How to fix the Southern Rail dispute?
Discussion
NDA said:
Hereward said:
You sound pleasant.
With regard to resolving issues with management - a normal human being would seek to resolve such issues through dialogue and wouldn't seek to target/punish the customer for a failure to reach agreement. If I had a beef with you I would take it out on you and not, say, your wife or another third party.
The media state that the actions of about 1,000 train staff affect the commute of about 300,000 Southern commuters. If that ratio is correct then I really don't know how those staff are able to look themselves in the mirror. I would be horrified with myself if my personal conduct negatively impacted even 1 person.
I agree.With regard to resolving issues with management - a normal human being would seek to resolve such issues through dialogue and wouldn't seek to target/punish the customer for a failure to reach agreement. If I had a beef with you I would take it out on you and not, say, your wife or another third party.
The media state that the actions of about 1,000 train staff affect the commute of about 300,000 Southern commuters. If that ratio is correct then I really don't know how those staff are able to look themselves in the mirror. I would be horrified with myself if my personal conduct negatively impacted even 1 person.
However if you dare to propose a different view, you're branded as ignorant. Pointless arguing with a single agenda mindset.
The dispute is about protecting jobs and wages masquerading as a safety campaign. Hard working passengers are merely leverage for the union to achieve it's aims.
NDA said:
I agree.
However if you dare to propose a different view, you're branded as ignorant. Pointless arguing with a single agenda mindset.
The dispute is about protecting jobs and wages masquerading as a safety campaign. Hard working passengers are merely leverage for the union to achieve it's aims.
Silly man.However if you dare to propose a different view, you're branded as ignorant. Pointless arguing with a single agenda mindset.
The dispute is about protecting jobs and wages masquerading as a safety campaign. Hard working passengers are merely leverage for the union to achieve it's aims.
You're entitled to propose whatever you like but don't go getting all offended when the proposals are shown as folly, ignorant and arrogant.
Over to you...(although I expect nothing of substance as you've clearly ignored posts telling you what the dispute was all about and how it has been settled).
Single agenda mindset you say?
PW said:
rs1952 said:
If I get any responses I'll tell you what happened later
The staff were all very reasonable and acknowledged that the bonus was a bonus, and they had already agreed a fair basic wage, otherwise they wouldn't have taken the job.They took it as motivation to knuckle down and quickly learn how to fix the new idiosyncrasies and issues they were facing and get the trains into service as quickly as possible as the idea of the bonus was intended.
It should be possible and fair to achieve the bonus at the same time you should also be expected to have to put in extra to achieve the bonus.
It seems there was a fine line drawn due to poor rolling stock being handed over and being expected to be fixed and put in service to achieve the bonus. The workers took issue that they may not achieve their bonus or full bonus as the stock was of such poor quality and their lack of knowledge on maintenance.
In business of any kind their needs to be an unwritten rule of scratch my back i will scratch yours between workers and management.
Sometimes you may have to do extra work or work outside normal hours without compensation and in return the management should recognise and remember the effort put in further down the line should you need the business to do you a favour not always in direct monetary. form.
So for example you work late one evening for a few hours and then a week or two later you need to go to a dentists appointment in the afternoon, rather than dock your pay to take the time off the business should simply allow you to leave early to go to the dentist.
gooner1 said:
Hereward said:
You sound pleasant.
With regard to resolving issues with management - a normal human being would seek to resolve such issues through dialogue and wouldn't seek to target/punish the customer for a failure to reach agreement. If I had a beef with you I would take it out on you and not, say, your wife or another third party.
The media state that the actions of about 1,000 train staff affect the commute of about 300,000 Southern commuters. If that ratio is correct then I really don't know how those staff are able to look themselves in the mirror. I would be horrified with myself if my personal conduct negatively impacted even 1 person.
Tell me, who do you suppose controls. The media, and how many people do their views impact on? Have you ever taken part in talks with management or union members?With regard to resolving issues with management - a normal human being would seek to resolve such issues through dialogue and wouldn't seek to target/punish the customer for a failure to reach agreement. If I had a beef with you I would take it out on you and not, say, your wife or another third party.
The media state that the actions of about 1,000 train staff affect the commute of about 300,000 Southern commuters. If that ratio is correct then I really don't know how those staff are able to look themselves in the mirror. I would be horrified with myself if my personal conduct negatively impacted even 1 person.
The replies received so far to my 1970s strike scenario are interesting, and might even be pertinent to the Southern Railway dispute. I gave the facts as I remembered them and people replied, but perhaps unwittingly putting their own interpretation on words and scenarios that were not the case on the railway at the time. I did not intentionally set a trap, but it is interesting the replies came in the way they did, based on the information I provided. The link to the current dispute is that there are often things going on behind the scenes that the general public don’t get to find out the detail of, and this can lead them to conclusions that are actually based on only part of the evidence.
There were unsocial hours payments; a plethora of different overtime rates (time and seven-twelfths for OT between 0200 and 0600 was a good one, but only for certain grades). There were enhanced rates for working nights, Saturday afternoons and Sundays. There were allowances for this, allowances for that (tool allowance, clothing allowance, tunnel allowance, extra pay for fogging and snowstorm duty spring back to mind as examples). Nobody in their right mind would have taken a job on the railway back then for just the basic rate of pay (except for a few clerks who didn’t get the opportunity to earn more), and the average earnings were emphasised at interview rather than the basic rates, which would have sent most interviewees laughing as they walked towards the door.
I didn’t spell it out, but the bonus scheme was a collective one. It was not related to the effort of individuals, but a reflection of the results from the team who worked there (and that’s not “teams” in the way we might think of them today, that was a shedful of 500-odd blokes).
To all intents and purposes the bonus was accepted, by management and workforce alike, as part of the going rate for the job. To lose part of that bonus was, therefore, on a par with reducing the basic rate. Such things do not go down well with anybody even in this day and age.
For example, part of the conditions of service for Workshop staff was that they clocked on and off with a good old-fashioned time clock that punched and time-stamped their cards. Staff could arrive as early as they liked, and indeed up to 5 minutes late for a shift, and they were paid from the shift starting time. If they were 6 to 15 minutes late they were docked 15 minutes pay; 16 to 30 minutes late and they were docked 30 minutes pay. Over 30 minutes late and they would be sent home without pay, which of course led to high levels of absenteeism from those who weren’t very good at getting up in the morning for a 7am start, if when if you turn up 31 minutes late you get sent home anyway… And as I said you could get in as early as you liked but if you clocked off early, you were booked off at exactly the time you clocked off. Down to the minute. And you want to go to a dental appointment? Fine – Special Leave (unpaid) once you cleared it with your Supervisor. Getting caught putting other staff member’s cards into the clock was an instant dismissal offence.
With shenanigans like that going on, it was little wonder that there was considerable tension between the workforce and the management that could blow up into something quite nasty quite quickly.
However, the strike saga ended as follows. After three weeks of being daggers drawn, a compromise was reached. An average bonus level based on 80% availability was to be paid, irrespective of actual availability, for a set period of 6 months (IIRC) so there was an element of swings and roundabouts in the deal. Management also arranged training courses on the new traction for the staff, who hitherto had been given no preparatory training and were just expected to get on with the job and muddle through whilst reading the Workshop manual. A good analogy might be a garage mechanic used to working on petrol engines all his life suddenly being confronted by a diesel and being told "Well get on and repair it then - its still a bloody engine, after all..."
Had the two sides agreed that deal three weeks earlier there would have been a lot less unhappy railway customers. Perhaps if Southern could have come up with a sensible compromise a few months ago the same might have applied there too.
PW said:
The staff were all very reasonable and acknowledged that the bonus was a bonus, and they had already agreed a fair basic wage, otherwise they wouldn't have taken the job.
frankenstein12 said:
There are two sides to a bonus as it is not an entitlement.
In the context of the time this assumption is wrong. Back in the 1970s railway basic rates of pay were crap (when I started in 1969 a drivers basic rate was £19 19s – that’s £19.95 if you want that in new money, for a 40-hour week), and they were supplemented by various enhancements and allowances. Staff generally only took home their basic rate when they were on leave – at all other times other payments would augment it. They didn’t even get it when they were sick, because sick pay wasn’t paid either except to management, clerical and supervisory staff and some people in selected grades (notably drivers) who had knocked up 25 years service.There were unsocial hours payments; a plethora of different overtime rates (time and seven-twelfths for OT between 0200 and 0600 was a good one, but only for certain grades). There were enhanced rates for working nights, Saturday afternoons and Sundays. There were allowances for this, allowances for that (tool allowance, clothing allowance, tunnel allowance, extra pay for fogging and snowstorm duty spring back to mind as examples). Nobody in their right mind would have taken a job on the railway back then for just the basic rate of pay (except for a few clerks who didn’t get the opportunity to earn more), and the average earnings were emphasised at interview rather than the basic rates, which would have sent most interviewees laughing as they walked towards the door.
I didn’t spell it out, but the bonus scheme was a collective one. It was not related to the effort of individuals, but a reflection of the results from the team who worked there (and that’s not “teams” in the way we might think of them today, that was a shedful of 500-odd blokes).
To all intents and purposes the bonus was accepted, by management and workforce alike, as part of the going rate for the job. To lose part of that bonus was, therefore, on a par with reducing the basic rate. Such things do not go down well with anybody even in this day and age.
frankenstein12 said:
In business of any kind their needs to be an unwritten rule of scratch my back i will scratch yours between workers and management.
You’d think so, wouldn’t you, but that did not apply on the railway in the 1970s.For example, part of the conditions of service for Workshop staff was that they clocked on and off with a good old-fashioned time clock that punched and time-stamped their cards. Staff could arrive as early as they liked, and indeed up to 5 minutes late for a shift, and they were paid from the shift starting time. If they were 6 to 15 minutes late they were docked 15 minutes pay; 16 to 30 minutes late and they were docked 30 minutes pay. Over 30 minutes late and they would be sent home without pay, which of course led to high levels of absenteeism from those who weren’t very good at getting up in the morning for a 7am start, if when if you turn up 31 minutes late you get sent home anyway… And as I said you could get in as early as you liked but if you clocked off early, you were booked off at exactly the time you clocked off. Down to the minute. And you want to go to a dental appointment? Fine – Special Leave (unpaid) once you cleared it with your Supervisor. Getting caught putting other staff member’s cards into the clock was an instant dismissal offence.
With shenanigans like that going on, it was little wonder that there was considerable tension between the workforce and the management that could blow up into something quite nasty quite quickly.
However, the strike saga ended as follows. After three weeks of being daggers drawn, a compromise was reached. An average bonus level based on 80% availability was to be paid, irrespective of actual availability, for a set period of 6 months (IIRC) so there was an element of swings and roundabouts in the deal. Management also arranged training courses on the new traction for the staff, who hitherto had been given no preparatory training and were just expected to get on with the job and muddle through whilst reading the Workshop manual. A good analogy might be a garage mechanic used to working on petrol engines all his life suddenly being confronted by a diesel and being told "Well get on and repair it then - its still a bloody engine, after all..."
Had the two sides agreed that deal three weeks earlier there would have been a lot less unhappy railway customers. Perhaps if Southern could have come up with a sensible compromise a few months ago the same might have applied there too.
Southern did come up with some changes which the ASLEF representatives thought the membership would accept. As it turned out the reps clearly hadn't fully understood the mood of the ASLEF members as they threw it out - twice. I'm not sure that you can lay all the blame/delay on the Southern management !
Hereward said:
The media state that the actions of about 1,000 train staff affect the commute of about 300,000 Southern commuters. If that ratio is correct then I really don't know how those staff are able to look themselves in the mirror. I would be horrified with myself if my personal conduct negatively impacted even 1 person.
The reality is that many of the customers actually sympathise with the staff. The service was also poor before the strikes and indeed on non-strike days. Arguably the situation was better on strike days because the trains that were advertised as running generally did actually run and usually on time, which is a lot better than other days.Dont forget that ASLEF believed they had an agreement about operating driver only trains on the Brighton Mainline and Southern took legal action to tear up that agreement.
Also dont forget that even before the dispute even started Peter Wilkinson at the DfT told a oublic meeting in Croydon they were going to smash the unions.
The dispute was as much down to management as the staff, ad I am a passenger.
frankenstein12 said:
A local car hire company was able to supply me with a brand new ford fiesta for £27 for a days hire.
I decided it would probability cost me no more than £15 in petrol to drive to london and back as my 2.8 litre costs me around £20 for the same trip.
All in i spent £40 on the trip using a hire car which was £3 cheaper than the train during off peak.
What about the congestion charge?I decided it would probability cost me no more than £15 in petrol to drive to london and back as my 2.8 litre costs me around £20 for the same trip.
All in i spent £40 on the trip using a hire car which was £3 cheaper than the train during off peak.
The Mad Monk said:
frankenstein12 said:
A local car hire company was able to supply me with a brand new ford fiesta for £27 for a days hire.
I decided it would probability cost me no more than £15 in petrol to drive to london and back as my 2.8 litre costs me around £20 for the same trip.
All in i spent £40 on the trip using a hire car which was £3 cheaper than the train during off peak.
What about the congestion charge?I decided it would probability cost me no more than £15 in petrol to drive to london and back as my 2.8 litre costs me around £20 for the same trip.
All in i spent £40 on the trip using a hire car which was £3 cheaper than the train during off peak.
rs1952 said:
You’d think so, wouldn’t you, but that did not apply on the railway in the 1970s.
For example, part of the conditions of service for Workshop staff was that they clocked on and off with a good old-fashioned time clock that punched and time-stamped their cards. Staff could arrive as early as they liked, and indeed up to 5 minutes late for a shift, and they were paid from the shift starting time. If they were 6 to 15 minutes late they were docked 15 minutes pay; 16 to 30 minutes late and they were docked 30 minutes pay. Over 30 minutes late and they would be sent home without pay, which of course led to high levels of absenteeism from those who weren’t very good at getting up in the morning for a 7am start, if when if you turn up 31 minutes late you get sent home anyway… And as I said you could get in as early as you liked but if you clocked off early, you were booked off at exactly the time you clocked off. Down to the minute. And you want to go to a dental appointment? Fine – Special Leave (unpaid) once you cleared it with your Supervisor. Getting caught putting other staff member’s cards into the clock was an instant dismissal offence.
With shenanigans like that going on, it was little wonder that there was considerable tension between the workforce and the management that could blow up into something quite nasty quite quickly.
However, the strike saga ended as follows. After three weeks of being daggers drawn, a compromise was reached. An average bonus level based on 80% availability was to be paid, irrespective of actual availability, for a set period of 6 months (IIRC) so there was an element of swings and roundabouts in the deal. Management also arranged training courses on the new traction for the staff, who hitherto had been given no preparatory training and were just expected to get on with the job and muddle through whilst reading the Workshop manual. A good analogy might be a garage mechanic used to working on petrol engines all his life suddenly being confronted by a diesel and being told "Well get on and repair it then - its still a bloody engine, after all..."
Had the two sides agreed that deal three weeks earlier there would have been a lot less unhappy railway customers. Perhaps if Southern could have come up with a sensible compromise a few months ago the same might have applied there too.
That was the 70's. These days pay is much more in line with reality. I dont disagree that in the case of the last two years of mainline strikes the management have been almost as much to blame as the unions due to the way they have handled things however the unions also come across as being stuck in the 70's mindset and that is not good for anyone.For example, part of the conditions of service for Workshop staff was that they clocked on and off with a good old-fashioned time clock that punched and time-stamped their cards. Staff could arrive as early as they liked, and indeed up to 5 minutes late for a shift, and they were paid from the shift starting time. If they were 6 to 15 minutes late they were docked 15 minutes pay; 16 to 30 minutes late and they were docked 30 minutes pay. Over 30 minutes late and they would be sent home without pay, which of course led to high levels of absenteeism from those who weren’t very good at getting up in the morning for a 7am start, if when if you turn up 31 minutes late you get sent home anyway… And as I said you could get in as early as you liked but if you clocked off early, you were booked off at exactly the time you clocked off. Down to the minute. And you want to go to a dental appointment? Fine – Special Leave (unpaid) once you cleared it with your Supervisor. Getting caught putting other staff member’s cards into the clock was an instant dismissal offence.
With shenanigans like that going on, it was little wonder that there was considerable tension between the workforce and the management that could blow up into something quite nasty quite quickly.
However, the strike saga ended as follows. After three weeks of being daggers drawn, a compromise was reached. An average bonus level based on 80% availability was to be paid, irrespective of actual availability, for a set period of 6 months (IIRC) so there was an element of swings and roundabouts in the deal. Management also arranged training courses on the new traction for the staff, who hitherto had been given no preparatory training and were just expected to get on with the job and muddle through whilst reading the Workshop manual. A good analogy might be a garage mechanic used to working on petrol engines all his life suddenly being confronted by a diesel and being told "Well get on and repair it then - its still a bloody engine, after all..."
Had the two sides agreed that deal three weeks earlier there would have been a lot less unhappy railway customers. Perhaps if Southern could have come up with a sensible compromise a few months ago the same might have applied there too.
I work in management and unfortunately most managers I come across are pretty bloody useless as they dont genuinely understand management. They see staff merely as a number on a spreadsheet and that is an extremely flawed work methodology.
Staff are the heart of a business and while they don't HAVE to like you or be paid the biggest salary they do need to be treated in such a way that they do not resent working for you. Unhappy staff are unproductive staff.
Unfortunately the other issue is staff rarely understand management and their decisions. I recently had a member of staff decide to take a days leave in the middle of a project and he decided to give me 5 days notice of his intent.
When I tried to get in touch with him to discuss his leave request his response was to send me a snotty email stating he was taking his leave whether i liked it or not as he was entitled to do so.
My initial reaction to his snotty email and then refusing to call me back was to deny his leave request but in the end I managed to call his team mate and got the phone handed over to him and had a chat with him and explained the situation.
He failed to understand that I was the one who could approve or deny his leave. He failed to recognise that the only reason I wanted to have a conversation with him was to understand whether his taking a days leave would impact on the completion of the project on schedule.
The only reason I went that extra mile for him and didn't just refuse his leave request is he and his team mate are two of the best guys I have who are always happy to go out of their way to help and I also knew he had been having a rough time recently in his personal lfe.
frankenstein12 said:
That was the 70's. These days pay is much more in line with reality. I dont disagree that in the case of the last two years of mainline strikes the management have been almost as much to blame as the unions due to the way they have handled things however the unions also come across as being stuck in the 70's mindset and that is not good for anyone.
I work in management and unfortunately most managers I come across are pretty bloody useless as they dont genuinely understand management. They see staff merely as a number on a spreadsheet and that is an extremely flawed work methodology.
Staff are the heart of a business and while they don't HAVE to like you or be paid the biggest salary they do need to be treated in such a way that they do not resent working for you. Unhappy staff are unproductive staff.
Unfortunately the other issue is staff rarely understand management and their decisions. I recently had a member of staff decide to take a days leave in the middle of a project and he decided to give me 5 days notice of his intent.
When I tried to get in touch with him to discuss his leave request his response was to send me a snotty email stating he was taking his leave whether i liked it or not as he was entitled to do so.
My initial reaction to his snotty email and then refusing to call me back was to deny his leave request but in the end I managed to call his team mate and got the phone handed over to him and had a chat with him and explained the situation.
He failed to understand that I was the one who could approve or deny his leave. He failed to recognise that the only reason I wanted to have a conversation with him was to understand whether his taking a days leave would impact on the completion of the project on schedule.
The only reason I went that extra mile for him and didn't just refuse his leave request is he and his team mate are two of the best guys I have who are always happy to go out of their way to help and I also knew he had been having a rough time recently in his personal lfe.
Good post. It may be my imagination but there seems to be far more 'aggro' from staff towards management these days anyway. Not really sure why as it seems to apply to even the best manager/staff relationships - perhaps staff feel more empowered through their 'Human Rights' - or just social media/TV perhaps ?I work in management and unfortunately most managers I come across are pretty bloody useless as they dont genuinely understand management. They see staff merely as a number on a spreadsheet and that is an extremely flawed work methodology.
Staff are the heart of a business and while they don't HAVE to like you or be paid the biggest salary they do need to be treated in such a way that they do not resent working for you. Unhappy staff are unproductive staff.
Unfortunately the other issue is staff rarely understand management and their decisions. I recently had a member of staff decide to take a days leave in the middle of a project and he decided to give me 5 days notice of his intent.
When I tried to get in touch with him to discuss his leave request his response was to send me a snotty email stating he was taking his leave whether i liked it or not as he was entitled to do so.
My initial reaction to his snotty email and then refusing to call me back was to deny his leave request but in the end I managed to call his team mate and got the phone handed over to him and had a chat with him and explained the situation.
He failed to understand that I was the one who could approve or deny his leave. He failed to recognise that the only reason I wanted to have a conversation with him was to understand whether his taking a days leave would impact on the completion of the project on schedule.
The only reason I went that extra mile for him and didn't just refuse his leave request is he and his team mate are two of the best guys I have who are always happy to go out of their way to help and I also knew he had been having a rough time recently in his personal lfe.
frankenstein12 said:
That was the 70's. These days pay is much more in line with reality. I dont disagree that in the case of the last two years of mainline strikes the management have been almost as much to blame as the unions due to the way they have handled things however the unions also come across as being stuck in the 70's mindset and that is not good for anyone.
I work in management and unfortunately most managers I come across are pretty bloody useless as they dont genuinely understand management. They see staff merely as a number on a spreadsheet and that is an extremely flawed work methodology.
Staff are the heart of a business and while they don't HAVE to like you or be paid the biggest salary they do need to be treated in such a way that they do not resent working for you. Unhappy staff are unproductive staff.
I agree 100%. As you say. my scenario comes from the 70s when things were a lot different especially in terms of pay. The railway had started on a policy of consolidating many of those enhancements and allowances into basic pay rates even then, because it had begun to dawn on management in those pre-computer days that the army of clerks they needed to calculate them was costing more than upping the basic rates by consolidating them.I work in management and unfortunately most managers I come across are pretty bloody useless as they dont genuinely understand management. They see staff merely as a number on a spreadsheet and that is an extremely flawed work methodology.
Staff are the heart of a business and while they don't HAVE to like you or be paid the biggest salary they do need to be treated in such a way that they do not resent working for you. Unhappy staff are unproductive staff.
I know exactly what you mean about managers and their staff management skills, and with some of them the only thing that has changed since the 70s is that they are now names on spreadsheets rather than names on a paper list. Completely off topic, but a few years ago I was doing a value for money review on a housing association's repair and maintenance service in the Midlands. There was a sign on the door of the General Office at one depot that read "No operatives past this point" - presumably the delicate clerks and managers didn't want dirty feet and smelly "lower orders" dirtying the carpet...
But I digress so I will get back on topic. When I buy a railway or a bus or an airline ticket, my contract is with the company, not the union. It is the company's job to provide the service and, if the company is having a problem with its workforce, it is for the company to sort out that problem and provide the service that I have paid for. And if that means locking management and union reps in a room until they reach an agreement or die of starvation (whichever cones first) then that is what they need to do. In the case of Southern management, they have signally failed (no pun intended...) to sort out their domestic difficulties and provide the service their customers have paid for.
It might be that if Southern had been left to manage the way they should then this problem may never have occurred, but in this case we have the dead hand of government behind the scene pulling Souther's strings. One would think that they had enough to do at the moment without that...
Nik da Greek said:
Charles Horton, the bête noire of Southern drivers is a fine example of higher railway management. He has already ruined one franchise to the point that it was taken into direct government operation and was at one point so bad it was deemed unsalvageable. Yet his connections with the likes of Grayling and other Government cronies got him into the Govia gig... where he still is despite massive evidence of catastrophic miss-management. He is so toxic that the only way he stays in his multi-million pound job is through patronisation from above, and he knows it. He is owned and what he does is so entwined with policy and orders from above that it has nothing to do with safety... or only as a piece of serendipity. It's about saving money and SAFETY is the easiest way of bamboozling the paying public. That was the point the strikers were trying to make all along, but the Dailt Mail reading masses either chose to ignore or just totally missed it
I think the word you're looking for is patronage. 
People like Horton (and Wilkinson) should be let anywhere near an industry which performs the important task of getting many thousands of people to work every day.
Part of the problem is that governments (of whatever stripe) have been quite unable to resist interfering whether directly or from behind the scenes.
When the railways were nationalised the head of the BTC (of which the railways were the biggest constituent) Cyril Hurcomb was a civil servant.
Then there was the deliberate suppression of the Stedeford Committe report which was not published until after Beeching's The Reshaping of British Railways had been accepted (by the government).
I often wonder what might have happened if Gerry Fiennes had been in the main driving seat and given the freedom to make a difference.
Red Devil said:
Nik da Greek said:
Charles Horton, the bête noire of Southern drivers is a fine example of higher railway management. He has already ruined one franchise to the point that it was taken into direct government operation and was at one point so bad it was deemed unsalvageable. Yet his connections with the likes of Grayling and other Government cronies got him into the Govia gig... where he still is despite massive evidence of catastrophic miss-management. He is so toxic that the only way he stays in his multi-million pound job is through patronisation from above, and he knows it. He is owned and what he does is so entwined with policy and orders from above that it has nothing to do with safety... or only as a piece of serendipity. It's about saving money and SAFETY is the easiest way of bamboozling the paying public. That was the point the strikers were trying to make all along, but the Dailt Mail reading masses either chose to ignore or just totally missed it
I think the word you're looking for is patronage. People like Horton (and Wilkinson) should be let anywhere near an industry which performs the important task of getting many thousands of people to work every day.
Part of the problem is that governments (of whatever stripe) have been quite unable to resist interfering whether directly or from behind the scenes.
When the railways were nationalised the head of the BTC (of which the railways were the biggest constituent) Cyril Hurcomb was a civil servant.
Then there was the deliberate suppression of the Stedeford Committe report which was not published until after Beeching's The Reshaping of British Railways had been accepted (by the government).
I often wonder what might have happened if Gerry Fiennes had been in the main driving seat and given the freedom to make a difference.
By the way, I think the phrase you're looking for is "People like Horton (and Wilkinson) should <NOT> be let anywhere near an industry which performs the important task of getting many thousands of people to work every day."
Red Devil said:
I often wonder what might have happened if Gerry Fiennes had been in the main driving seat and given the freedom to make a difference.
Gerry Fiennes would still have had the problem of falling passenger numbers and cash receipts, for both passenger and freight services. There would still have been closures and rationalisations - whether they would have been the same ones that we actually had would be another matter. But something that Gerry Fiennes had that present SR management clearly do not is an ability to understand their staff and not to upset them needlessly. He had no place for red rags, and left guards and signalmen to use them. I never met the man (joining the railway as I did 2 years after he'd been given the bullet for publishing his book) but my father did on one of Fiennes' "wandering about the system getting to know people" jaunts. A genuine sort of bloke, so the old man said.
For those who don't know much about the man, here is an extract from his book "Fiennes of Rails" page 173, when he was called to give evidence in the High Court regarding a Port of London Authority shunting accident. His adversary was Trevor Jones QC:
Jones – "Mr Fiennes, you were a railway general manager for a number of years?"
“Yes”
"And before then you were Chief Operating Officer of British Railways?"
“Yes”
"And before then since about 1950 were in senior positions in management?"
“Yes”
Then came:
"So you have forgotten all you ever know about shunting?"
“In the corner of this court there is a shunting pole. If you will pass it to me I will show you how to use it”
I somhow doubt that the likes of Alistair Moreton and his ilk could end a line of questioning quite so decisively
The government should state they won't prosecute any rail passengers who get into it any of the strikers. Can't see it happening but the country is effectively being held to ransom by a small group for I believe selfish motives.
There are I am sure plenty of people who would be willing step in a take these peoples jobs.
There are I am sure plenty of people who would be willing step in a take these peoples jobs.
Then why not apply?
Southern, I believe, has recently gone through an extensive train driver recruitment campaign in the last year or two in amongst other train companies. I trust you’ve put your application in?
And what do you mean by ‘get into it with strikers’?
Southern, I believe, has recently gone through an extensive train driver recruitment campaign in the last year or two in amongst other train companies. I trust you’ve put your application in?
And what do you mean by ‘get into it with strikers’?
Edited by valiant on Friday 17th November 07:00
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