Yes, more staff do want time off over Christmas - no surprises there (and for the record that doesn't impact on my belief you could easily get enough volunteers for a skeleton Boxing Day if you paid a descent amount!). The rostering should be robust enough to deal with that as there are only a certain number of drivers (or TM‡'s) allowed to be off on a given day. For example, just this week it looks like over 20 days of holiday requests have been declined at Oxford drivers depot alone!
But a huge backlog of route and traction knowledge amongst established staff, and a large number of vacancies still to be filled is causing even more problems than it would normally do. The fault for that lies squarely at FGW▸ 's door.
Sounds to me like 6 of one and half dozen of the other - to an extent the tail is wagging the dog, in most situations the starting point is "we need to have enough staff to maintain the service" before any A/L is considered, but if there are not enough staff with the necessary skills to start with without relying on people giving up rest days then that becomes tricky.......agreed though, money talks, but again it comes down to having the right people available, not just lots of bodies....both sides probably need to consider their positions to find a solution....suspect staff will cling onto their "right" to have Xmas day/Boxing day off as of right however that's not sustainable in the longer term if the politicians/public demand a Boxing Day service (which they already are) and Xmas engineering possessions become less of an issue........sometime around 2100 then?
At each depot establishments are calculated by adding in the service that needs covering + spare coverage + standby coverage + annual leave requirement and then rounded up.
Annual leave is a red herring, as a minimum number allowed off is agreed and built as part of the link (usually 15% at any one time). I don't know any service/catering/retail industry that would say "oh sorry we cannot cover xyz so your annual leave is cancelled". Extra leave will of course be granted but only if the service is covered.
Of course if there are vacancies in the link and not enough overtime volunteers or training hasn't happened for route/traction then you start getting uncovered turns. Then add the fact that more people are sick this time of year (genuinely) and no doubt the odd extra case that may not be genuine (a problem that is faced by all service industries in the winter/xmas time), and you have problems. Apart from the odd case who may not be genuinely sick, those problems are not caused by operational staff, but the recruitment policies and higher management off them.
You have drivers who are moving from West &
LTV▸ depots to
HSS▸ to allow a full service to run on HSS while
IEP▸ training happens, and there is a massive recruitment programme going on across all depots and business areas for the long-term, but training drivers takes approximately a year if not longer, and whether you like or not, the current running of the railway means decisions will be made with money in mind from both a FGW (business/profit view) and a
DfT» /taxpayer view (deficit reduction anyone?)
Ultimately though, if depots were fully trained on traction/routes required and all vacancies fully filled then you wouldn't see this problem.
