Scotrail

[scottsdad]

25 minutes ago, oaksoft said:

Between people demanding the right to neck several cans of warm lager sitting amongst families trying to get to the city centre for a day out and blokes chugging off, I think I'll stick to my car. God made me a snob for my own good I think. 

Just remember to park in a discreet place before choking Kojak. 

[19QOS19]

Maybe it was the driver at the thought of his impending pay rise of around 2 and a half grand a year

We dont need an excuse...

[hk blues]

38 minutes ago, oaksoft said:

Between people demanding the right to neck several cans of warm lager sitting amongst families trying to get to the city centre for a day out and blokes chugging off, I think I'll stick to my car. God made me a snob for my own good I think. 

^^^

Yep, probably wise to lie low for a while

[VincentGuerin]

I'm confused by all the different unions and dates.

Can anyone tell me whether I'm fucked trying to use a train in Scotland on Saturday or not?

[hk blues]

6 minutes ago, VincentGuerin said:

I'm confused by all the different unions and dates.

Can anyone tell me whether I'm fucked trying to use a train in Scotland on Saturday or not?

You might be lucky, but it seems a w**k is more likely based on recent events on the Polmont line

[ajwffc]

I'm confused by all the different unions and dates.
Can anyone tell me whether I'm fucked trying to use a train in Scotland on Saturday or not?

Saturdays strike is ASLEF drivers from Rail London, Chiltern Railways, Greater Anglia, Great Western, Hull Trains, LNER, Southeastern and West Midlands Trains. The next RMT dates are the 18th and 20th of August

[Clown Job]

Train drivers are also taxpayers.

Maybe the issue is people elsewhere are getting paid poorly, especially the “essential workers” 

 

Edited July 28, 2022 by Clown Job

[101]

12 minutes ago, Clown Job said:

Train drivers are also taxpayers.

Maybe the issue is people elsewhere are getting paid poorly, especially the “essential workers” 

 

This taxpayer nonsense is just getting ridiculous, Covid spending couldn't have all come from general taxation.

[Michael W]

16 minutes ago, 101 said:

This taxpayer nonsense is just getting ridiculous, Covid spending couldn't have all come from general taxation.

It certainly didn't and is also unfair to taxpayers since they'll be the ones paying for it for years to come. 

[Sergeant Wilson]

23 hours ago, VincentGuerin said:

I'm confused by all the different unions and dates.

 

That doesn't come as a complete surprise.

[Bairnardo]

This taxpayer nonsense is just getting ridiculous, Covid spending couldn't have all come from general taxation.

It's just a cynical way of trying to turn one worker against another. Tory playbook 101.

[101]

7 minutes ago, oaksoft said:

It didn't but that isn't relevant. The money was borrowed on behalf of taxpayers and it's taxpayers who will have to foot the bill so the furlough payments are relevant to the taxpayer.

Other than semantics, Shapps isn't saying anything which is factually incorrect here is he?

No it is correct, if you indeed think he cares about delivering value for tax payers, as Bairnardo said it's classic wedge politics.

[BFTD]

Oaksoft considering himself the exceptional voice of reason never gets old  

And deciding what "most people" believe too. One step off "people on the doorsteps are telling me..."

[IrishBhoy]

I keep seeing clowns like Truss and Shapps talking about how future strikes will become toothless due to the policy they are about to implement that involves bringing in agency/contract staff to cover striking workers. I’ve been a contractor in the rail industry for 10+ years, I’ve been contracted on jobs for TfL, Scotrail, Northern Rail and numerous other TOC’s, so I would like to think I have a good understanding of how contractors are used in the industry. 
 

Ive seen them mention this during interviews numerous times now, and not once have they been asked to explain just how they are going to find the requisite number of contractors, who are willing to defy nationwide strike action, that will be able to fill the number of positions required for the trains to run without disruption. Where do you find contractor signallers, track maintenance staff, station operational managers? In the most part these are full time employees who will be abiding by their unions wishes to take strike action. Even if there was a wealth of contractors out there able to do these jobs during strike action, how do you organise them into work on 2 or 3 weeks notice? They won’t stay round the corner from Glasgow Central or Euston. That’s not even getting to how these contractors will be paid, or how much. It’s not uncommon for contractors in management positions to be on 4 figure day rates in the rail industry. Maintenance contractors will be looking for £30-£40 per hour. It infuriates me that these buffoons are able to spout this sort of nonsense without any scrutiny from our media.  The next time we hear this from Truss or Shapps, a journalist should ask ‘where are these agency staff that you are going to use currently working?’. The correct answer to that is either contracted to a TOC/Network Rail, or subcontracted to a company working for them. Are we expected to believe that even some of these people will leave a steady contract to cover strike action for a day/week? 
 

There has been an attempt by the Conservative party to paint this solely as a dispute with the train drivers, which allows them to point to the drivers above average annual salary, hoping that the general public turn against them. Only yesterday Shapps put out a tweet along the lines of ‘train drivers earn £60k per year and your tax money paid their wages during covid’. This is disingenuous in the extreme, for multiple reasons, but it disregards the cleaners, tickets inspectors, maintenance staff etc., who aren’t on wages like that, and who haven’t been getting a fair slice of the pie whilst profits for rail operators and their shareholders is rising.
 

Shapps and Truss, along with the vast majority of this current Govt., seem happy to spout mistruths and downright lies in order to convince the working public they are on their side. They have managed to get the media parroting the ‘8% pay rise offered to RMT and they didn’t even consult their members before rejecting it’. What they fail to mention is that it’s not 8% by any manner or means, it’s 4% this year and 4% next year, with the threat of involuntary redundancies still on the table. These politicians are the perfect mix of being absolutely thick as shit, at the same time as being in a position of extreme power, which should worry almost everyone (Tory MPs and millionaires excepted). Only last week we had a Conservative leader candidate who made Britain leaving the jurisdiction of the European Court of Human Rights one of her main policies, and people were supporting her  It’s 2022 and workers rights and conditions are going backwards, and a front bench MP is openly advocating for removing basic human rights, and it hardly raised an eyebrow. 

[Billy Jean King]

I might be able to answer that one.
They'll use a body shop which put it's employees through an intensive training program.
Large companies do this already to take advantage of finding cheap programmers for large IT systems. They use a body shop company who take promising school leavers and people without qualifications and/or experience and put them through 12 weeks of intensive training  (without pay by the way) before integrating them into the large company teams. They are not employees of the large company. They remain employees of the body shop (sometimes for a fixed number of years) and in that way can be hired and fired en-masse without the large company having to declare it publicly. It's a very successful business model and if it works for IT systems, I can't see any reason why that wouldn't work in the rail industry.
That would be my guess.
And it wouldn't take very long to get to the point where you had a pool of people capable of stepping in at a moment's notice who are not union members.

Bodyshopping in ICT circles is almost totally centred offshore (primarily India) and the model would not get off the ground these days in the UK in that or any other sector. No idea where you are getting your info from but I haven't come across anyone outside of India who has become a contractor via that model.

[Billy Jean King]

I'm sorry but you are wrong about this.
This successful company, as one example, supplies some of the largest companies in the world using the exact model I've described. They target and train up talented school leavers and they then place them in industry.
Home | Sparta Global

That simply appears to be a glorified internship. I've worked in IT for 35 years with several multi nationals and literally hundreds of contractors and never come across a "Spartan". No idea how you think that would work for railway signal men.

[Billy Jean King]

Just reading Sparta reviews. What a god awful model. You have to pay for your training in the form of a "leavers fee" after a maximum of 2 years whether you get a placement then post or not. It's definitely not a contractors training scheme they are simply a training scheme where you may or may not get work at the end of it.

[IrishBhoy]

13 minutes ago, oaksoft said:

I might be able to answer that one.

They'll use a body shop which put it's employees through an intensive training program.

Large companies do this already to take advantage of finding cheap programmers for large IT systems. They use a body shop company who take promising school leavers and people without qualifications and/or experience and put them through 12 weeks of intensive training  (without pay by the way) before integrating them into the large company teams. They are not employees of the large company. They remain employees of the body shop (sometimes for a fixed number of years) and in that way can be hired and fired en-masse without the large company having to declare it publicly. It's a very successful business model and if it works for IT systems, I can't see any reason why that wouldn't work in the rail industry.

That would be my guess.

And it wouldn't take very long to get to the point where you had a pool of people capable of stepping in at a moment's notice who are not union members.

That sort of system may work for IT companies, but even taking someone at the most basic level of train maintenance, they will have served a 4 year apprenticeship as a mechanical or electrical technician, (rail operators prefer their maintenance workers to be dual trained on both the electrical and mechanical systems), will have at least an HNC in a mechanical or electrical field, as well as an SVQ Level 3. Electricians are required to hold even more qualifications (17th edition, high voltage training etc), and that’s before you even get into the safety aspect that varies from depot to depot, things like trackside awareness, PTS etc. Thats the minimum you would need to even change a brake pad on a train. Train maintenance guys are working beside 25Kv main lines, if you even get within a metre and a half of that kind of voltage it throws you about 20 feet away and you are almost certainly dead. It’s not the kind of job that people would hold those sort of qualifications for and then sit around the house waiting for a phone call. Anyone who has took the time to get trained to that level, will more than likely already be employed in the rail industry. I understand you were only putting a suggestion out there, but there is so many things wrong with trying to implement something like that, that any sensible person could see in an instance that it’s completely unworkable. 
 

Same thing applies with signallers, shunters, drivers. You don’t hold the qualifications to work as a signaller unless you are already working as a signaller. I think some people underestimate just how many people are required in order for trains to run without disruption. Taking on ‘promising school leavers’ isn’t going to cut it im afraid, unless you are happy to travel on a rail network ran by a bunch of 18 year olds. 

[Billy Jean King]

That sort of system may work for IT companies, but even taking someone at the most basic level of train maintenance, they will have served a 4 year apprenticeship as a mechanical or electrical technician, (rail operators prefer their maintenance workers to be dual trained on both the electrical and mechanical systems), will have at least an HNC in a mechanical or electrical field, as well as an SVQ Level 3. Electricians are required to hold even more qualifications (17th edition, high voltage training etc), and that’s before you even get into the safety aspect that varies from depot to depot, things like trackside awareness, PTS etc. Thats the minimum you would need to even change a brake pad on a train. Train maintenance guys are working beside 25Kv main lines, if you even get within a metre and a half of that kind of voltage it throws you about 20 feet away and you are almost certainly dead. It’s not the kind of job that people would hold those sort of qualifications for and then sit around the house waiting for a phone call. Anyone who has took the time to get trained to that level, will more than likely already be employed in the rail industry. I understand you were only putting a suggestion out there, but there is so many things wrong with trying to implement something like that, that any sensible person could see in an instance that it’s completely unworkable. 
 
Same thing applies with signallers, shunters, drivers. You don’t hold the qualifications to work as a signaller unless you are already working as a signaller. I think some people underestimate just how many people are required in order for trains to run without disruption. Taking on ‘promising school leavers’ isn’t going to cut it im afraid, unless you are happy to travel on a rail network ran by a bunch of 18 year olds. 

No ICT company I know is going to pay contractor rates to a kid straight out of school with a few weeks at a training agency behind them. I suspect he has seen the Spartans glossy social media platforms on his hours of daily silver surfing.

[Melanius Mullarkey]

12 hours ago, BFTD said:

Oaksoft considering himself the exceptional voice of reason never gets old  

And deciding what "most people" believe too. One step off "people on the doorsteps are telling me..."

Imagine oaky turning up on your doorstep just as the One Show theme tune kicks in.

”Good evening, sorry to trouble you squire but I wonder if you could spare 35 minutes of your time to read this film script i wrote yesterday”