The United Kingdom’s rail service is coming under scrutiny ahead of the Christmas season, with rail experts slamming working arrangements as the reason for anticipated delays and cancellations.
Train services in the UK have been privatised for 30 years. During that time two key aspects of how the industry is run have contributed to problems at holiday times and during big national events. One factor, and the main problem, is that the network relies on staff “volunteering” to work at weekends in order to ensure trains operate on Sundays.
“We don’t have enough people to cover that train [service] seven days a week, and that can’t be right, and it never has been right,” Graham Eccles, former managing director of South West Trains and head of Stagecoach, told The Independent.
That means the whole weekend system depends on staff who are under no obligation to work. At particular times of year such as during Christmas breaks, or on Sundays when big football matches such as the England final versus Spain in the Euro 2024 championship are showing, train drivers naturally choose to enjoy their day off, as is their absolute right, rather than take on extra shifts. Hundreds of trains were cancelled on Euro Final day.
Some say changes to working attitudes since Covid-19 and the growing sense of the importance of work-life balance and time spent with family and friends is worsening the phenomenon.
But another factor is at play. The increase in train driver salaries over the years means, according to some, that drivers are no longer so financially dependent on being able to pick up extra shifts, and therefore they choose not to work. The bottom line, says Mark Whelan, general secretary of train drivers’ union Aslef, told The Independent: “Train companies don’t employ enough drivers to deliver the service they promise passengers and government, they will run.”
The railway should not be run on overtime – which is, of course, voluntary.
Mark Whelan, general secretary of train drivers’ union Aslef
The UK government had been advocating a seven-day working week for the railways to address the issue, until the recent resignation of transport secretary Louise Haigh, who had told The Standard: “We obviously want to get the railways to a seven-day week, we want to make sure that we have the most modernised practices and that they are fit for Great British Railways of the 21st Century.”
Some train companies such as ScotRail are undertaking recruitment rounds to the tune of 160 drivers a year, while others, such as Great Western Railway (GWR), have been trying to move existing drivers on to new contracts which include Sunday working as standard. But, “without a further trade union deal this will take some time to work through [the] whole driver population,” GWR has said, adding that “in line with most of the rail industry we do rely on paid overtime.”
Which means this season, like other years in on the UK’s railways, passengers should expect challenging travel timetables as they make their way home for Christmas.
