Gants Hill Station closed due to vandalism

Would this be cost-effective? Surely the Infracos would cane this for all it's worth?

Employees for it?? Working Christmas day ??

I done it HB, and the bank manager is very happy, happy as a bunny in fact.

An absolutely 100% correct point of view IMHO with which I fully concur although I have a slightly different perspective.

I am puzzled by the references to double time and double time + day in lieu which is what the rate for Christmas day used to be as under devolution in the early 1990s all overtime rates were reduced to the single rate of time and a quarter and no days in lieu. The rail industry was definitely not 'overpaid' as suggested in other comments in this thread, indeed my recollection was of no effective pay increases for 10 years following devolution as the increases, such as they were, never matched the previous year's inflation until 2002 despite the official figures.
Also under devolution all statutory bank holidays were withdrawn and added to annual leave such that an annual leave request had to be made in order to take one with no certainty of being awarded it. On that basis even though LUL was officially closed on Christmas Day if it fell during my normal rostered working week I always insisted upon working it even though the railway and the building I worked from were closed and padlocked. I would never allow management to get away with 'giving' me a day off and then expecting me to work one of my rest days to make up for it as management expected. Thus for the last few Christmas Days of my working career at LUL 'I covered my post' from home for normal rostered pay.
For anyone who doesn't get it, company policy when I joined LTE as it was in the 1970s was that statutory holidays 'must be taken' unless rostered to work them for the going rate (only Xmas day and Good Friday paid double time and a day in lieu) or invited to work overtime. Devolution effectively reversed this policy and I wouldn't let management have it both ways! I recall when I was a supervisor a near riot erupting in the early 1990s when an engineering manager attempted to cancel the normal arrangements for more than 100 night staff working Maundy Thursday into Good Friday because he was looking to trim his budget extravagences, I quickly put him right as I had about one third of the affected staff and he had to trim the management perks instead of the workforce bread and butter. Basically he had expected staff to book off at 0630 even though by custom and practice staff were always paid until 0800, they would of course otherwise have been 'trespassing' for at least an hour awaiting the first train!

What I meant is that the Infracos are not required to support a service on Xmas Day so could effectively quote LU whatever they wanted to supply depot, engineering, signal staff etc in order to run a service (unlike the occasional period of 24-hr running which is written into the PPP contracts).

On the other hand, for LU's own operational staff, Dec 25 is just another working day, albeit one where, if you're not rostered RD, you're 'forced' to take/lose a day's Annual Leave. So in theory LU *could* make, say, station and duty manager grades work over this time for 'security' purposes, but for no extra money (unless on O/T which would be on the normal O/T rate. Clearly it would not be worth bringing in train grades but certainly, staff at SCC's might be expected to observe long-line CCTV for signs of trespassers/vandals (q.v.).

This actually raised its head in two ways at the end of 2008. Firstly with the week-long blockade on the Jubilee Line, T/Ops were required to run test trains of 96TS, including on Dec 25. Rumours circulated that Tube Lines, or Alsthom, or whoever; were going to pay their staff around £4000 for four days' work and needless to say the T/Ops began to expect something similar (optimists!). So did the SCC and DMT grades that would also have to volunteer to support this operation, but it later emerged that only the standard O/T rate would be paid on Dec 25.

Once this became clear I understand most or all of the Jubilee T/Ops declined to participate, and LU had to get Metronet Test Train T/Ops in to cover instead. Given the SCC and DMT situation I still wonder just how much of the intended test running was done on Christmas Day?

Similarly, volunteers were sought to observe CCTV remotely for 'security' on Xmas Day. Again, the idea of getting standard O/T only and no day in lieu was just thought laughable by most operational staff and LU were hardly stampeded with applications. (A 'Training Specialist' from Ashfield House did come forward but they were reduced to drafting in PCSOs from the BTP!)

My part of Service Control is staffed 24/7, 365 days a year and there is no extra money for working Xmas Day, nor is it staffed by volunteers, its rostered, compulsory. I sometimes laugh at the belief often held outside of LU that there is vast army of non-Christians in the workforce who would be willing to work on Dec 25. Believe, even in this secular age, there isn't!

LU *is* still a good employer, witness the sorry tales of the hoops people have to jump through on application which we read so often on this forum and which probably hardly any of us that joined before the mid-90s would ever pass. But there are still aspects which are positively Victorian. (E.G. working until say 7am on nights yet having the 0000-0700 period deemed a 'RD', so you can be required to come back to work the following morning - yet at the same time ever hectoring people about their lifestyle and how it might affect performance - eating habits, sleep, alcohol, drugs (incl. prescription). Fatigue is a bad thing, but not if LU's rostering parameters are the cause it seems?