rambo19:
Juddian:
Spot on Robroy.Note the difference between us and the train workers, they stuck together within their unions all these years, never allowed their jobs to be dumbed down, and now reap the benefits.
Thing is, maybe a young squaddy could be trained to drive a train to cover during a dispute (going by reports here of squaddies observing road fuel tanker deliveries), but if the signals/engineers/trackside staff staff won’t play ball the bloody train isn’t going anywhere.
All my life lorry drivers have been at each others throats, whether vying for the new lorry or undercutting or grassing or whatever, divided we are always ruled.
With train and tube drivers, they all work for the same company, IE, C2C, virgin, TFL, etc etc. And therefor have more power by sticking together.
I’m a london bus driver, there are about 10 different companies in london running the buses, therefor we have no real power when it comes to wages.
Sadly, it’s the whole point of privatisation.
They are not all the same company. They are separate privatized companies. C2c has nothing to do with TFL who has nothing to do with Virgin.
Talking of Virgin - it is on the higher end of the pay scale for train drivers. They will not usually take on trainee drivers externally these days if at all as they have plenty of qualified train drivers to choose from. Of those they can be choosy and pick those with a good safety record, and high speed experience (defined by Eurostar as driving trains at 90 mph or faster). So it’s quite difficult to get a job there. The usual average salary for a train driver is about 45k for a 35 hour week (and 35 hours includes all breaks). Sundays can be extra and often the 35 hours is done in 4 days.
You can’t train a squaddie to drive a train during a dispute. There is the issue of keeping up competency and route knowledge. It’s not like a truck where you can just get in and drive - which unfortunately rambo19 is why bus drivers pay is low in comparison. It takes just a few weeks to learn to drive a bus and the entrance tests are hardly challenging. At my depot it takes 9-12 months to be passed for driving and because we cover a lot of track miles up to another year to complete all route learning and become fully productive. Let’s not forget those entrance tests can only be failed once. A second fail is a life ban.
DCPC - I forked out my own money to pay for this so I can carry on driving coaches. I haven’t had a pay rise there in the last 8 years. £60 for a shift that can start at 7am and end after 8pm (but only 6 hours of that is driving). My boss will now deduct wages for people who damage the vehicle or fail to clean it properly. I can’t see anything changing soon.