are spread throughout the week. It would only be every four weeks or so before two consecutive rest days came together. That is why twelve hour rosters became popular. Network Rail doesn’t like twelve hour rosters, but signallers do. Sure, it’s a long working day, but four days on followed by three days off makes it worthwhile. With the judicious addition of annual leave days, a decent period away from work beckons. But, still, Sundays are not a part of the working week.
As I understand it, buying out the Sunday would be expensive. Yet on *privatisation, Railtrack significantly changed our terms and conditions (we had a strike over it, too). There was an opportunity then to buy out the Sunday and make it a part of the working week. Similarly, the train operators had that opportunity when the franchises were negotiated. Expensive, yes, but given the exposure to just the kind of risk First Capital Connect suffered last weekend and Midland suffered a few weekends previously, I would suggest that it would be a worthwhile one.
The other underlying problem mentioned above is the reliance of overtime to hold the roster together. On a normal working day, First Capital Connect cannot run their normal service. This is not the union’s fault, this is First’s fault. They are the ones who have tried to shave off staff costs by relying on overtime. It is rank incompetence to attempt to run a service without a full complement of staff to operate it. The answer to people not working overtime is to have enough people to fill the roster in the first place. Overtime then becomes the exception rather than the norm; something you fall back on in the event of sudden sickness, for example.
If FCC and other TOCs want to ensure that they are not cancelling services en masse they need to recruit more drivers and renegotiate the working week. No one should feel obliged to work overtime and companies really shouldn’t be relying on it to cover their core service on a routine basis.
*As DK points out, privatisation isn’t quite what it seems.
If these guys get paid anything like the £40,000 a year that South West Trains drivers get paid, employing more of them to solve the overtime problem might not be quite as simple as it seems.
.-= My last blog ..Where is Harriet Harman’s equality agenda now? =-.
Indeed – that’s why there is always pressure to reduce staffing costs (and £40k is about right for a semi-skilled safety critical role with anti-social hours). That said, any business that doesn’t employ enough people to deliver its core service wouldn’t survive very long in the harsh world outside the semi-privatised rail industry. The current arrangement is a cosy one providing both parties are prepared to cooperate. Business like, it ain’t.
If you cannot afford to fully staff your business, you can’t afford to run the business. Therein lies the problem with privatised railways. The running costs are hugely expensive. Those libertarians who want a return to the old big four arrangement need to consider the state of the infrastructure immediately prior to nationalisation. Also bear in mind why all those smaller operators disappeared during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. To raise enough revenue to cover infrastructure and staffing costs would mean prohibitively high ticket prices.
The problem with recruiting more drivers and renegotiating the working week is the cost, if you could save on overtime fine, however the unions will automatically look for compensation on loss of earnings and the whole grizzly cycle will begin again.
However that doesn’t mean to say they shouldn’t start on finding a permanent solution.
As for £40k being about right for a semi skilled safety critical role with anti-social hours, no, about £25k covers that. £40k is for professionals, not cab monkeys who could be replaced by a single electronic chip.
“…and if the unions are to blame for causing the disruption, the employer is to blame for giving them such an easy target.”
Well, quite! I can’t blame the unions or the rail workers, frankly; they are in the business of maximising their pay, after all, and who wouldn’t do the same if their boss was to leave such a massive open goal?
That said, the Remembrance Sunday action was poorly judged by the union leaders, and won’t have won them any plaudits from the public.
I’m sorry, but you are entirely wrong on this one. Train drivers and signallers receive intensive training and ongoing assessment to ensure their competence. A mistake on their part can result in multiple deaths. If you want the right calibre of person, you pay a decent salary. Every time I signed on for duty, I was taking the risk that I could end up facing a manslaughter charge, such is the responsibility inherent in the role. These jobs are semi-skilled. The remuneration offered is about right given the responsibility these people undertake.
Salary is not decided on a subjective idea of what is a “professional” or not, it is based upon what skills are required, what responsibilities are demanded and whether people are prepared to undertake them for the amount offered. Also there is the matter of disruption to personal life caused by anti-social hours. At the time when I was a signaller, my salary was around £10 – 15k. It was significantly higher than the average at the time. Would I go into a grade 7 signalbox again for £25k? No, I wouldn’t. You want me to take on the responsibility and put up with the disruption to my home life, you pay me a suitable salary. As an aside, signallers are paid less then drivers, which is an ongoing cause of resentment, but that’s another matter.
If you think that drivers can be replaced by an electronic chip, maybe you need to learn a little more about the signalling system on the UK network. Then you can explain how a chip will read and respond to 150 year old semaphore signalling and switch to track circuit block multiple aspect signalling (and back again) – neither of which directly interface with the train’s systems apart from the somewhat crude AWS and slightly more sophisticated ATP and ATWS that interact with the braking systems. In-cab signalling is some way off and certainly will take decades before the whole system is resignalled. Then you can think about replacing drivers.
As an ex railway signalling technician, I apologise for offence caused, however I don’t think I get value for money from the railway workers, no matter what level of training they receive. No I don’t blame them for trying to get more, but I still maintain they are overpaid for what they do, not the signallers especially so, but the drivers. yes I know the system is antiquated and requires massive reinvestment, but if the labour costs are so high that wont happen either.
Sooner or later change will have to come or the railwaymen will go the way of the miners and currently the postal workers.
You haven’t caused any offence.
As an ex-railway technician, you know full well that the suggestion of replacing drivers with an electronic chip is pure tosh. 😉
Yes, change must and will happen. The signalling role has changed massively in the past few years with the introduction of signalling centres covering larger areas of control by fewer people. Fewer people on a higher rate of pay, quite rightly.
Trains are another matter – current technology demands a driver although increasingly they are using driver only operation, so reducing staffing by doing away with conductors. Given that, the higher salary is justified. Should they be paid more than signallers? As an ex-signaller, I’ll have to say not. Drivers only have one train to look after at any one time, a signaller will have dozens.
Your early days in a signalbox? Tell us more.
.-= My last blog ..Albion Update from the personal perspective =-.
I don’t know the ins and outs of the railway unions, but surely they would object to more drivers/signallers being hired. Not only would that decrease the amount their members could earn by working overtime, it would remove from their arsenal this non-strike way of striking (refusing to work voluntary overtime) in the case of disputes.
So although hiring more employees might be the best way to solve the problem of unreliable service, it could well end up antagonising the unions into further, more disruptive action.
.-= My last blog ..This blog is moving =-.
Bella Gerens has a point.
From my experience in the chemical industry – also a 24 x 7 operation with safety-critical aspects (and how!) – a proposal to reduce overtime opportunities by taking on more staff was always regarded as an attack on the existing staff.
The overtime becomes regarded as part of the package. You are reducing their take-home, whichever way it’s looked at.
Bella, Andrew, quite so. However, in practice, there’s not much they can do about it. The industry has been here before. One of the findings of the Clapham crash in 1988, was an over reliance on overtime. Indeed, fatigue was a primary cause of the incident. The industry recruited heavily as a consequence and just those complaints were made. I know, I was one of the new recruits 😉
For the union, though, there is an upside. More recruits means more potential members and more union fees. Hence, they won’t complain that loudly.
Longrider, the creation of more driving posts would indeed be welcomed by the unions. Especially as they are actively pressing TOCs to recruit, and help keep those drivers that have been made redundant by FOCs in the industry.
I wasn’t aware of that – I’ve not had much dealing with the driving side for a year or two as these days I’m mostly dealing with track workers.
“Should they be paid more than signallers? As an ex-signaller, I’ll have to say not. Drivers only have one train to look after at any one time, a signaller will have dozens.”
Of course, if something does go wrong, the signaller is in a hut miles away watching the blinking lights on the board; the driver, however, is along for the ride, so to speak… 😉
.-= My last blog .."All I learnt at school, was how to bend not break the rules…" =-.
Julia, perfectly true. Drivers have been known to leave the footplate permanently due to jumpers – and Michael Hodder died with his passengers. That said, being a distance from the action doesn’t stop the stomach churning wrench when you see something about to go horribly wrong. A signaller will see a SPAD as it happens and there is little they can do to prevent a subsequent collision given that their signalling system is interlocked by the occupied track circuits. I can still recall the cold sweat as I watched my track circuits show occupied when they shouldn’t. Nothing happened on that occasion as the points were already set for a safe route, but it felt like ten years fell off my life that afternoon.
Fascinating, but graphically illustrative of why, when cars became cheap enough for the masses to afford, they dropped railways like the proverbial hot brick.
No matter what you do (i.e. how much money is poured down the black hole of rail) its unlikely that much more than about a tenth of travel can ever be by train (and most of that would be prisoners of the daily commute). Logic would therefore suggest that rail should get – maximum – a tenth of all spending and subsidy (or whatever you want to call it) allocated to transport.
I sometimes wonder if railways shouldn’t have been left to die a natural death when mass car ownership came about. Long distance rail commuting is spectacularly wasteful and the fact that those who do it, commuting largely into London and a few other big cities, are disproportinately highly paid and influential distorts the whole economy, and distorts it disproportionately.
Don’t forget, when the Beeching “axe” fell, there basically were no motorways or out of town shopping centres and car ownership was a fraction of what it is today. If all the closed lines could magically be made to reappear, who would actually use them?
Railways can carry large quantities of people and freight in a manner that is not practicable on the roads. Indeed, I’d like to see all long distance freight using the railway.
You make an unsubstantiated assumption about people commuting into large cities. Having done this, all I can say is that assumption does not square with my experience. Rail, whether mainline, light or underground cuts through the traffic and it therefore efficient. Given the choice of driving in London or using the railway, there’s no contest as far as I am concerned.
As to your final question, when I was living in Bristol, had they put back the old Midland line through Fishponds to the city centre, yes, I would have used it to commute – and I would not have been alone.
Rail is still popular worldwide and shows so signs of dying out. There is a reason for this.
One final point here. Before I moved to France, I travelled several times a year to the house. I tried flying, using the ferry and taking the train. Flying, overall was the cheapest but took around 12 hours given the drive to Stanstead and the paranoid security measures. The ferry was by a small margin the most expensive, but took 24 hours door to door and involved a 9 hour drive once on the continent. Rail was in the middle cost-wise, but was the most efficient, relaxing and overall the most pleasant method of travel. If I didn’t have to carry so much, I’d use the rail for my commutes back to the UK. It’s also worth pointing out that the French TGV was as full as the UK trains even in the middle of the day.
Driving into central London for work would be insane enough, but where would you park? A million people who do not live in London work in London. Say that by some miracle all of these people shared a car, it would still mean half a million cars finding somewhere to park.
Bonkers.
I didn’t that rail would or should die, just that it should be left to find its own level (for want of a better word), whatever that may be. It is just a form of transport and I really (honestly) can’t see why it should get preferential tratment. I’m not that bothered as to what railways (or roads for that matter) there are in other countries, I live in this one.
Long distant in Britain? Getting freight onto trains is fine as long as (except for a few specific cases like coal from a mine to a power station)there is road tansport at the end to take it to where it actually has to go. I read somewhere that about 80% of freight journeys in Britain are 50 miles or less. I submit that 20% is probably an absolute upper limit for freight on rail (with that inconvenient necessity of road needed to finish things off).
Not everything revolves around London. Here in Hastings (St Leonard actually), lots of cars park in the streets around the stations (and not so close) as people drive to railways to commute to London, which can be a pain for people who actually come here to work. I recall a similar thing in St Albans and Hatfield where I lived twenty odd years ago.
I think the source of my antipathy to rail (which I’m not going to insult you by denying) is the disporportionate amount of resources rail consumes for little practical gain, and – my essential point – probaly little possible gain.
Then there is the way it is used as an excuse to cut road spending and as an excuse not to build roads which are clearly and desperately needed. Without decent roads,what use can be made of rail I submit rather limited. See the point about having to get to stations to commute to London in the first place and having to get goods off trains to where they really need to go. How many out of town shopping centres are built on rural stations?
You will doubtless dismiss this as fatuous, which it is. Going to Tescos by train is very Monty Python because the large majority have cars which they use for the overwhelming bulk of their travel.
I’ve been to Europe too, and while I’ve never set foot on a train in Europe, the ease with which you can move around on decent roads (i.e. motorways or dual carriageways) is striking, as is the availabliity of parking in all those towns and cities I passed through.
The point about using rail for long distance freight is that it reduces the amount of large trucks on the roads. That stream of trucks playing leapfrog on the motorway causing a 50mph tailback could all be hauled by one train. Once at the terminal, smaller trucks travelling shorter distances then are in order, or the truck is carried by the train so that it is driven for a shorter distance – the logic being; integration with rail and road working together.
As for station parking, most of the stations I’ve used have more than adequate parking. There has been the odd exception, but they are the exception rather than the rule.
I’m not going to get into the political debate about rail as it is not only way off the discussion in hand, but I can’t control the silliness of politicians who use rail as a political punch bag.
Bottom line here, it is a useful means of avoiding city traffic and is a more relaxing method of travelling long distance. If you need to, you can work while travelling. I am not suggesting rail over road or the other way around. I do believe that rail is a useful transport option. Do away with the urban lines into the city centres and traffic congestion will multiply.
Your comment about European motorways fails to mention one very important point – you cannot really compare them to the UK system with the exception of the M6 toll road. It costs me around €80 to get from my home in the Languedoc to the Channel Ports (and, yes, if going that way, I willingly pay to use the M6 toll rather than sit in the traffic around Birmingham). It’s also worth mentioning that the populations in Europe are spread over a wider area – France is significantly larger than the UK with a similar population level.