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Post by railtechnician on Sept 5, 2010 2:24:05 GMT
In the transport industry, I'd not be without some sort of union membership. Ok, they didn't particularly help me in my hour of need, nor a lot of the people sacked over the time I was employed there, too busy sorting wages out, but they did back me and made sure I got fair treatment. We had one bloke sacked because of something I can't mention as it's still ongoing, but for me, that was an "all-out" because the company were bang out of order. My direct supervisor was also sacked for swearing at a driver. Yes, just swearing. The union should have picked up on this, but failed to, so as a result, swearing is a sackable offence now, as is the case I can't mention. Add to that, my own condition means I can't drive, but the union didn't do anything in response to my sacking, nor have they done anything about the bloke that just got sacked for having excessive time off for cancer treatment. Local reps need to hard up a bit, and start some serious fights for the rights of the workers, but not to the point where the Labour Government of 74-79 was dictated to. Well the RMT watched LU Engineering sold down the river without lifting a finger to prevent it in the runup to devolution in 1992/3. In 2002 it did it again when JNP were transferred to Tube Lines under the PPP because at the time the RMT was in dispute with Ken Livingston which should have resulted in all RMT members getting a pay increase. However, Ken made a promise to deliver a reward later if the RMT ended the dispute and it duly did exactly that the minute that JNP were transferred thus only remaining LU staff were awarded the increase. After Camden Town derailment Bob Crow slated Tube LInes and its workforce, many of whom were RMT members! I'm afraid the RMT are a washout in so many ways, the priorities are all wrong but that's what happens when the members just keep paying their dues without having their say. Most sensible people don't want to be on strike, wages that are lost through strike can never be replaced, it is a pointless exercise that alienates the travelling public and in the end it will cost jobs one way or another. The RMT knows that jobs will go, it has been on the cards for the last 30 years, it has always been a question of when rather than if. What the RMT should be doing is ensuring that those who will have to lose their jobs are properly recompensed, getting everyone out on strike will not ensure it.
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Post by Deleted on Sept 5, 2010 3:05:49 GMT
Thanks for the info, to be honest as long as you add an hour on to your usual journey time it's easy to get around London by bus and National Rail.
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Post by railtechnician on Sept 5, 2010 3:16:29 GMT
Anyhow, if you are one of the people to vote against strike action, haven't you got the right to go to work, or does the ballot mean all union members comply? It doesn't matter how you voted, nor whether you even voted at all; if your Union has called all it's members out as per the result of a ballot, all members that were involved in the ballot are expected to accept the result and act accordingly. Of course you do have the adult choice of deciding whether or not to follow your Unions call, but at the end of the day you are expected to tow the line. You live near me, and know what your area would suffer without buses. Most of those duties are O/T shifts, and the backlash from the public would be one thing, but as most of those routes are funded by the Council, Slavecoach would lose them to the cheapest bidder. Work to rule in Lincoln would kill them, it's almost a given that you take a defective bus out. So you advocate work to rule yet acknowledge that in the process your company * would lose work and thus jobs. Shooting one's self in the foot a bit there isn't it? * I know you don't work for them at the moment but you posted in that context.Colin, at the risk of being contraversial you know that it is all a game. Defective buses shouldn't be on the road but the management will look the other way after coercing a driver to carry on and if the traffic commissioner just happens to do a random inspection of a defective bus in service the first one to get it in the neck is the driver because the bus is his responsibility! After 28+ years service on LT/LU/Tube Lines and all those years as an RMT member I can say without a shadow of a doubt that similar examples can be found across LU too despite the nice rosy compliant corporate image that the company likes to hide behind. It happens in every department at all levels from the bottom to the very top and generally speaking the only people who get it in the neck are those at the extremities as the majority of those in between are competent at various levels of rear covering, blame deflection and creative accounting! The vast majority of managers are Teflon coated and trained to be so, the higher one climbs the more insulation generally speaking. A quick engineering example, no names, no locations but it happened on one of the lines one morning. A bunch of chaps including signal ops managers were in on night overtime changing 'Q' relays in several IMRs, at the time it was a regular occurrence as we had hundreds to change and it was 'bunce' OT for anyone that wanted to earn some extra money. Generally speaking we changed 4/5 pairs of relays per shift on a regular night shift on average enabling us to have enough time to test out the signalling before start of traffic and so that was also the norm for an OT shift. We had a list of the sites and who was working at them as we were the call men on duty, generally speaking it was normal for people on OT to be finished and gone before start of traffic but out of courtesy they would ring and let us know they were finished. One early morning we had heard from all those in on OT except for two managers and as traction current switching on time approached we tried to call them on the IMR auto and got no answer. Then we called our colleague in the signal control room to check if he'd remote tested the site or heard from the people working there, he hadn't. Moving on, traction was switched on and trains began to move and then we got a call to attend a signal failure at the site where the two managers had been working, I called the site as it was a 20 minute drive from the depot but got no answer once more so we jumped in the van and made our way there. On arrival trains were rolling and we went to the IMR to investigate, the submarine door was unlocked and as I opened it I saw two red faced managers still changing the last pair of relays. They had caused a 20 minute delay to service as they had the air off the frame and they were laughing about losing track of time. One had done a stint on operating for a few months on a management exchange programme and quickly calculated the rough cost to signals based upon the NAKS (can't remember what is stands for) value and determined that it was miniscule and that the engineering manager would no doubt let them off with an unofficial verbal caution to take more care! I can tell you that I was livid to put it mildly, our engineering manager was known for his DBs of signal linemen for far less and yet two signal ops managers had allowed themselves to be mutually distracted enough to lose track of time, cause failure and delay and were going to get away with it. We would've been hung, drawn and quartered for the same display of incompetence under a Safety Authority to Work Certificate. As expected we were 'asked' to keep quiet and nothing came of it. One of those managers is now quite a senior figure, I'm not sure about the other, he was still an ops manager when I retired.
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Post by Deleted on Sept 5, 2010 12:36:48 GMT
One had done a stint on operating for a few months on a management exchange programme and quickly calculated the rough cost to signals based upon the NAKS (can't remember what is stands for) value and determined that it was miniscule and that the engineering manager would no doubt let them off with an unofficial verbal caution to take more care! It's NACHs and it stands for Nominally Accumulated Customer Hours - basically a formula for calculating the overall passenger disbenefit (i.e. the amount of delay caused to real people) of any incident, based on location, duration and time of day. Any incident at start of traffic incurs minimal NACHs because of the small number of people travelling at that time.
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Post by railtechnician on Sept 5, 2010 13:28:30 GMT
One had done a stint on operating for a few months on a management exchange programme and quickly calculated the rough cost to signals based upon the NAKS (can't remember what is stands for) value and determined that it was miniscule and that the engineering manager would no doubt let them off with an unofficial verbal caution to take more care! It's NACHs and it stands for Nominally Accumulated Customer Hours - basically a formula for calculating the overall passenger disbenefit (i.e. the amount of delay caused to real people) of any incident, based on location, duration and time of day. Any incident at start of traffic incurs minimal NACHs because of the small number of people travelling at that time. Thanks TFC, I was scratching my head trying to remember that and getting the acronym wrong didn't help me at all!!!!
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Colin
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Post by Colin on Sept 5, 2010 23:34:53 GMT
Colin, at the risk of being contraversial you know that it is all a game. Defective buses shouldn't be on the road but the management will look the other way after coercing a driver to carry on and if the traffic commissioner just happens to do a random inspection of a defective bus in service the first one to get it in the neck is the driver because the bus is his responsibility! I can say without a shadow of a doubt that similar examples can be found across LU too despite the nice rosy compliant corporate image that the company likes to hide behind. Absolutely. Sometimes you have to play the game smarter and sometimes it's played for you, but there is often a game to be played.
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Post by Deleted on Sept 6, 2010 8:03:29 GMT
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Post by Deleted on Sept 6, 2010 13:57:28 GMT
I love tube strikes - they are like a survival adventure game for urbanites All the excitement of "will my line work", "how badly it will work", "will my station remain open", "can I find another way to get to". It's all a bit pointless though when I can walk from work to home in 45-50 minutes...
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Post by Tubeboy on Sept 6, 2010 15:56:35 GMT
I will be picketing in the morning and be proud to do so. Bring it on!
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Post by v52gc on Sept 6, 2010 17:45:38 GMT
The TfL spokesperson on the BBC news just claimed there are over 11000 station staff so 800 voluntary redundancies is acceptable in tough economic times. Other then the dodgy figures there, a shop during tough economic times will lose business and can justify cutting jobs/recruitment. A transport system is not a shop, nearly as many people still need to get from A to B!
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Post by Tubeboy on Sept 6, 2010 18:07:44 GMT
Only a fool would accept these cuts wont affect safety. My station is losing five full timers, leaving just three. How will that benefit the station? And as to this tosh its just ticket staff being displaced, supervisors and control room staff are as well. This despite Howard Collins assertion on the BBC London News a moment ago saying no Station Supervisors are going to go. Two are going at London Bridge, two at Canary Wharf. Canary Wharf is losing FOURTEEN staff from the ticket gatelines.
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Colin
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Post by Colin on Sept 7, 2010 0:27:08 GMT
Please use the newly created thread titled Strike service info if you wish to post about the current state of the train service during the strike.
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Post by messiah on Sept 7, 2010 8:02:04 GMT
Only a fool would accept these cuts wont affect safety. My station is losing five full timers, leaving just three. How will that benefit the station? And as to this tosh its just ticket staff being displaced, supervisors and control room staff are as well. This despite Howard Collins assertion on the BBC London News a moment ago saying no Station Supervisors are going to go. Two are going at London Bridge, two at Canary Wharf. Canary Wharf is losing FOURTEEN staff from the ticket gatelines. 14 staff from Canary wharf gatelines. Not sure how much impact that will have on safety, as the gatelines are not the most dangerous places.... You could argue having staff cuts out anti-social behaviour, however all the other communal areas of Canary Wharf are in much the same boat, and it doesn't seem the roughest place on the underground network. It's all a cost-benefit analysis - how much you spend for how much benefit - and that definitely includes safety, otherwise you could carry on spending more and more money making things safer and safer, but with diminishing returns. Management have taken the call to reduce station staff - this may be right, may be wrong. Job cuts amount to less than 10% in total, and are all voluntary (ie no cimpulsory dismissals). Most private companies have been through similar or worse situations in the last few years. (either recruitment freezes, so not replacing staff who leave, or actual job cuts). As for these cuts not affecting safety, most likely they will. Whether this makes a big difference is much more debatable, and I doubt we will know the answer for a number of years.
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Post by Deleted on Sept 7, 2010 9:38:14 GMT
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Post by Tomcakes on Sept 7, 2010 14:26:51 GMT
The are going to ban free travel for strikers? Bob is going to go insane! I'm pretty sure I have read on the TfL website that staff who go on strike lose their free travel on those days when they are striking and have to pay full fare.
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Post by Deleted on Sept 7, 2010 14:30:27 GMT
... oh, on the days which they are striking. For a minute there I thought it was perma...
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Post by 21146 on Sept 7, 2010 14:33:56 GMT
The are going to ban free travel for strikers? Bob is going to go insane! I'm pretty sure I have read on the TfL website that staff who go on strike lose their free travel on those days when they are striking and have to pay full fare. There's no way of enforcing that easily.
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Post by Deleted on Sept 7, 2010 14:34:31 GMT
The are going to ban free travel for strikers? Bob is going to go insane! I'm pretty sure I have read on the TfL website that staff who go on strike lose their free travel on those days when they are striking and have to pay full fare. TC is quite correct and staff should remember that their nominee passes are not valid whilst they strike.
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Post by 21146 on Sept 7, 2010 14:37:23 GMT
... oh, on the days which they are striking. For a minute there I thought it was perma... That'll be the next dispute...
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Post by Tomcakes on Sept 7, 2010 14:50:51 GMT
I'm pretty sure I have read on the TfL website that staff who go on strike lose their free travel on those days when they are striking and have to pay full fare. There's no way of enforcing that easily. Get the system to calculate Oyster usage of those on strike and deduct the cost of journeys made?
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Post by 21146 on Sept 7, 2010 15:32:11 GMT
There's no way of enforcing that easily. Get the system to calculate Oyster usage of those on strike and deduct the cost of journeys made? It's logistics of that. For example: can you travel at 0800 and 1800 if you were booked to work 0900-1700? Far too complicated (but not impossible).
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Post by version3point1 on Sept 7, 2010 16:38:41 GMT
Get the system to calculate Oyster usage of those on strike and deduct the cost of journeys made? It's logistics of that. For example: can you travel at 0800 and 1800 if you were booked to work 0900-1700? Far too complicated (but not impossible). Even if they did try, think of how many people are in possession of Staff Passes and Nominee Passes – not all those who possess them are operational staff, so a considerable amount of time would have to be taken to narrow it all down to those who are operational. Then there's the matter of how long it would take to collate all this information, and Oyster can only keep data with regards to Staff/Nominee passes for a maximum of 8 weeks before it is purged. Even then, for management or another regulating body to access this information, because it relates to both an employee number and one's name, as well as it counting as an act of monitoring staff, under the Data Protection Act, a Subject Access Request would have to be submitted to Oyster card for each individual concerned. Mmmm... when we're supposed to be cutting costs, the immense number of forests that would have to be cut down to pursue this paper trail is yet another pointless waste of resources.
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Post by Chris M on Sept 7, 2010 17:06:47 GMT
... oh, on the days which they are striking. For a minute there I thought it was perma... I think BA were planning/threatening to permanently withdraw from cabin crew who went on strike. I can't remember if they did though.
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Post by Deleted on Sept 7, 2010 17:26:50 GMT
... oh, on the days which they are striking. For a minute there I thought it was perma... I think BA were planning/threatening to permanently withdraw from cabin crew who went on strike. I can't remember if they did though. Yes they did.
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Post by 21146 on Sept 7, 2010 17:37:54 GMT
I think BA were planning/threatening to permanently withdraw from cabin crew who went on strike. I can't remember if they did though. Yes they did. Indeed, and they appear to now be in dispute for being in dispute! (i.e. striking about the consequence of going on strike in the first place.)
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mrfs42
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Post by mrfs42 on Sept 7, 2010 17:50:12 GMT
Oyster can only keep data with regards to Staff/Nominee passes for a maximum of 8 weeks before it is purged. Hmm. Local DRAM storage or remote data holding?
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Post by rincew1nd on Sept 7, 2010 19:13:56 GMT
BBC News has a video about the strike. Of particular interest are the shots inside an "antiquated Control Room". {Watches over and over to try and figure out where it is} {Fails, after going gooey over the shot down the frame at 1:55)
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Post by mrfs42 on Sept 7, 2010 21:08:45 GMT
BBC News has a video about the strike. Of particular interest are the shots inside an "antiquated Control Room". {Watches over and over to try and figure out where it is} {Fails, after going gooey over the shot down the frame at 1:55) With the pushbutton on lever 1 I say it's Edgware Road.
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Post by memorex on Sept 7, 2010 21:32:40 GMT
With the pushbutton on lever 1 I say it's Edgware Road. Certainly is.
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Post by railtechnician on Sept 7, 2010 21:42:19 GMT
BBC News has a video about the strike. Of particular interest are the shots inside an "antiquated Control Room". {Watches over and over to try and figure out where it is} {Fails, after going gooey over the shot down the frame at 1:55) With the pushbutton on lever 1 I say it's Edgware Road. Yep I agree, I spotted it straight off even though I haven't been in it for 20 years but there are plenty of clues like Plats 2,3 & 4 to High St. Ken TD
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