ASLEF and West Coast: where did it all go wrong?
Relations between ASLEF and newly appointed operator Virgin Rail Group in 1997 were a far cry from the current situation (writes Mel Holley).
Virgin Rail CEO Brian Barrett signed a deal with ASLEF General Secretary Lew Adams to create a 50:50 venture, Millennium Drivers Ltd, with training centres at Glasgow Polmadie, Crewe and London with a combined capacity of 100 training places, including new tilting driving cab simulators.
The 18-month courses were designed to recruit 2,000 drivers over seven years. Virgin and ASLEF agreed to ‘act now’ to head off a driver shortage, due to the planned increase in services and the forthcoming retirement of hundreds of drivers, whose average age was 41-50.
They signed the deal on December 18 at Euston station, where Adams denied that he was ‘getting into bed’ with Virgin and that it did not compromise ASLEF’s ability to negotiate pay and conditions.
In 1998, Virgin Rail Group boss Richard Branson named 87022 Lew Adams The Black Prince - in a nod to his nickname ‘The Black Prince of Militancy’, given to him by the Daily Mail during the 1995 rail strike.
After being voted out of office in May 1998, to be replaced by leftwing candidate Mick Rix, Adams joined Virgin as a training manager.
Former BR General Manager Southern and Anglia Regions, Graham Eccles became Chief Operating Officer Rail with Stagecoach from 2001, as part of its joint venture with Virgin.
He told RAIL: “The mess that Avanti has got itself into over rest day working and rostered Sundays is about management (and the Department for Transport) not heeding the lessons of history.
“In BR days, when the system was cost-driven, driver establishments were either set too low or there was a deliberate and mutually agreed policy to enhance take-home pay without creating a pension liability, by using overtime. Everybody won.
“There was a downside. The service could only be covered by goodwill. Whenever there was a spat between ASLEF and management, the withdrawal of this goodwill created a stick with which to beat management.
Eccles says this was a major industrial relations flaw which passed to the new operators at privatisation. The railway became
revenue-driven to increase profitability, which was driven by (among other things) train service reliability and performance, day-in and day-out.
“The more far-sighted TOCs saw the need to negotiate away this trap and to employ their most valuable resource (train drivers) on a more professional basis. Conditions of employment were re-negotiated; the working week was changed to all seven days.
“Driver establishments were reset so that they could cover all the foreseeable needs, and commitments were made by management to recruit. Drivers got a significant pay rise, and their entire salary became pensionable.
“Everyone was happy. The drivers had better earnings for the same hours and a better pension, the TOCs that made these changes removed the industrial relations lever that threatened reliability, and the fares revenue began to flow in. The DfT saw its franchises gain value. ASLEF gained members.
“Not every TOC went that way. Some left drivers’ conditions largely alone, some tinkered with contracted Sundays, and the more foolish ones didn’t even bother to set realistic establishments and maintain the establishments they actually had.
“The wiser franchises had 15 years of peace with their drivers. Others (like London Midland)
were regularly in trouble over reliability. The secret was keeping the establishment under review and having a recruitment plan that kept the establishment full.
“I know (because I co-chaired Virgin Trains for six years) that their driver establishment was correct and that they had a robust recruitment plan. They could afford it, they were profitable. They had peace with ASLEF.
“Since COVID, it’s once more a cost-led railway. It would be unfortunate if Avanti/DfT had forgotten those lessons of the past, and had either neglected to set proper establishments or allowed a driver vacancy gap to arise.”