For the want of a driver

[big jim]

whatever the politics of it all is i think that LM will struggle to get a significant number of fully qualified drivers to fill the gaps within the depots in birmingham an they will be forced to take people "off the street" or promote from the rear, which as pointed out near the start of the thread takes time.

 

as an example 4 TOCS advertise in railnews for qualified drivers jobs based in birmingham

 

TOC A: 35 hour week, £41k, cross city and local work, 2 traction type, free travel on TOC A

 

TOC B: 35 hour week, £46k, intercity work, 1 traction type, free travel on TOC B + C + D

 

TOC C: 35 hour week, £47k, intercity work, 2 Traction type free travel on TOC B + C + D

 

TOC D: 37 hour week, £48k, intercity and local work, 4 traction type inc locos, free travel on TOC B + C + D

 

which would you go for if you knew you could do all 4 jobs with ease?

 

it may be a toss up between the last 3 but TOC A would be last on my list, of course personal circumstances will come into play too

 

to put a personal spin on it there is a speculative advert up in our booking on point for qualified drivers with ATW at various locations, ATW have a depot less than 2 miles from home, and another in chester as well as slightly futher afield in shrewsbury however it is £5k less than im on now with no obvious perks, the only bonus would be more time at home and less travelling to work and i dont spend anywhere near £5k on travelling to even warrant looking into it

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Kenton]

I do understand that a lot of office / management grades in all sorts of industries do overtime for nowt and somehow, over time it's become the accepted norm. With safety critical work though, it could only lead to some very nasty results.

 

I don't quite see the difference between working extra time for "free" and working it as overtime in relation to safety. They are both as safe or unsafe as each other. There are an awful lot of "safety critical" jobs around where the hours worked are well in excess of the traditional 9 to 5 plus anything claimed as overtime.

[colin penfold]

I'm curious about the training regime. Is there anywhere an individual could go to independently get themselves trained as a driver in order to apply for roles at these TOCs who only want trained people? You can do this for PCV and HGV after all.

[colin penfold]

I don't quite see the difference between working extra time for "free" and working it as overtime in relation to safety. They are both as safe or unsafe as each other. There are an awful lot of "safety critical" jobs around where the hours worked are well in excess of the traditional 9 to 5 plus anything claimed as overtime.

 

I would add that placing a limit on overtime or controls on when and how it's worked does not mean that it has to be paid. I recall that in the early post NBC days many bus operators brought in flat salary, no overtime contracts but with a contractual obligation to "needs of the job" overtime like most of us in offices are requred to do, as Kenton has already pointed out. Bus drivers are also subject to hours regulation.

[Dagworth]

Hmmm.... wonder whether I should start writing my CV....

I was a driver for 12 years until I walked away from Connex in '97

 

Andi

[Guest Phil]

Ive never met anyone one the Railway who would work a second of overtime without being paid, and rightly so......Well apart from that late running allowance they had... (10 minutes was it? )

 

You obviously never mingled with management then Mickey.

MS1 grades had to work 20 hours overtime every quarter for nothing - 80 hours a year !!!

 

Don't think traincrew would ever countenance that - and if most are like you, obviously don't realise it. Not sure it is still applicable these days though.

 

Late running allowance for the TOC I work for is 2 hours a week for guards, which was to have been phased out over the last couple of years, but is still a condition.

[big jim]

Hmmm.... wonder whether I should start writing my CV....

I was a driver for 12 years until I walked away from Connex in '97

 

Andi

 

give it a try!

 

colin: as far as i know you can pay to do the aptitude tests yourself, being able to do it on paper is one thing, getting the experience on the track is something else

 

regards the question that someone asked about training time on page 1, from personal experience mine went something like this....

 

my initial driver training took from may to february, so 9 months, that included classroom, practical, traction, PTS, route learning and being passed out on all of them

 

my move to DRS involved 7 weeks training which was mainly traction training on locos, wagons and handling turns, and pts again, luckily i had a lot of routes from arriva that i carried over to DRS, futher route learning was done during the handling turns

 

the move to fastline involved a mere 3 weeks training as it was a simple traction conversion from 47s to 56s, 66s were already on my traction card as were all the routes, pts had to be done yet again!

 

chiltern gave me 7 weeks training which was traction, routes, LUL rules, pts again and various other bits and bobs like DOO operation etc, again route learning was done during handling turns, luckily as i used to sign 158s etc i had prior knowledge of sprinter units so it was really a conversion rather than a full traction course as 165s are pretty much identical to 158s regards faults and failures etc

 

i have recently been offered a job with colas, should i move there i recon i'd not need much training as have previous knowledge of 47s, 56s and 66s and 90% of the routes are on my previous route cards with various companies so they would only need refreshing and re-signing

 

 

 

MS1 grades had to work 20 hours overtime every quarter for nothing - 80 hours a year !!!

 

 

when i started with DRS there was no overtime/RDW to speak of and you had "special event days" where you had to work for (if i remember right) 2 days unpaid a year

 

it was annualised hours too so you would get to near or to your yearly contracted hours and they would make you take annual leave whether you wanted it or not so as to not bust your hours and have to pay you o/t

 

[andy stroud]

Ive never met anyone one the Railway who would work a second of overtime without being paid, and rightly so......Well apart from that late running allowance they had... (10 minutes was it? )

Not a second? I would go as far as to say you should be dismissed. Thats's not showing much commitment to your company or industry. I seem to remember from a previous thread you were boasting that your income had doubled since privatization. You could always look for employment elsewhere.

[cheesysmith]

Commitmant as in working unsociable hours, not being able to enjoy a glass of wine the night before, of only seeing your kids infreaquently and leaving your partner to deal with them. Having worked on the railways when it was br and work now as a bus driver, the rules do require commitmant but having worked several jobs, all i can say is i work the hours of my contract, maybe a little longer for emergencies like late running etc. But if the job cannot be done by myself in the hours the managers set, then either the workload is too much or they need to employ more people. I give my hours for money, not for free. I dont think a supermarket will feed my family for free. If you are having to do corner overtime without getting paid, that to me is a for of slavery. Or you can say if they employed more people to do.the job, it would help cut unemployment. Of course, the business will never do that while it can get you doing it for free, after all, cheaper is always better to a acountant.

[Oldddudders]

Not a second? I would go as far as to say you should be dismissed. Thats's not showing much commitment to your company or industry. I seem to remember from a previous thread you were boasting that your income had doubled since privatization. You could always look for employment elsewhere.

It's a culture thing, and it stems no doubt from days many decades ago when wages were poor, and overtime mattered. The dark era of dreadful industrial relations in the industry also had a hand in making people think that way. National conditions of service, hammered out with unions for each grade or group of grades, laid down what rights were on both sides. Management gave nothing away, so why would staff behave differently? Having started as a booking clerk and been lucky enough to end up in the Executive Group, I see both sides of the coin.

 

I also have to say that a number of contributions in this thread are unsurprisingly wide of the mark, being written without insider knowledge of a most complex industry. I know remarkably little about today's railway, even though I retired only 8 years ago after 38 years service!

[Guest Phil]

It's a culture thing, and it stems no doubt from days many decades ago when wages were poor, and overtime mattered. The dark era of dreadful industrial relations in the industry also had a hand in making people think that way. National conditions of service, hammered out with unions for each grade or group of grades, laid down what rights were on both sides. Management gave nothing away, so why would staff behave differently? Having started as a booking clerk and been lucky enough to end up in the Executive Group, I see both sides of the coin.

 

I also have to say that a number of contributions in this thread are unsurprisingly wide of the mark, being written without insider knowledge of a most complex industry. I know remarkably little about today's railway, even though I retired only 8 years ago after 38 years service!

 

 

Spot on post Ian

I completed 34 years service this July and have to admit that IMHO the railway seems not to depend on quite so much "institutional" overtime being worked these days, at least in the areas I know of. LMT may well be an exception, as well as similar TOCs working in some of the less affluent areas.

 

One of the issues which does cause problems in the resourcing of traincrew is training. The changes which take place on the railway these days - particularly stuff like GSM-R and signalling alterations. These alterations require staff to be released for briefs or courses, which prevent each individual from working routes until they are competent. A recent one of these has been the "Chepstow brief" which requires two days for each driver. You can imagine the logistics of releasing 170odd drivers for two days each to receive an update on a resignalled piece of railway, and make sure there are enough people competent to work the trains over the route from "day 1" of the new signalling.

 

This knocks the "F2" drivers who are "off trains" for eyesight, medication, pregnancy, illnesses into a cocked hat !!!

 

Perhaps I was a little short with you "Bon Accord" but train driving cannot be compared to flying or sailing, as there are no "autopilots" available to the driver. Athough there are aids like speed control and AWS / TPWS, the driver is certainly not able to climb out of their seat and visit the toilet compartment, so it is probably far more similar to bus driving, although the train driver's union has successfully raised it's social status.to that of (probably) an airline captain.

 

Andi - you really wouldn't probably cope with today's train driving having had such a long break from it. I know many old hands who are daily frustrated by not being able to do today, what was commonplace twenty years ago. Not only that, but friends tell me that things you would never do back then, you have to do now. It used to be considered sacrosanct to power down a platform towards a stopblock, but it seems you now sometimes have to.

[Rugd1022]

Phil raises a good point about training and the 'hidden costs' of it - I did the GSM-R Radio course quite a while ago now, but by the time it comes on stream I dare say I'll need a refresher on it before I'm allowed to use it. We were all given a handbook at the time of passing the course but there's no substitute for practical experience. To release me for a second time to refresh the course, my poor old roster clerk will be tearing his hair out trying to cover my booked job on the day....

[ThaneofFife]

Try asking a solicitor if he will do you an hour of extra work on your house conveyance or divorce for nothing and wonder why he is frogmarching you out of the door pronto!

 

The working overtime for free issue IMHO builds up resentment, the risk of being taken for granted and compounds the problem of expecting something for nothing.

The railways by their very nature need a degree of flexible working but surely the franchise bids shouldnt be so tightly bean counted to the detriment of not including an adequate provision for driver overtime payments?

 

Taking it to the extreme, do you get drivers simply rocking up working all week for the love of the job and no payment? The TOCs would love that.

 

Working for free is the thin end of the wedge.

[Welly]

Talking of overtime for free - I know someone who worked in a food product development department and despite his degree level qualification, he was paid barely more than minimum wage AND he was expected to work several hours of unpaid overtime every week! Unsurprisingly the turnover of staff was about 3 years and he himself is studying for a different career.

[royaloak]

Not a second? I would go as far as to say you should be dismissed. Thats's not showing much commitment to your company or industry. I seem to remember from a previous thread you were boasting that your income had doubled since privatization. You could always look for employment elsewhere.

Sack somebody that only does their contracted hours, I wonder what the outcome would be at the industrial tribunal?

Actually no I dont.

 

Are you a manager at LM by any chance, with an attitude like that you would fit right in.

 

I dont work my rest days but I do occasionally do overtime when its gone base over apex, maybe I should be sacked for being so inflexible then?

[Rivercider]

My railway career was entirely clerical, and over 30 years I knew quite a number a clerks who have worked over their time

15 or 20 minutes unpaid maybe a couple of times a week. At times of serious disruption perhaps longer than that.

Stopping on duty in the TOPS office to help get trainlists issued to avoid delaying departures.

Later when I was in traincrew rostering staying on to finalise weekly or daily roster sheets.

I have done so myself on numerous occasions, my loyalty being to not let down my office or workmates.

 

Of course to return to the OP that is far more serious than a bit of flexibility or giving a few minutes here and there is going to fix,

 

cheers

[rob D2]

It's a delicate balance - I don't want my company to go bust, so I help out but generally expect something back . I'm not a charity, it is an interesting job but I have bills to pay.

 

Loyalty is a word I am slightly suspicious of in this day and age. A colleague worked tirelessly and never turned the company down once. He was then truly shafted with 2 years to go.

[The Stationmaster]

It's a delicate balance - I don't want my company to go bust, so I help out but generally expect something back . I'm not a charity, it is an interesting job but I have bills to pay.

 

This is the problem with it all - the question of that delicate balance which can be so easily upset by the 'make cuts quick' merchants or indeed the opposite side of the coin where the staff get belligerent for exactly the same reason (they want more money too). If you expect folk to put in that bit extra there has to be another side to it and management also have to put in that bit extra as well - it might be financial it might be whatever but even saying thank you can help.

 

However the problem is that there are far too many in the industry now who are under undue pressure to do all sorts of things - from saving money to creating mountains of paper to prove they have done what they were supposed to do in order to keep the legal team happy in case the company is sued. Net result can be dissatisfaction and aggravation.

 

The other problem for managers with wing mirrors and a tv camera watching their back is that of trying to step back to where things were. A couple of Drivers on here have mentioned large training workloads - the only ways you can properly cover those is with spare men, possibly with some creative rostering (not so easy nowadays), or overtime and Rest Days worked. If you, as a manager, keep hammering the latter you will put up the backs of all but the few grabbers but if you ask to put in more spares you will have an unfavourable pay review and not get a salary increase next year or a particular promotion you wanted. I was lucky in the operator I worked for that my Director and the MD and Deputy MD always believed my figures on traincrew establishments (partly because they knew I would screw down costs wherever I sensibly could) so my figures were always accepted and the company worked to them. But with a different set of Directors things might be different; with a 'tight' franchise contract things will be different; with someone out to make their name sitting further up the managerial heap things will be different. Sorry but it's a fact of life (and in many respects it wasn't much different in BR days).

[Rugd1022]

Taking Mike's first paragraph above - this is exactly the situation LM management have now got themselves into, relying on the good will of some of their train crew working rest days / overtime just to run a normal service.... a few drivers get fed up with giving up their free time, then a few more do the same, the good will dries up completely then a large number decide to leave for better prospects elsewhere... and said management are left with a cock up of their own making. The travelling public are then left in the lurch and it's all down to one thing - mismanagement.

[Supaned]

If I could just add another comment regarding driver's pay scales. In general , those TOCs with higher salaries have arrived at those figures as a result of traincrew "selling" some of the more generous conditions that existed in BR days - effectively the employers gain greater flexibility in terms of rostering and productivity , and whilst the higher salary does indeed seem attractive , not everybody is prepared to accept the terms and conditions that go with it - by contrast , TOCs with lower salaries in general tend to have a lot more of the former BR conditions , which , in certain cases , can lead to a lot of disruption . As an example - drivers on XC are "committed" to work a number of sundays in the year , whereas those at LM are not , many drivers at LM do not work any sundays , and prefer not to move to a TOC where they would be obliged to do so. Others have also touched on the aspects of the job with regard to working of unsociable hours , not seeing family , having to regulate alcohol intake etc - I'm certainly not complaining about these things and was well aware of them when I signed up for the job , but not everybody considers these things or indeed can cope with them in the long term , the salary is also in part compensatory for this.

Going back to LM ,there is also a long standing history of poor industrial relations , which certainly won't have helped the situation when the company management may be expecting things to work on a "goodwill" basis , despite new uniforms and vinyls on trains , the staff and management are largely unchanged from Central Trains days.

 

In answer to Colin's question , whilst external entrants can indeed pay to undertake the psychological testing to test suitability for driving duties , there is to date no external training school where people would be able to be trained to do the job. Whilst the rules and regulations could indeed be taught in a classroom , the practical train handling element can really only be taught and indeed learnt with a real train , and there aren't really any suitable places to do this - perhaps an enterprising scheme could use somewhere like the Ashfordby test track for this , but the sums involved would be huge , and for anybody undertaking the training there would still be no guarantee of a job at the end of it.

[Rivercider]

 

In answer to Colin's question , whilst external entrants can indeed pay to undertake the psychological testing to test suitability for driving duties , there is to date no external training school where people would be able to be trained to do the job. Whilst the rules and regulations could indeed be taught in a classroom , the practical train handling element can really only be taught and indeed learnt with a real train , and there aren't really any suitable places to do this - perhaps an enterprising scheme could use somewhere like the Ashfordby test track for this , but the sums involved would be huge , and for anybody undertaking the training there would still be no guarantee of a job at the end of it.

 

Very true, as well as rules and train handling there is also the railway safety culture to be learnt.

In my very limited experience of new recruit drivers I got the impression that groundstaff/shunters who stepped up to the footplate

generally already had a safety awareness which comes from being around the active railway.

In the same intake were a couple with no outdoor railway experience, one of whom got himself into a real pickle,

and having made his initial error was unaware of it and would have continued on with possibly very serious consequences.

The training programme was tightened up after that, though, and presumably has been refined much more since then.

 

cheers

[Southernman46]

Put the water on to boil - we need a fresh batch !!

[Ray H]

Perhaps one of the (other?) downsides of privatisation is that the scope for gaining experience of the wider railway has reduced significantly.

 

One of the advantages of working up through the grades was that you got a good grounding. This has to have been especially true for management grades. Take a look at Gerry Fiennes's book and what he learnt over the years as he climbed (or even raced) up the ladder and ask whether it would be possible today to gain that type of experience? I don't think so. Hence mismanagement may also be partly due to the same old story - lack of experience.

[The Stationmaster]

Perhaps one of the (other?) downsides of privatisation is that the scope for gaining experience of the wider railway has reduced significantly.

 

One of the advantages of working up through the grades was that you got a good grounding. This has to have been especially true for management grades. Take a look at Gerry Fiennes's book and what he learnt over the years as he climbed (or even raced) up the ladder and ask whether it would be possible today to gain that type of experience? I don't think so. Hence mismanagement may also be partly due to the same old story - lack of experience.

 

I suspect it might not be so much 'mismanagement' as 'non management' in quite a lot of cases - very often because of lack of knowledge and experience that was acquired in the way you mentioned.

 

The BR Management Training Scheme had quite a good overall reputation in industry and was indeed at one time quite sought after by graduates but it was very difficult for staff members to get onto it - in the year I got on there were 2 of us out of several hundred staff applicants and no doubt Ian's experience was much the same. But of course most of what you learnt about managing (and for many what they learned about the railway) came in their early appointments and here you are exactly right about the way the industry has been divided. I my first management post I had a traincrew depot, a marshalling yard, 3 small stations (all part time staffed only), and 4 signalboxes plus I had to do some of the re-railing after we came off the road, and after the job fell vacant I used to get all the Asst District Signalling Inspector's Sunday turns as well (hence some very good earnings) - so I learnt an awful lot about things which nowadays would be divided among at least 3 different parts of the industry and in many instances would be bound around with the complete works of a Philadelphia lawyer in order to stifle most initiative at my then level.

 

I know the task has changed enormously since then and a lot of what I know about railway operation is probably more useful to historians and railway modellers than it is to today's railway but equally an awful lot of other areas where I have experience are just as useful today as they were in my time. Part of the answer is training and while I have - since leaving the big railway - taught graduate trainee signal engineers about a lot of relevant (to them) operational stuff that is never going to be the same as getting to grips with it.

[Oldddudders]

in the year I got on there were 2 of us out of several hundred staff applicants and no doubt Ian's experience was much the same.

I was one of 31 who took the initial internal entrance exam (for Southern Region staff only) at Beckenham in early 1973 - and the only one to get appointed that year. There were a handful of staff entrants on other Regions too, so perhaps we did a little better than you.