“Are we speaking off the record?” That’s how almost every conversation on this subject starts.
“Don’t quote me directly, will you? Or mention my company? We’re talking to the unions and we would not like this to be taken the wrong way.”
So the RMT still wields considerable influence. Rail executives rarely speak well of it. But they are wary of publicly discussing the legacy of the Southern strikes, desperately keen to avoid antagonising a union that routinely ballots for a strike as the opening gambit in any negotiation.
On this occasion, therefore, RailReview cannot present for you the particular perspectives of the captains of our industry. I have spoken to many different people to compile these views - you will just have to trust me on that.
Trust is a word that people use a lot… mainly in a negative sense.
“This dispute has been all about a breakdown in trust,” I have been told several times. “Clearly on Southern there is no trust between management and the unions, and with the RMT in particular.”
“Some of the accusations they have made against each other are going to take years to repair.”
“They have repeatedly called each other liars. The RMT says Govia Thameslink Railway is dishonest, broken, a Government mouthpiece. It accuses GTR of profiteering at the expense of safety, even when it knows the franchise is losing money. There is no way back from that position with honour.”
“The RMT has spent a year demanding something it knows cannot be offered, and the company imposed changes it knew the RMT could not accept. The problem now is that the union intends to treat the rest of us the same way. The result is going to be a painful war of attrition in which everyone loses.”
At the time of writing, ballots are being held on Merseyrail and Arriva Rail North over the companies’ unwillingness to offer cast-iron guarantees that they would never operate a train without a second safety-qualified member of staff on board. Other franchises actively contemplating extensions of Driver Only Operation (DOO) are watching nervously.
“From the passenger point of view, Southern provides a pragmatic template for how DOO and second member staffing might work in other parts of the industry,” says Transport Focus Chief Executive Anthony Smith.
“How it is negotiated and implemented will be guided by this dispute, which must have exhaustively explored all aspects of it.
“The ex-guards, now On Board Supervisors, are feeling rather raw. The legacy of poisoned industrial relations and strained personal relationships is going to take time to work through the system.”
“Discussions with the unions have become more difficult over the last year,” admits an executive at one of the big train operators.
“Compared with 18 months ago, we find it more challenging to have honest conversations with the unions. We don’t want those conversations about operational improvements to fall into dogmatic political arguments. And in this context we’re not even discussing Driver Only Operation!
“That strain has certainly slowed the pace of change. We are in a good place, we have stayed respectful, and we have been discussing how we introduce new trains. We’ve always said we will have a second member of staff on board in normal circumstances, and that hasn’t changed. But it is taking a long time.”
Another operator points out that only in very rare cases will the number of customer-facing employees reduce. Almost the entire railway is continuing to grow, and more passengers will require more staff, he says. But the way in which those staff are deployed is changing as a consequence of increasing automation.
“We cannot afford to have the RMT hijack that with a safety argument that doesn’t stack up,” he says.
But… “If I was running the RMT I would play the safety card, too,” confesses a former managing director of a train operator, now in a role with an interest in the dispute.
“That’s because it is the only card the union has left to play, and we all know the safety argument isn’t there. The evidence that Driver Only Operation is safe is simply overwhelming.
“It was entirely predictable that Southern would seek a deal with ASLEF. It was also hugely predictable that the RMT would carry on, and accuse ASLEF of betrayal.
“I was struck by the similarity to the old disputes of the 1980s, because the whole RMT position is the same now as it was then. And it is being ended by splitting the two trade unions exactly as it was then.
“In 1982 the two-week strike was about flexible rostering. It was called the NUR then, but otherwise it could be the same thing happening today.
“The RMT has been bellyaching about not being involved in the talks with ASLEF at the TUC. Of course it wasn’t involved! Because the company had to make sure the RMT was scuppered. The union is going to be very bitter about it for a very long time.
“Because this strike has so far been regional and not national, it has been much easier for the trade unions to manage. On a national strike, union finances start to creak very quickly. On a regional level, the strike can be financed from the rest of the country. I would guess a lot of the guards haven’t suffered too heavily financially because they’ve been helped out by the rest of the RMT. That’s the way it works. You can sustain a regional strike for an awful lot longer.”
The last strike about Driver Only Operation was in 1993, and the arguments have barely evolved over the 24 years since then. But during previous strikes the passenger voices were more muted. Social media has transformed that. Public pressure has increased exponentially, because information is disseminated in seconds, rather than hours and days in the past.
When cancelled trains leave passengers stranded on platforms, they take to Twitter and post evidence on Instagram. The articulate, vocal and tech-savvy Association of British Commuters was formed by a handful of Brighton season ticket holders, who came up with the #SouthernFail hashtag and quickly gained 4,000 followers. It enabled passengers to unite, raising sufficient money to launch legal action against the Department for Transport.
