Southern's Timetable Reduction

[cromptonnut]

It's a consultation.  It doesn't mean any of the responses will change their proposals...

[Gwiwer]

It's a consultation.  It doesn't mean any of the responses will change their proposals...

 

Correct.  But it may be useful to gauge the opinion of their fare-paying passengers while there is still time to make changes.  Any changes they do make would likely be fine-tuning tweaks or settling for the most-favoured options where two or three are given.

[Fenman]

It's a consultation. It doesn't mean any of the responses will change their proposals...

Your glass is half empty, isn't it?!

 

Maybe there's a parallel here: passengers who assume the worst of staff are, of course, usually completely wrong.

 

What about people who always assume the worst of management?

 

Paul

[phil-b259]

It's a consultation. It doesn't mean any of the responses will change their proposals...

I wouldn't even so sure on that.

 

While It's obvious that the most radical options have , as you say already been decided ( I would expect nothing else on a railway as big and as complex as the future TSGN network will be) the desire to take into account passengers views on what is changeable is a positive one.

 

What I would say though is that having been given the chance to have your day, if you don't respond then you cannot come back moaning in a year or twos time.

 

For example if you think the 313s should go from the Coastway services, make sure you respond to the consultation exercise.

[phil-b259]

Your glass is half empty, isn't it?!

 

Maybe there's a parallel here: passengers who assume the worst of staff are, of course, usually completely wrong.

 

What about people who always assume the worst of management?

 

Paul

Very true - even in NR

[Gwiwer]

 

For example if you think the 313s should go from the Coastway services, make sure you respond to the consultation exercise.

 

Exactly.  My key points were to remove the 313s on the grounds of age, lack of toilets, unsuitability and overcrowding (they replaced mostly 4-car units some time back, remember), to revert to hourly Victoria - Littlehampton and Victoria - Hastings via Haywards Heath all to be 12 cars on the grounds that one 12-car train an hour offers more accommodation than the present pair of 4-car portions every half-hour and eliminates the lengthy wait at Haywards Heath for the split / attach thereby cutting journey times by up to 8 minutes, and to select the "Eastbourne" option for splitting the Brighton - Ashford service on the grounds that 2-car trains are hopelessly inadequate and while Hastings is preferable as the changeover point only Eastbourne guarantees a level interchange.  

[Claude_Dreyfus]

A new set of strike days have been announced by the RMT. All are Tuesday to Thursdays, except one which is Thursday to Saturday. Why the anomaly? Well, guess which Saturday. Why yes, it's November the 5th.

[John M Upton]

The choice of dates, apart from being unwelcome is also very bizzare.  Cross referencing the dates of football club fixtures with the teams certain senior members of the Union support may reveal the answers though....  Seems odd that some of the senior Union officals around here are always rest day or annual leave on the strike days...

[lmsforever]

Surely its about time this union was reigned in as they clearly are staging politicaly motivated strikes in that they are trying to get the franchise taken away from the incumbernt and replaced by a quasi nationalislised operation.The members must surely be wise to the activities of the leaders by now or is the RMT akin to the mafia?

[cromptonnut]

lmsforever, on 22 Sept 2016 - 20:47, said:

Surely its about time this union was reigned in as they clearly are staging politicaly motivated strikes in that they are trying to get the franchise taken away from the incumbernt and replaced by a quasi nationalislised operation.The members must surely be wise to the activities of the leaders by now or is the RMT akin to the mafia?

 

There is fault on both sides, both sides refuse to budge, and in the meantime both passengers and staff not on strike suffer.

[phil-b259]

A new set of strike days have been announced by the RMT. All are Tuesday to Thursdays, except one which is Thursday to Saturday. Why the anomaly? Well, guess which Saturday. Why yes, it's November the 5th.

 

I really am struggling to see the point of them.

 

Usually, if strike action is going to change anything, then history shows said changes happen after the first few walkouts and are normally the result of management who dispute all the bluster, actually are taken by surprise at just how angry their workforce is.

 

With the Southern dispute the DfT couldn't give a s*** what the workers think - its time to show them who is boss. As such they are hardly going to back down after a few strikes, in fact it seems to be positively welcomed by the department as a way of driving a wedge between (and I paraphrase here)  those hard working passengers with their expensive tickets and those greedy self serving railway unions whose members have (in comparison with other public sector workers) escaped the worst of the Austerity measures previously favoured by no.11

 

6 months down the line strike action is rarely effective - management will have developed ways to mitigate / get round its effects, while individual strikers, losing pay and perks get fed up and start coming in anyway.

 

All the RMT are doing with this dispute is prolonging the inevitable and making their members poorer.

[phil-b259]

Surely its about time this union was reigned in as they clearly are staging politicaly motivated strikes in that they are trying to get the franchise taken away from the incumbernt and replaced by a quasi nationalislised operation.The members must surely be wise to the activities of the leaders by now or is the RMT akin to the mafia?

 

The dilemma is this. Many union members want the union top brass to look after their interests - and during his time at the helm the late Bob Crow was very effective at protecting pensions and working practices such as moves to reduce the standard manning levels (from say 3 man teams to 2 man teams), plus he secured decent pay rises for most members year on year.

 

On the other hand Bob Crow and his collogues were/are staunch socialists, committed to the class struggle and the overthrow of the rich by the working class and the downfall of capitalism.  The fact that this would actually make 'the workers' lives considerably worse - nor the fact that all previous 'socialist states' were actually pretty unpleasant places to live if you happened to disagree with what was the approved 'socialist thinking' seems not to feature in such peoples minds.

[jjb1970]

Parallels with 1984-85 maybe? If the government have decided to fight this out to the finish and win then ultimately if they have the nerve to see this through then they will win. The question is whether they have the nerve to do that. One thing helping them is that the legacy of years of RMT militancy seems to be that public anger towards Southern (who are taking the heat for DafT) doesn't appear to be translating into strong support for the RMT by members of the public based on my own anecdotal experience.

[cromptonnut]

jjb1970, on 22 Sept 2016 - 23:01, said:

public anger towards Southern (who are taking the heat for DafT) doesn't appear to be translating into strong support for the RMT by members of the public based on my own anecdotal experience.

 

A lot of this is down to deliberately inaccurate media cover of the situation, and trying to reduce the whole dispute to the petty-sounding "who presses the button to close the doors".

 

It's far more complex and broad than that, the media like to give anything that's down a good kicking and the unions don't seem to have quite grasped how to play the PR machine as well as the government and GTR have.

 

It's also unfortunate that much of the stuff on the union websites is full of the same old rhetoric and over-used phrases rather than actually outlining properly what the problem is about removing the guaranteed second person on board.

 

Of course 'everyone will be offered a replacement job' but if you are currently based at Croydon and are offered a new position at, say, Littlehampton, for no extra money, 2 hours extra travelling a day and increased costs to you, would you just accept that as a "suitable alternative"?

 

When I ask most people would they just accept the loss of, or major changes to, their role at work without putting up a fight, they say no.  So why should they expect railway staff to as well?

[John M Upton]

The way I see it, it doesn't matter one jot what the Unions do, sooner or later they are just going to do it anyway and the RMT's negotiating strategy of sticking their heads in the sand hoping it will all go away whilst they carry on what has become a personal vendetta between their chief negotiator and that guy from the DfT is actually making things for their members worse in the long run.

 

Meanwhile there are no Revenue Protection teams anymore, they have been split up and reclassified OBS on the already DOO services on Gatex and the Brighton main line, the Union said and did absolutely nothing about their demise whatsoever.

 

For a laugh, try telling a staunch union man that actually the Unions are not in charge of running the railways and indeed never have, then wait for the 'Does not compute' to appear in their eyes....

[cromptonnut]

I'm in TSSA and I haven't been very impressed with our union's response to the changes to ticket offices yet.

 

All we've seem to have been sent is "Join the Labour party for free and vote for Jeremy Corbyn" related.

 

That's not what I signed up for or want to be paying my money for.

[jjb1970]

A lot of this is down to deliberately inaccurate media cover of the situation, and trying to reduce the whole dispute to the petty-sounding "who presses the button to close the doors".

 

It's far more complex and broad than that, the media like to give anything that's down a good kicking and the unions don't seem to have quite grasped how to play the PR machine as well as the government and GTR have.

 

It's also unfortunate that much of the stuff on the union websites is full of the same old rhetoric and over-used phrases rather than actually outlining properly what the problem is about removing the guaranteed second person on board.

 

Of course 'everyone will be offered a replacement job' but if you are currently based at Croydon and are offered a new position at, say, Littlehampton, for no extra money, 2 hours extra travelling a day and increased costs to you, would you just accept that as a "suitable alternative"?

 

When I ask most people would they just accept the loss of, or major changes to, their role at work without putting up a fight, they say no.  So why should they expect railway staff to as well?

I don't really think that the publics attitude to the RMT especially can be blamed on the media. Whether fairly or not, years of perceived strike happy militant behaviour have created a situation where many people just don't take anything the RMT says seriously and write them off as politically motivated trouble makers. That may be unfair, but based on anecdotal evidence it does seem to be a widely held view and it is not because of media reporting of this story.

On the wider point, if I was not happy with the way my employer was treating me then I'd leave. Ultimately the only thing that really matters for employers in these situations is whether they have enough trained staff to continue operating as a business. If there was no better offers then I'd probably just accept that since my current role was the best offer available then I'd accept that and make the best of it.

[Coryton]

When I ask most people would they just accept the loss of, or major changes to, their role at work without putting up a fight, they say no.  So why should they expect railway staff to as well?

 

Some years ago I lived in London and commuted on a line that had regular and frequent cancellations over a large period of time due to driver shortages.

 

Most passengers were perhaps understandably full of outrage.

 

But under questioning it turned out that:

1) They expected companies they were shareholders in to do everything they could to maximise profits.

2) They expected the TOC that got them to work to do everything it could to run their trains on time even if wasn't cost effective.

[The Stationmaster]

Surely its about time this union was reigned in as they clearly are staging politicaly motivated strikes in that they are trying to get the franchise taken away from the incumbernt and replaced by a quasi nationalislised operation.The members must surely be wise to the activities of the leaders by now or is the RMT akin to the mafia?

 

I thought it already was a quasi-nationlised operation with Southern being 'managed' at the behest, in detail, of that idiot at DafT?

[cromptonnut]

So Dyan Crowther is leaving.

 

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2016/sep/26/southern-rail-owner-govia-chief-operator-lands-hs1-top-job-dyan-crowther

[John M Upton]

There is (yet another) re-organisation of management posts happening going on, a bit like a cabinet reshuffle presumably triggered by Crowther's departure.  It will be interesting to see who is without a chair when the music stops...

[phil-b259]

There is (yet another) re-organisation of management posts happening going on, a bit like a cabinet reshuffle presumably triggered by Crowther's departure.  It will be interesting to see who is without a chair when the music stops...

 

Which won't make the slightest bit of difference to the situation all the time P.W. and his minions at the DfT continue with the policy of trying to 'break' the RMT and the RMT continues to resist said policy.

[phil_sutters]

Seaford has got its trains back today - but they had buses on standby at the station - just in case! Shows great confidence in their ability to run a 'normal' service.

 

Having posted the Rail replacement bus's cheeky 'rail' logo/emoji on another thread, I thought I would revisit it and add a suggestion for a new display on our 313s.

 

 

Future plans for the branch are now raising new ire in the local population. In the 2018 timetable revision, which is currently being consulted upon, we stand to lose the couple of through trains to Victoria which start at Seaford, giving local people a chance of a seat. The rest of the trains have to be changed onto at Lewes and arrive with Eastbourne & Hastings passengers already ensconced in the seats.

[Coryton]

Seaford has got its trains back today - but they had buses on standby at the station - just in case! Shows great confidence in their ability to run a 'normal' service.

 

 

It also shows they were prepared to spend money to prevent more inconvenience to passengers/more bad publicity (delete where applicable) if things went wrong.

 

That or somebody forgot to cancel the buses...

[phil-b259]

This might be of interest to regular Southern users

 

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Cancelled-strange-disturbing-crisis-Southern-ebook/dp/B01HBL62TS/ref=cm_cr_arp_d_product_top?ie=UTF8