The "laid back" life of a 67k train driver

From the Daily Telegraph:

The ‘laid back’ life of a £67k train driver – and how it compares to other jobs

The academic requirements are minimal and the perks generous, so why are they paid so much more than nurses, army officers and teachers?

“Police detectives, school teachers, law graduates. I’ve seen them all applying to become train drivers because it’s an easier job for a much higher salary,” says ‘Dave’, an anonymous rail worker. “I know the job requires prolonged concentration, they work unsociable hours and they run the risk of suicides or other fatalities,” he says. “But people in other professions are paid far less to live with equivalent or greater stress and much more unpredictable challenges.”

Dave is feeling candid in the wake of last week’s reports that Avanti will be culling up to half of its Saturday services from Dec 9 to 30 because of driver and train crew shortages, according to industry sources; this despite the fact that, two years after qualification, drivers can expect to be paid a salary of £67,000 a year.

Avanti is not unusual. According to Reed Recruitment, train driver salaries can rise to in excess of £65,000 across the UK^▸ (United Kingdom). The average driver salary in London is £58,795, with experienced professionals in the region having salaries that often exceed £69,000, while train driver salaries in Scotland start at £38,194 for newly qualified drivers, rising to £48,360 after the probation period has ended.

“But that doesn’t include overtime,” says Dave. “Unless they’re working on [tourist attraction] Colne Valley Railway, you’d be hard pressed to find any mainline train driver working for £48,000.”

That’s an impressive whack, when compared with bus drivers whose salary ranges from £18,000 to £34,000 per annum and have to manage constant interaction with the public alongside less predictable driving conditions and fewer perks. Train drivers also require fewer academic qualifications than lower-paid nurses, army officers and secondary school teachers.

And how’s the job? I scrolled through railforums.co.uk where users purporting to be train drivers swapped opinions on their role. In September 2019, one group member described his working life as: “very laid back, I’m paid to look out of a window. When I step off I’m done and I don’t take anything home with me.”

In the same forum, other drivers warned potential applicants to prepare for long shifts, a degree of isolation and to set their alarm clocks for 2am. But one argued these inconveniences were a small price to pay for a great job. “Used to work in ticket offices years ago,” they wrote, “and I hated it with a passion, interacting with the public, the cash handling, the noise and announcements (busy London terminus), bullying management and supervisory culture, pressing the same sequences of buttons and saying the same things day in, day out, being rooted to the spot behind the window, the sense of having no dominion over your mental and physical space.”

This same user felt that while train driving involved managing “stresses such as shift patterns, changes in your workday, curveballs from Control or the Daily Sheets,” the benefits included the freedom “to concentrate and absorb what needs to be done and given [the head space] to do so. Not many jobs like that these days, not outside the trades anyway.”

Anonymous train guard ‘Sarah’ – who earns £29,000 per year –says: “The drivers’ salary is higher partly because of physical and mental health danger money: hurtling at 100-plus mph towards who knows what, the driver is the first to die in an accident. It is one of those specific skill jobs: only some people can stay in the zone with that level of concentration and the tests are very rigorous.”

Dave agrees that though “the academic requirements are low, the psychometric tests are unique. Do you remember that electronic game, Simple Simon? With the flashing lights? It’s like doing that for nine hours so it is a skill.” But he also argues that advances in technology make it an increasingly unnecessary skill.

“You say they’ve got to keep control,” he says. “But the technology means we don’t have to trust the human element any more. There are so many things [in place] to prevent an accident. Speeding through a red signal? There are so many things to stop that train. It would have to be almost purposeful.” He tells me that his own rail company is “even trialling cameras in the cab that monitor dilation of the eye to check if a driver is getting too tired”.

Dave tells me he’s “a socialist, a red. A union member. But when I think of what doctors and nurses are being paid – while being expected to pay for hospital car parking while train drivers get free station parking, free taxis to work and free rail travel for their families – I think train driver salaries are unjustifiable.”

He does acknowledge that drivers risk long-term mental health challenges if they’re unlucky enough to be involved in fatalities. “That can obviously be a horrific experience,” he says. In 2020-21 there were 247 suspected suicides on overground railways, according to Network Rail. But he notes that medics, police and firefighters also deal with the fallout of suicide for lower salaries and – in some cases – more guilt because of the more personal contact with the people involved.

“If train drivers are involved in a fatality they get as much time off as they need. But the cleaners [who are] sent to go underneath a train afterwards, scraping off [the human remains] before things are jet sprayed? They’re on minimum wage. Who’s supporting them?”

Dave believes that train driving should be a dwindling profession. He says: “The Victoria Line had the first driverless train in the 1960s. Eurostar doesn’t need them [drivers]. At 180 mph the driver is almost functionless. You can’t react to anything at that speed. DLR^▸ (Docklands Light Railway) is driverless.” he sighs. “I dunno what the purpose is… I mean you could have an operator but probably pay them a lot less.”

Instead, he stresses that “station staff are the ones we need. The guys in the ticket offices. Maybe the ones in the countryside can be replaced with machines but the larger stations, with drunk people coming off the trains at 11pm? People with disabilities who need help? You do need staff there. And what are they paid?” Platform and gateline staff are on some of the lowest salaries on our network, with ticket office staff earning £24,000 to £26,000 and controllers at the terminals earning about £30,000.

Dave is angry about that. “They also have a hard time. They get assaulted. I know of one who was stabbed. Let’s be honest, when most suicides jump they jump from a platform so station staff are right in the middle of it, dealing with everything.”

Sarah counters that the current driver pay dispute “is more about no pay rises at all for nearly five years, so I guess the argument is that if they were worth the money five years ago surely it should be kept in line with the cost of living. When I joined four years ago I hoped my salary would be subject to a yearly negotiation. It is traditionally a job where less formally educated people can do well and that is no bad thing.” She adds that she believes the issue of private sector train driver salaries is “separate to the scandal of worthy state workers being exploited and underpaid… It seems a bit weird that the government has, according to the RMT^▸ (National Union of Rail, Maritime & Transport Workers), blocked discussions between the Rail Delivery Group and unions when they are – unfortunately – private companies. It seems a bit like we’re a public service when it suits and not when it doesn’t. I would like the railways publicly owned and subsidised to make public transport the obvious and cheap choice for green travel.”