How to fix the Southern Rail dispute?
Discussion
deeen said:
Reading his article, it does sound a bit chicken and egg:
Southern: "We want DOO so we can bring in new trains"
Aslef: "We're fighting DOO cos it's not safe on the old trains"
Where did it say in the article that Southern want DOO to bring in new rolling stock as I cant see it?Southern: "We want DOO so we can bring in new trains"
Aslef: "We're fighting DOO cos it's not safe on the old trains"
KTF said:
deeen said:
Reading his article, it does sound a bit chicken and egg:
Southern: "We want DOO so we can bring in new trains"
Aslef: "We're fighting DOO cos it's not safe on the old trains"
Where did it say in the article that Southern want DOO to bring in new rolling stock as I cant see it?Southern: "We want DOO so we can bring in new trains"
Aslef: "We're fighting DOO cos it's not safe on the old trains"
You are correct, he doesn't give Southern's point of view, and I wildly over-simplified his.
Let me try again!
Reading his article made me think the dispute has become a bit "chicken and egg"
I've boiled down his article to "ASLEF are fighting DOO cos it's not safe on the old trains (and some of the things they said would work don't work, and drivers could get stitched up when they don't)"
while part of Southern's position seems to be "We want DOO to bring in new rolling stock where (presumably) all the stuff works"
50 Tory MP's now calling for legislation to prevent / make strikes more difficult in the future due to the "essential" nature of the service.
Exactly what I said would be an option a couple of pages before if the government wanted to play hardball.
The article from the Guardian interviewing the union leader is interesting. Just goes to show how the popular media outlets (TV News especially) are not exactly reporting this dispute fairly. I am sure if they ran a story around rail safety as the reason for the strikes and then put out there the arguments in the article that there would be more support for a solution which means less / no change.
Exactly what I said would be an option a couple of pages before if the government wanted to play hardball.
The article from the Guardian interviewing the union leader is interesting. Just goes to show how the popular media outlets (TV News especially) are not exactly reporting this dispute fairly. I am sure if they ran a story around rail safety as the reason for the strikes and then put out there the arguments in the article that there would be more support for a solution which means less / no change.
deeen said:
while part of Southern's position seems to be "We want DOO to bring in new rolling stock where (presumably) all the stuff works"
Southern are not getting any new rolling stock though! There was an exceptionally misleading statement by Chris Grayling talking about new rolling stock but it is Thameslink and Gatwick Express who have new rolling stock, all being operated DOO without dispute.Thameslink indeed have new Siemens Class 700s. They'll be great when they work properly. Gatwick Express also do have new rolling stock... to them. It's old news on the region though, being essentially an "update" of the Bombardier Class 377/387 stock that have been blighting Southern and Thameslink for years now. Something like twelve years into their operational life on Southern and they're still riddled with "teething problems" [/euphemism]. Gatwick Express tried to take the introduction of the new stock as far as industrial action also but ...surprise surprise... GTR got ther balloted action overruled in the courts on the principle that Gatwick Express already operated 10-car 442 Plastic Pigs in DOO and a 12-car 377 is only fractionally longer than a 10-car 442. Much the same argument that was used to introduce 12-car DOO on Thameslink when it was part of First along with Great Northern; as I previously mentioned that was a case of "GN already run 12-car DOO so Thameslink can have no objection against it". GN ran one 12-car DOO service daily. Thameslink now run almost entirely thus.
Is it cynical to suggest that this has been the subtext all along behind first the First Group attempted merger of Thameslink and Great Northern T&Cs in order to sneak 12-car DOO onto Thameslink (it's much easier to extend an existing working practice such as the 8-car DOO Thameslink were already running than to completely re-write all pre-agreed methods of work such as is currently being tried at Southern) and then under GTR merge the Thameslink T&Cs with Southern, thus ensuring the largest mnonopoly on the railways represented by the GTR conglomorate could rationalise the entire South-East of England's working practises via the back door? Quite a cumbersome sentence, I'll grant you, and many will only see conspiracy theorist paranoia in it, but isn't it a fact that if the lads at Southern hadn't stood up to be counted no-one would even have noticed the sweeping de-safetyising* of the rail network carried out largely behind the scenes and in keeping with some giant DfT-sponsored strategy?
*not an actual word, sorry
Spelnilg an grammer
Is it cynical to suggest that this has been the subtext all along behind first the First Group attempted merger of Thameslink and Great Northern T&Cs in order to sneak 12-car DOO onto Thameslink (it's much easier to extend an existing working practice such as the 8-car DOO Thameslink were already running than to completely re-write all pre-agreed methods of work such as is currently being tried at Southern) and then under GTR merge the Thameslink T&Cs with Southern, thus ensuring the largest mnonopoly on the railways represented by the GTR conglomorate could rationalise the entire South-East of England's working practises via the back door? Quite a cumbersome sentence, I'll grant you, and many will only see conspiracy theorist paranoia in it, but isn't it a fact that if the lads at Southern hadn't stood up to be counted no-one would even have noticed the sweeping de-safetyising* of the rail network carried out largely behind the scenes and in keeping with some giant DfT-sponsored strategy?
*not an actual word, sorry
Edited by Nik da Greek on Tuesday 17th January 00:49
Spelnilg an grammer
Edited by Nik da Greek on Tuesday 17th January 00:50
Public frustration towards drivers bubbled over at Bognor Regis station on Monday when a passenger "verbally abused" a driver through his open cab door leaving the driver so upset that the service was cancelled.
Link to report of snowflake on the line
Link to report of snowflake on the line
Cold said:
Public frustration towards drivers bubbled over at Bognor Regis station on Monday when a passenger "verbally abused" a driver through his open cab door leaving the driver so upset that the service was cancelled.
Link to report of snowflake on the line
Yeah who wins in that situation? The driver who is being paid to be there or the passengers who now have a cancelled train.Link to report of snowflake on the line
Driver is a legend, I'd of done the same thing I don't come into work to have verbal abuse shouted at me.
RemyMartin81D said:
Cold said:
Public frustration towards drivers bubbled over at Bognor Regis station on Monday when a passenger "verbally abused" a driver through his open cab door leaving the driver so upset that the service was cancelled.
Link to report of snowflake on the line
Yeah who wins in that situation? The driver who is being paid to be there or the passengers who now have a cancelled train.Link to report of snowflake on the line
Driver is a legend, I'd of done the same thing I don't come into work to have verbal abuse shouted at me.
craigjm said:
I thought the cab doors had to be locked. That incident could have been a lot worse. I am surprised that this is not happening more and more to be honest as passengers start to show their frustrations. It's not right and it's the staff that bear the brunt of it not the management.
Happened to my brother at Peterborough some years ago, running about twenty minutes late he pulled into the platform to be met with a smartly dressed 'city type' waving a knife at him through the open side window. Result = one cancelled service. Happened to him again at New Street a year or so later only this time it was the pointy end of an umbrella. He regularly gets passengers banging on the internal cab door giving him grief, not exactly helpful when approaching a red 'un or a buffer stop in a bay platform!I'm so glad I'm a freight driver...
Cold said:
Public frustration towards drivers bubbled over at Bognor Regis station on Monday when a passenger "verbally abused" a driver through his open cab door leaving the driver so upset that the service was cancelled.
Link to report of snowflake on the line
It is suggested on Facebook that the driver was out of the can and down by carriage 8 when a passenger entered the drivers cab and took photos of the cctv screens. He passengers is all edging the screens were visible and clear and has posted photos.Link to report of snowflake on the line
However it is also clear that platform dispatchers were missing.
So the options appear to be to either
the driver can only dispatch with dispatchers unless he manually closes all the doors. He was in the process of doing this when a passenger gets fed up and opens the cab door and gets in the cab, meaning the driver has to stop what he is doing etc and ultimately cancellation of the train
Or the driver could not see all the doors in the CCTV in the absence of dispatchers he went through a Manila dispatch process before a passenger took the action of accessing the cab etc.
Irrespective instead of a 5 or 10 minute delay the train was cancelled and a significant delay occurred
P5BNij said:
craigjm said:
I thought the cab doors had to be locked. That incident could have been a lot worse. I am surprised that this is not happening more and more to be honest as passengers start to show their frustrations. It's not right and it's the staff that bear the brunt of it not the management.
Happened to my brother at Peterborough some years ago, running about twenty minutes late he pulled into the platform to be met with a smartly dressed 'city type' waving a knife at him through the open side window. Result = one cancelled service. Happened to him again at New Street a year or so later only this time it was the pointy end of an umbrella. He regularly gets passengers banging on the internal cab door giving him grief, not exactly helpful when approaching a red 'un or a buffer stop in a bay platform!I'm so glad I'm a freight driver...
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