Staff displacement - Ongoing dispute

It's not between depots, they want to displace them to other lines, mainly Leytonstone drivers being sent to Earls Court.

A few from White City have already been displaced to Queens Park but as that was seen as "just up the road", it was gotten away with.

Some poor soul managed to get a transfer from Earls Court to Barking to be closer to home even though they lived in Leyton. Happily an opportunity to move to Leytonstone arrived and they jumped at the chance.
Guess where this poor soul is going?
Thats right. Back to Earls Court!

Auxsetreq Blog has a go at explaining the dispute, be warned his blog has some rude words.

love the new service map on the TFL site far better than anything that has been produced before

The whole TfL has felt soulless for me since the Olympics. It's taken on the character of an insane sociopath, egotistical, like a multi national corporation hungry for conquest

Auxsetreq and aslefshrugged are either two separate people or one person with multiple, very distinct personalities!

No not me.

And of course rather than try to negotiate better relocation terms or alternatives, like millions of other workers (as opposed to ridiculously highly-paid shirkers) the pathetic union reaction is as always to throw all their toys out of the pram, inconvenience thousands of people trying to go about their daily business, cause huge risk of injury and death through overcrowding, and blame all this on management. Hypocrisy and cant.

Highly-paid shirkers???....you mean the city guys and gals hanging out the pubs when they should be in their offices, earning ridiculous amounts of money whilst holding entire economies to ransom in order to retain extortionate bonuses, whilst national funds are used to bail out their excesses.
Just to add, how do you negotiate better relocation terms or alternatives when the management team didn't even show, they sat in different room at acas, you can't negotiate with 4 walls and a door with a window, but I'm sure the ES will twist and spin it. Can't remember the last time there was a death through overcrowding. Yes, this is managements fault, and the unions, for creating these crazy agreements and the unions for accepting them without foreseeing effect. Hypocricy......we all live in glass houses 😉

Likely because only the west end depots will be open, so the entire line will be serviced from that end and drivers will need to get back to that end of the line for meals, etc. In normal service a west end driver could drive West Ruislip to Leytonstone, hand over that train to an east-end driver to take to Epping and driver the latter's train back to West Ruislip in time to finish. If there isn't an east-end driver to swap with the train will have to stay with the driver.
You also need to get the trains back to the west end of the line. Normally, while a train that started at West Ruislip is taking people from Loughton to Epping one that started at Epping is taking people from Greenford to West Ruislip. However today, the east end train wont be running so there would be big gap in the service - not a good idea in the central area. Leytonstone will have been chosen as the easternmost reversing point that allows a minimum safe and acceptable service to be run with only the west end depots.
If the west end drivers were striking but the east end ones not, then I imagine there would be a similar situation at the other end of the line with no service west of somewhere like North Acton (and maybe no service on the north side of the loop to get a couple more trains and drivers in the central area).

No, I most certainly am not Auxsetreq.

Not quite, a typical duty is made up of two halves, you drive a train until you get off for your meal break - which can be at any of the five depots - and then after you drive another train until you finish.  On Saturdays and Sundays we can have "step backs" where you get off one train, hang around for a bit and then pick up another

We used to have a really silly duty on WTT67, you'd start the first half at Leytonstone, pick up on the westbound, go to West Ruislip, get off and travel down to White City for your meal break.  You were relieved at West Ruislip by a Loughton driver who'd had their meal break at White City then travelled up to West Ruislip, if you were lucky and they were in a generous mood they'd meet you at White City on the westbound, take the train off you and you'd get a bit extra on your meal break.

The three east end depots have about two thirds of the drivers, they just won't have enough from the west end to cover beyond Leytonstone without seriously reducing the frequency in the middle.

Central Line Twitter said that the bus would call at Epping-Debden-Loughton-Chingford, one bus every 15 minutes, but no replacement buses anywhere else

The Waterloo & City closed at 10am

I have been down to Loughton station this morning off peak to see what's happening.
1. Several trains running through - I saw 3 in 10 minutes, in both directions. If they are running they should be in passenger service, no matter if irregular.
2. Buses appearing erratically at Stop A, inadequately labelled. ("Extra" does not help as a blind) No LU staff at the bus stops to help passengers. None in the ticket hall, with passengers going into the barber shop to ask advice. Probably too cold to expect any customer assistance. Not clear if Debden being served (one driver saying definitely it wasn't, as the Debden area was "gummed up").
3. RRP buses taking unorthodox routes. One seen using Forest Rd/Earls Path in Loughton!

Badly, badly done, LU!