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Lofty132 posted:It's strange, the area I work in has few female Traincrew members but then the company tends to aim for older women with established families when taking on since the amount of times their generous maternity schemes have burned them is unreal. If a member of Traincrew becomes pregnant for my company they are to be taken off their duties immediately (since a member of staff once alleged she lost her baby due to falling on a train that jerked suddenly). She is to be placed in a role like booking office if possible but if not possible she just has to sit in the mess room doing nothing because not all depots are run by the same company. They also have to provide the pregnant employee with a bed in a private area. They then get a year full paid maternity and all their holidays taken upon resuming to work. Yeah drat those pesky women getting pregnant and taking advantage of their employers and legal rights. Also lol did your autocorrect change 'men' to 'meme'
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Dec 30, 2013 01:25
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Apparently so. I'm all for their legal rights but to put things in perspective, earlier this year we had three drivers on long term sick at my depot. It was train cancellation central since my company has no overtime agreement for drivers. So from their perspective do they want a 50/50 male female workforce of varied ages, given that in that scenario there lies a chance that a significant percentage of drivers could be off for a year at a time, at the same time? Of course not.
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Dec 30, 2013 01:55
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Lofty132 posted:since my company has no overtime agreement for drivers. i'm seeing an obvious solution here. that doesn't require institutional sexism.
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Dec 30, 2013 02:03
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Yeah they've been arguing with ASLEF about that for about five years ever since they took it off them. Even with conductors though it only takes a couple of people missing long term and cancellations start racking up, despite overtime being available. Say there are 10 Saturday shifts that need covering at the depot for conductors. The first person to apply for daily leave is granted regardless of whether there is cover or not. In addition there are usually two people on booked annual leave weeks (these are given in advance, you get told when your holidays are you don't get to pick. You can swap if you're lucky enough to find someone willing). So that's three people off already. Let's say there's someone on the sick too since it's not unusual. Now in the interests of equality we have two female conductors in the 21-35 age bracket who are both pregnant, by chance within months of each other. Everyone on leave, sick or pregnant today is on the same shift pattern (this has happened before). So out of the ten shifts we need to cover six are now uncovered. Say we can cover two with spare conductors, cross cover another shift from a different depot that signs he same routes and we need to find three more. There are some diehards who will come in to work any shift for overtime but they may already be in work, or have commitments anyway (it's a Saturday after all). Any roster clerk will tell you that covering that many shifts on a Saturday with overtime is a big ask. I personally refuse to work Saturdays because as our shift pattern stands, working a Saturday for overtime means I end up working five in a row. There is no good shift to catch on a Saturday. Late night and you will more than likely have to liaise with the BTP, afternoon and it's hordes of children misbehaving, I decided to stop working Saturdays when I realised I could have the day off instead of arguing with a stag do at 10am. I'm not saying that it's right, I'm not saying that I'm opposed to the idea, I'm just trying to shed some light on how the railway works in the context of the situation. There is already a lead swinging culture amongst people who have been on the railway a while, which exacerbates things to the detriment of everyone else. It's also widely acknowledged in our area that late night trains are getting a lot worse for violence: we've gone from no police on trains to police regularly travelling on late trains to police officers getting hospitalised whilst attempting to police said trains. Which is another reason why I'm not the only person unwilling to work overtime at weekends. If there is a workable solution to get more women into the workplace in the railway, that's great. Just don't moan if you see even more rail replacement buses than usual due to 'a member of train crew being unavailable'.
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Dec 30, 2013 02:24
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I don't see how they can't plan around those absences when they already have the mandate to plan around yearly vacation days far in excess of what most Americans ever get. Especially since women rarely get pregnant more than twice in their lives in western societies, and many don't ever.
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Dec 30, 2013 02:29
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You'd think that but there's a train that was basically cancelled everyday for 12 weeks straight due to 'no driver' this summer. Edit: another issue is holiday entitlement. In our previous scenario I mentioned that the employee first in the queue for that holiday would be granted that holiday unconditionally. Anyone after that is marked with their position (2nd, 3rd etc) and 'subject to traffic' which essentially means if everything is looking rosy beforehand you will find out if you got that holiday about 48 hours before the actual date, handy if you've booked a hotel/gig tickets etc. Earlier in the year due to illness and people being unwilling to work overtime I actually applied for 6 different Saturdays between March - May and was denied all of them despite being 2nd, due to the fact there was a struggle for cover. As you can imagine, this can lead to increased 'sickness' levels amongst employees of a certain nature. Bacon Terrorist fucked around with this message at 02:53 on Dec 30, 2013 |
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Dec 30, 2013 02:45
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Sorry, I went America-centric there for a minute and forgot train services in the UK are for-profit and thus shouldn't really be in the business.
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Dec 30, 2013 02:50
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Lofty132 posted:Say there are 10 Saturday shifts that need covering at the depot for conductors. The first person to apply for daily leave is granted regardless of whether there is cover or not. In addition there are usually two people on booked annual leave weeks (these are given in advance, you get told when your holidays are you don't get to pick. You can swap if you're lucky enough to find someone willing). So that's three people off already. Let's say there's someone on the sick too since it's not unusual. SO you have 10 shifts, with 10 people, and normally 3 are away. this is not sane staffing. sane staffing would be "We have 10 shifts to cover, and normally 3 people out, so we need 13 staff not 10". I see this type of thing all the time where people will allocate staffing positions then try and fit the work into them, instead of letting the workload drive the number of positions.
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Dec 30, 2013 03:58
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Lofty132 posted:Yeah they've been arguing with ASLEF about that for about five years ever since they took it off them. Yeah you're right best not hire a few extra workers to cover shifts or anything let's just sack off everyone working on the railway with a vagina, that's a much more workable solution.
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Dec 30, 2013 04:39
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Of course not but the last young woman who worked at our depot had three kids in five years then retired to focus on her cake baking business she did from home. Let's estimate for arguments sake she worked 18 months out of the five years after her maternity and sick pay. That means she was paid a total pre-tax salary of £115,000 for her tenure, or £6390 per month of actual work she did. She is an extreme example but that's what happened and it seems they have been careful since.
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Dec 30, 2013 05:15
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I know a bloke who said he had the flu but he went to watch the Arsenal game because his mate got tickets. That's the risk you take when you hire men, unfortunately.
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Dec 30, 2013 05:20
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Lofty132 posted:Of course not but the last young woman who worked at our depot had three kids in five years then retired to focus on her cake baking business she did from home. Let's estimate for arguments sake she worked 18 months out of the five years after her maternity and sick pay. That means she was paid a total pre-tax salary of £115,000 for her tenure, or £6390 per month of actual work she did. She is an extreme example but that's what happened and it seems they have been careful since. Hey, you're one reason why the workplace is so loving poo poo for women.
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Dec 30, 2013 06:15
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Why's that? She fully acknowledged what she was doing. There's a guy who's a train driver we have estimated has worked less than 2 years on and off in the last six due to various 'ailments' and manipulation of the company's generous 6 months full sick pay allowance. I have just started work again after a serious back injury, I know my colleagues will have been slating me when they have caught my lovely shifts over Christmas because that's the nature of the beast. You see you are spare, you look to see what shift you have caught and see who's shift it was supposed to be. If you're in an unfortunate position in the shift pattern you can end up essentially catching all of one person's shifts when you are spare. I don't have a problem with young women on the railway, I have said this already. I've given real life examples of what has happened and why I think that railway companies are perhaps cautious when taking on young female train crew. There are more young female railway staff working in booking offices and on platforms. Again I can only speculate that it may be easier to cover a woman on maternity leave in those positions with secondment or a temporary vacancy: this is impossible for Traincrew. It takes two years to fully train a driver and around six months to fully train a conductor. In addition to this your shift position cannot be taken from you as it essentially your job line. People can cover your shifts but no one can assume your entire line of work.
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Dec 30, 2013 07:15
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I work in a profession that is over 97% female, where most staff are typically 25-45 years old. As a result, there are always people on maternity leave. Here's the thing, though: they try to work space into the budget to account for this so that they can hire temporary staff as cover.
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Dec 30, 2013 08:05
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Do you think ASLEF and RMT will allow temporary cover of their member's jobs?
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Dec 30, 2013 09:41
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Lofty132 posted:Why's that? Yeah, some of us believe that the purpose of companies existing and exploiting labour isn't only to produce a product and turn a profit, but also to treat said labour in a humane fashion, and it just happens that a segment of the population can get pregnant and that companies should take that into account, even if it means those employees getting "unfair" attention and benefits. Certain things you stated might be a good argument for the position "specific industry regulations for maternity leave are badly designed", but you also used those things to moan about the women in question. That's why you're a shithead. (Also, maybe one woman somewhere abused the system. 1) That's an anecdote 2) Suppose you actually put in the effort to get to actual data, for every pound "wasted on fraud" there will be so many pounds used to make life better for so many other people).
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Dec 30, 2013 11:44
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Lofty132 posted:If a member of Traincrew becomes pregnant for my company they are to be taken off their duties immediately (since a member of staff once alleged she lost her baby due to falling on a train that jerked suddenly). Our union (TSSA) newsletter had an article a while back about Spanish staff fighting for and winning maternity rights just like these. The reason they did it was because the miscarriage rate among train staff who worked through pregnancy was something like 30%. I think. I read it a while ago.
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Dec 30, 2013 13:29
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That's a good thing of course, I'm not debating that. Looking back at the article I don't really know how the industry is supposed to make the shift work 'flexible and part-time' so that the 'high skilled high paid jobs' are more accessible since a large part of the reason the wages and conditions are good is down to the job being anti-social hours and long shifts. 40 hours in 4 days of 4am starts is par for the course.
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Dec 30, 2013 15:47
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Not about railways specifically but something that would affect them: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-25549789 Benefits to trains I assume are less snow on the line and less heat from the sun (on the SWML in summer tracks getting so hot that they had to slow some services down).
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Dec 30, 2013 19:47
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I think it's a good fit for this thread because, like most railway projects, it's hundreds of millions more of public money being spent on benefitting London.
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Dec 30, 2013 19:54
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Is it? I couldn't see any information about who's funding it and even if it'll be built (my guess: it won't) in that article.
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Dec 30, 2013 19:59
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Hmm good point. Maybe this £200 million transport infrastructure would be paid for entirely by the private sector. Lets wait and see.
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Dec 30, 2013 20:05
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Pissflaps posted:Hmm good point. Maybe this £200 million transport infrastructure would be paid for entirely by the private sector. Lets wait and see. Total cost is £8 billion for the full 219km, £200 million is for the 6.5km that would be the first phase. I assume you're joking about private money?
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Dec 30, 2013 20:53
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Lofty132 posted:Do you think ASLEF and RMT will allow temporary cover of their member's jobs? Why wouldn't they? The member's job is kept safe until they return.
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Dec 30, 2013 21:01
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Again, in America the relevant unions to rail transit operations explicitly have it in their contracts that temporary cover for things like maternity leave are ok with them and mandatory. I've no idea why the British rail unions would oppose that.
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Dec 30, 2013 21:08
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legally they'd have no leg to stand on trying to oppose maternity cover. this seems like nonsense out of a unions-as-bogeymen fox news pamphlet. also, that cycle thing is laughable and not going to happen.
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Dec 30, 2013 21:19
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Metrication posted:Total cost is £8 billion for the full 219km, £200 million is for the 6.5km that would be the first phase. I assume you're joking about private money? Nothing gets past you does it.
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Dec 30, 2013 21:37
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Install Windows posted:Again, in America the relevant unions to rail transit operations explicitly have it in their contracts that temporary cover for things like maternity leave are ok with them and mandatory. I've no idea why the British rail unions would oppose that. People think that RMT and ASLEF would strike because Bob Crow couldn't get any Coco Pops at the corner shop.
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Dec 30, 2013 21:45
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Install Windows posted:Again, in America the relevant unions to rail transit operations explicitly have it in their contracts that temporary cover for things like maternity leave are ok with them and mandatory. I've no idea why the British rail unions would oppose that. I don't know about the US, I thought they actually had more stringent qualifications when it came to being a 'rail engineer' and conductor. There's generally not a pool of qualified train drivers hanging around waiting for a temporary contract, they are either in work or have been fired for one of the many hilarious reasons I have witnessed since joining the industry, such as masturbating whilst driving, being a secret arsonist, watching porn on a tablet whilst driving etc. Even if there was a pool of qualified train drivers who could temp, they would still need to be passed out on the relevant routes by getting so many hours driving in with an instructor before being able to drive services solo. I'm not saying it's impossible, just in my experience the people who have qualified and are not driving have been sacked for good reason.
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Dec 30, 2013 22:58
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Was anyone elses anorak inflamed by the ludicrous train inaccuracies in the latest episode of Sherlock, by the way? Worse than that loving Call of Duty game.
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Jan 3, 2014 15:57
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No (yes) but the only places you can shoot on the tube using trains are Charing Cross Jubilee Line, the W&C on Sundays and Aldwych, otherwise you end up with the shot at ~1hr in where they're actually in Westminster station, and there's a load of the public staring at the tv crew. A modern TV production doesn't really have the budget to build a station or fake trains so they have to bend to the will of the LU Film Office. Also annoyingly they don't have any SSL rolling stock and track that's easy to use. This doesn't excuse bloody Skyfall though because they do have the money.. e: or if you've got loadsamoney you can indeed piss people off http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/london/6075206.stm Rude Dude With Tude fucked around with this message at 16:31 on Jan 3, 2014 |
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Jan 3, 2014 16:24
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just the stupidity of nobody noticing the train car disapear. that's as bad as the magic flyers in Ocean's 11. geographical details being incorrect for convenience is just amsuing trivia that affects even the best production. it only becomes an issue if it's contradictory within it's own universe, or does try to rely on real life knowledge at other times. technical details don't matter any more than the medical details in Casualty, since this is all for the layman. although this guardian article seems to think they could afford to make their own fake train for the final scenes. http://www.theguardian.com/media/2014/jan/03/sherlock-twitter-the-empty-hearse-tube-london-underground
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Jan 3, 2014 16:49
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Yes, but I try not to think about it. Even ignoring the wrong rolling stock issue they always have (these basics you can usually ignore cos budgets etc), the glaring errors caused my brain to go into meltdown. I'd not been this mad about a piece of train trivia since they claimed on the studio tour that the Hogwarts Express was built in Crewe, when it is clearly a GWR Hall class 
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Jan 3, 2014 16:50
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Cerv posted:although this guardian article seems to think they could afford to make their own fake train for the final scenes. http://www.theguardian.com/media/2014/jan/03/sherlock-twitter-the-empty-hearse-tube-london-underground
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Jan 3, 2014 17:01
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Bozza posted:Yes, but I try not to think about it. Even ignoring the wrong rolling stock issue they always have (these basics you can usually ignore cos budgets etc), the glaring errors caused my brain to go into meltdown. It was more the fact that the mistakes were just ones that could be fixed in the script, not the shooting - why make a point of the train being a District Line one instead of just saying it's a Jubilee Line one, which also calls into Westminster and has loads of weird little side tunnels because of the JLX work, and would then match up with the CCTV footage (and the fact they'd have to shoot at Aldwych like everyone else). Then the last bit where they got into a tube train front door and walked into a subsurface carriage just broke my sperg-sense altogether. It's like all the mistakes they make with London geography, they seem to actually go out of the way to get things wrong, which in a show that's supposed to be about all the tiny details is just maddening.
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Jan 3, 2014 17:11
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I actually wondered for a moment if the inaccuracies were deliberate - after all, the episode had other moments set up to gently mock its more obsessive fans, as well as a scene where someone who apparently knows everything about the underground has overlooked a crucial detail.
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Jan 3, 2014 19:30
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I don't get it, are those end doors usually locked all the time?
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Jan 3, 2014 19:31
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I like the idea that the driver's supervisors would be totally fine with the train being randomly delayed, particularly when the fitters tell them that he's lost an entire carriage. Also, is a guy who takes security tapes home to wipe them an actual thing anywhere?
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Jan 3, 2014 20:36
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The engineering work recently along the Lea Valley lines, which is (as far as I know) total track renewal moving northwards, has got me wondering. Any chance someone in the know can do an effortpost on track laying/renewal processes and so forth?
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Jan 6, 2014 21:02
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Jonnty posted:Also, is a guy who takes security tapes home to wipe them an actual thing anywhere? I'm not sure about the system the underground uses but all of the modern CCTV I have come across have Digital Video Recorders that automatically overwrites old footage on a rolling basis
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Jan 7, 2014 14:32
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