As you may know, there will be another round of strikes by the RMT and an overtime ban by ASLEF drivers.
The first round of strikes will not affect us in FH and HOP next Thursday and Friday, however from 3rd July we lose our London Bridge to Victoria services on Monday to Friday, only running on Saturdays.
They’re doing it out of concern for our safety I’m sure.
Thanks for the heads up.
Once again technology cannot come fast enough, then we can stop paying drivers excessive salaries just because they can abuse the commuting public!
How long is that for?
They refused £75,000 salaries. It MUST be the safety element. 
£75k? Fuck me!
Could you post a link please? I can only see an announcement about a strike on 10 July.
Thanks.
That is utterly appalling. I see that a commuter association has just gained the right to judicial review of the government’s handling of this.
I am no fan of unions. I worked in a closed shop where I was forced to hand over half my pay in union dues, and they did bugger all for us. However, at much as it would pain me to see them win over this clearly spurious safety argument, I’m so fed up with this I want Southern to drop this stupid war.
Yeh £75k but you have unsocial hours! My Daughter is training to be a nurse maybe she should be a train driver in fact I see a great bit of careers advice stuff degrees just drive a train.
Wish I was younger I took 20+ years to get anywhere near 50k but I didnt work weekends and always held the doors open for ladies.
I take your point about being conscious of partisanship in lobby groups more generally, but I don’t really care what their political sympathies are in this case. The government has completely failed in its handling of this franchise.
Whilst I don’t believe the safety argument for a second, there is absolutely no doubt that Southern are the cause of most of the problems here. Take the removal of the LB-Vic route - this isn’t down to a strike, but a work to rule policy. No rail franchise should be depending on overtime worked to function. If Southern was adequately staffing in the first place, the vast majority of union action here would have little teeth.
As Southern is part of a management contract where the Government pay GTR to operate the services, it’s perfectly correct for a lobby group to ask for a judicial review of how what is a taxpayer funded service is being operated or in the case of Southern, not at all.
There is blame on all sides IMHO, but I believe the strikes/overtime ban could have been resolved a lot more faster without the Department of Transport pulling GTR’s strings based on political ideology over Driver only operated trains.
This thread has gone from local issues to politics.
I think some of the commentary above is political but but most is not. It’s a topic of huge local interest, and there is potential for blame on all sides: government, unions, operators. Making comments in support of one or another is not, I think, a political stance.
I’m sure there are members who will take a different view than the one broadly expressed so far, and I’d welcome them having the opportunity to say state it.
In my opinion, if we keep specific party politics out of it, the discussion should remain here. Thoughts?
If it remains a topic of sharing information, I agree as it’s important for locals to see. However if it turns into a debate about government decisions, it should move.
That’s not really fair to those of us who chose not to become involved in the Politicos discussion page.
Criticism or support for government decisions based on party lines is inherently political (e.g. the lobby groups are Labour supporters therefore bad, the government is only supporting Southern because they are Tories etc.). But you can be a non-partisan or bi-partisan person politically and still comment on government policies or decisions when they are directly impacting the community - particularly when it’s such a big issue as this.
Some more info: http://www.standard.co.uk/news/transport/southern-drivers-reject-75000-pay-deal-and-reinstate-overtime-ban-a3568026.html
The headline is slightly different to the story - the union rejected a deal which would have given drivers a 23.8% pay increase (over 4 years) to work 35 hours a week, with an option to earn 25% more by working an extra day (thus getting to that headline 75k) because they feel that driver-only trains are unsafe. Arguably this is an example of a train company trying to push through a practice about which the experts on the ground - the drivers - have concerns, by buying those experts off in the shortish term.
Do we think that anything other than excoriation will follow if the RMT / ASLEF now accept the change only after a better pay deal?
[edited for clumsy phrasing]
Arguably this is an example of a train company trying to push through a practice about which the experts on the ground - the drivers - have concerns, by buying those experts off in the shortish term.
Arguably, the drivers have a vested interest and aren’t objective. I don’t accept that they are the experts on safety just because they happen to be there. That doesn’t mean they are qualified to say what the cause of accidents are. On the other side of the fence, I know the unions argue that the that the Rail Safety & Standards Board and Office of Rail Safety aren’t objective either, although I don’t know what the basis for this is.
I think it’s accurate to say that they have rejected the deal. Whether they have really rejected it because of genuine concerns about safety, whether this is tied to concerns about this paving the way to future structural changes which could result in drivers losing their jobs, or whether it is connected to a political motive, is a matter of speculation. There’s evidence to support all three hypotheses.
Thanks Joey_H good to get an inside perspective. My issue is I see driver only trains on Southern and wonder what the issue is. Oversimplified of course but I am sure I am not alone.
Doesn’t @Joey_H"s post address and largely answer that question? Not all lines, trains and stations are the same, even within one franchise.
ETA: Cross-posted with @Joey_H’s reply
Thanks @Joey_H for your detailed, expert and insightful reply.
I can’t quickly find a source, but hasn’t there also recently been a change in the law around responsibility being attributed to drivers personally in case of an accident happening on a train? This was cited as one of the factors against adoption of driver-operated only trains in a report I read a while back, I think.
I completely agree with you about the lies in the media, and it is always good to get an insider’s perspective.
However, I know someone in ASLEF who has said to me that there is more at stake here than conductors. A friend who is a non-driver at Southern has also suggested there’s another agenda going on other than safety (and, FWIW, this person is very supportive of the drivers and p**sed off with their employer). I can’t say much more without potentially outing them.
From all the research I’ve done and the people I’ve spoken to directly involved, I’ve never got the impression this was about pay. Southern appears to be using that as a way to get PR on their side (i.e. greedy drivers are holding us all to ransom for more money DM type headlines).
I recall that too. I looked into it at the time but couldn’t find any evidence to back it up.
Oh and as I have sounded awfully cryptic, the conversations and research I’ve done does make me doubt that this is entirely about current safety concerns, but not that this is just a politically motivated act of the Bring Down the Tories type. I’m not casting aspersions on the credibility of current drivers either - I’ve had enough experience of unions and enough friends who are heavily involved at a senior level to know that the rank and file are not always privy to the full strategy behind proposed industrial action.
That doesn’t sound like a change in the law. That sounds like a case under existing negligence laws that affect everyone.
Why did they prosecute him? Because DfT are trying to demonise guards and push forward their guard-free agenda.
Are you suggesting that the CPS is controlled by the Department for Transport to abuse the judicial process for political purposes? That’s quite an astonishing claim. Do you have any evidence to back that up?
It does very well, but many commuters don’t have a Joe_H to inform them nore a great resource like this site to show them.
I recently lost all sympathy for train guards. There was an issue on the line. He was completely unhelpful and useless. His only comment was “I have to wait for information from the driver.” when some little old ladies were asking for help to replan their journey or asking if they could use their ticket to travel on to central London he just refused to offer any solution.
If your job is just to relay information from the driver - your job is not justified. The arguments for “safety” are the same. Just like the guard waiting for information from the driver, all he will do is call the police. They don’t actually do anything.
Having said all that - all these disputes and strikes are just caused by the comical set up of our railways. We are just pawns in a political game.
We should all just be thankful we live on a Metro route which means far less chance of cancellations and disruption 
I’m sorry, I’m really concerned about the lack of an “…until” date. Is this for the foreseeable future after 3rd July? I’m so, so sick of this.
Thanks for the insight @Joey_H.
This report has only recently been made public but delves into great detail re the issues at Southern:
