When we ran a 24x7 operation, we had the issue that we could have spent a lot of money - an awful lot of money - on having people waiting around to provide service for only a tiny proportion of the time. We dealt with this by having multi-facetted staff who could be on duty and doing work that was not time critical, but had the ability (and very much the disposition) to look after immediate custom stuff at the drop of a hat.
Change in terms and conditions of employment from doing a few jobs to doing a bit more of 'other peoples jobs' and being offered a bit more money to do so.
That sounds like the current dispute doesn't it - i.e reducing staff numbers, and offering those that remain additional money for a change in their terms and conditions.
There are significant differences, though. All members of our team took their permanent positions with us in the full knowledge of the exotic hours. Our team interacted very well with one another and where particular shifts were a problem sorted it out (and, yes, I was part of that team). And our team was relatively well looked after / remunerated for the role which - I must add - was far lower paid than (as I understand it) that of the staff currently involved in industrial action.
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