Avanti tweet sparks ASLEF retort
PHILIP HAIGH considers the factors preventing progress in talks to end the rail disputes
Avanti West Coast has been accused of making false claims, after a Twitter spat between the operator and ASLEF General Secretary Mick Whelan.
The row was prompted by a message from AWC to passengers due to travel from July 31 onwards, which said: “Due to unofficial strike action by train drivers we are facing multiple short-notice cancellations on our network from tomorrow
… we urge them to engage in meaningful talks around modernising working practices and developing a railway fit for the 21st century.”
ASLEF spokesman Keith Richmond told RAIL: “There is no strike - official or unofficial - on AWC this week. The truth is that the company does not employ enough drivers to deliver the service it has promised passengers it will run. The company should stop lying and start recruiting.”
Defending its statement, AWC told RAIL: “This latest issue is not related to seven-day-a-week working. It’s purely to do with how a dramatic, overnight fall in drivers willing to work their midweek rest days is going to impact significantly on our ability to deliver our current level of service.
“This has been borne out by 40 cancellation sand 15 part cancellations today( August 1), roughly 20% of our scheduled Monday timetable.
“In the weeks until now, we have regularly seen around 200 services driven by drivers on rest days. This is something drivers like as it allows them to earn extra money.
“In the days following the result of the [strike] ballot, we’ve seen significant numbers call in to say they are no longer willing to work rest days, even from those who regularly work midweek rest days. As it stands, less than 25 services are allocated to drivers on rest day this week.
“The challenge from ASLEF that we need to employ more drivers is interesting. It takes 18 months to train a driver from scratch.”
AWC has just shy of 600 currently qualified drivers on its books, of which around 500 are deemed productive (regularly rostered for driving). To operate its current midweek timetable, AWC requires 196 driver turns.
Restarting driving training and carrying out driver assessment as a result of COVID has been difficult, due to restrictions on the number of people allowed in cabs and social distancing.
IF you’re fighting a fire, it’s best not to pour fuel onto it.
Whether Avanti West Coast meant to or not, a Tweet on Sunday July 31 poured fuel onto the flames of its dispute with train drivers.
“Due to unofficial strike action by train drivers, we are expecting multiple short-notice cancellations until further notice,” it said on Twitter.
Secretary of State for Transport Grant Shapps then waded in with a jerrycan of four-star: “UNOFFICIAL STRIKES: Passengers using Avanti West services should expect disruption today. Archaic rules from 1919 mean working on rest days is voluntary. Unions now stopping drivers volunteering - causing misery for public & staff who won’t get paid. We MUST modernise rail.”
In common with many train operators, Sundays are not part of the working week at Avanti West Coast. More recent employment contracts call on drivers to work some Sundays in a year, but if a driver is not rostered then she or he does not have to work. Some may volunteer to work, but not volunteering is not unofficial strike action.
Sundays are not rest days, but Shapps was right that working on rest days is also voluntary. The practical effect of Sundays not being part of the working week is that train operators cannot be sure they will have sufficient drivers to run the timetable. They rely on volunteers - and when they don’t have enough, then cancellations follow.
It’s no way to run a railway. Any business that relies on overtime to deliver its core product is surely flawed. Changing this is one way in which rail could be modernised, so Shapps is again right. But he’s right for the wrong reasons.
One way to modernise would be treat Sundays in the same way as the week’s other six days. Drivers’ union ASLEF supports this. It would very likely need more drivers not only to properly roster Sundays, but also to cover gaps on Mondays to Saturdays that rely on drivers volunteering to work rest days.
This might reduce the opportunities to work overtime and be paid extra for it, which is one reason why rail companies and unions have so far tolerated this situation. Both sides know their employees and members like the opportunity. In addition, for employers, it’s usually cheaper to pay the overtime than recruit, train and pay extra staff.
Avanti West Coast told me that its July 31 Tweet didn’t relate to Sunday working, but instead was about delivering its MondayFriday timetable.
It justified this by saying that on Monday August 1, it cancelled around one-in-five trains for lack of drivers. As I understand the situation, where Avanti once had more than 200 trains per week covered by its overtime arrangement, this has suddenly dropped to fewer than 20 following the results of the strikes ballots from ASLEF. (For context, it plans around 245 trains on a weekday, 175 on a Saturday, and 150 on a Sunday.)
There’s little difference in effect between a union encouraging staff not to volunteer and many staff individually deciding not to work their days off. Except that the former is illegal unofficial action, and the latter is merely individuals making a decision (albeit in large numbers). Avanti may think it’s the victim of the former, but the union will say it’s the latter.
The latest proposal from the Rail Delivery Group is to contractualise the overtime that Sunday working represents. This would put drivers onto contracts in which they had to work some Sundays (the precise number to be agreed), which would then be paid as overtime. This (argues RDG) gives more certainty to train operators planning Sunday timetables, but also gives drivers the chance to earn overtime.
I’m not convinced it doesn’t also lead to train operating companies (TOCs) needing to employ more drivers, so it has cost implications just as ASLEF’s proposal has. So, it seems unlikely to be the sort of modernisation that frees money to be channelled into a pay rise.
Which leads neatly into ASLEF’s official strike action where drivers walked out at several operators on Saturday July 30.
Talks between RDG and ASLEF have not started. I’ve talked to both sides, and I detect frustration on both sides.
RDG told me: “Conversations with RMT and TSSA [the two other unions] are bloody difficult and progress might be at a snail’s pace, but we haven’t been able to do that with ASLEF.”
ASLEF’s response was short and rather Anglo-Saxon. Let’s just say the union vehemently disagrees and says there haven’t been any meetings organised for it to turn up to.
If both sides are waiting for the other to send an invitation, we may be waiting some time. But when they do meet, I fear they will be at cross purposes.
ASLEF is clear that it wants to talk about pay - specifically, a rise to counter the effect of high inflation. Employers in RDG want to talk about how modernisation can free money to give as a pay rise. ASLEF will only talk about
“This stalemate favours no one, least of all passengers. If rail is to prosper, the protagonists in this dispute must find an answer. Until they do, the railway has little chance of fixing the bigger problem hanging over it - the growing age profile of its drivers.”
modernisation when it’s agreed a pay deal. Shades of chicken and egg.
There may be a deal to be done over modernisation, but ASLEF will not deliver this for nothing. And it will not begin to talk until its inflation pay deal is agreed, noting that it recently settled with ScotRail for 5%.
Although ASLEF argues that employers have formally tabled no pay offer, the union acknowledges the general thought of 2% as the likely limit to which train operators can go without further reference to Shapps and the Department for Transport.
So, if the DfT is serious about workforce reform, it will need to get over the pay problem before ASLEF will talk. And ASLEF already has some ideas that could reduce the overall bill for drivers.
One could be amalgamating into a single pool the drivers from multiple TOCs who drive over the same routes. That could mean drivers based in Euston driving either Class 390s for Avanti West Coast or Class 350s for West Midlands Trains along the West Coast Main Line to Birmingham. Or the amalgamation of Southern and Thameslink’s drivers on the London-Brighton line.
Of course, pay would likely be levelled up rather than down, but there could still be overall savings for Great British Railways.
Yet in pay talks, ASLEF does not have RMT’s advantage in representing staff at the lower end of pay scales. Drivers are well paid and have seen that pay increase above inflation over the last decade, argues RDG.
ASLEF says this is the result of its willingness to modernise since privatisation. “We’ve agreed a lot of modernisation, but they’ve done nothing with it,” said one ASLEF insider about the employers.
There are some among the train operators who think drivers have little to complain about in terms of pay. I’ve heard others suggest that the action by RMT and TSSA has painted ASLEF into a corner and left its members at risk of appearing silent in the wider dispute about pay and conditions.
I don’t entirely buy that argument. Yes, drivers have done well in pay since privatisation, but they were never going to stand silent amid rampant inflation. Whether we see more strikes from drivers is open to question. I don’t sense the union rushing towards announcing more dates, but I see little fear of adverse consequences from more action.
Nor do I see any pressure on ministers. When the Scottish government settled the dispute with ScotRail’s guards last autumn, it did so with the COP26 climate change conference hanging over it. This raised the prospect of no trains running in Glasgow just as leaders from around the world gathered to talk about green transport, among other things.
There’s no equivalent for ministers in London. They can, if they choose, let this dispute run on and on, hoping the union side will blink first. ASLEF tells me its members are hardening their attitude, so I can’t see them blinking soon.
This stalemate favours no one, least of all passengers. If rail is to prosper, the protagonists in this dispute must find an answer. Until they do, the railway has little chance of fixing the bigger problem hanging over it - the growing age profile of its drivers.
The young lads (and they were mainly lads) that British Rail recruited in the 1980s are approaching retirement. So too are the drivers the private operators recruited in the 2000s, because they were older when they joined the footplate.
This gives operators, ministers and ASLEF every incentive to recruit, train and use drivers more effectively. Perhaps 5% is a fair price to start this important work? That is, if you don’t mind pouring more fuel onto the RMT and TSSA disputes…