Tube drivers and their pay

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It makes me angry.... Surely tube drivers are paid far, far more than jobs with equivalent levels of responsibility, and they only get away with it because they can hold London to ransom... Do they have no shame!?

Why do a lot of subway systems have driverless trains if they are so skilled and important?

Meh they are only paid what they get because they can inconvenience the capital. Good on them, for most strikes people wouldn't care so it isn't really about having strong unions its about leverage. The Police have a lot of leverage but they are not allowed to strike if they were I am pretty sure they would be enjoying nice pay packets also.

social workers and carers do a lot of work but ultimately their strikes wouldn't affect the right people.

bitchpeas- you're being very aggressive. I haven't stated what my attitude is, so how could you even know? I was just picking up on MrsDV's comment on your point about people with GCSEs, because I thought it was an interesting point. The whole commoditisation of education is something I feel very strongly about. However, if we are expecting people to start their working lives 45k in debt, they ought to have expectations of a decent salary. I'm not saying people that are incompetent should be well paid. It comes down to supply and demand though. Jobs that require highly specialised skills and therefore have only relatively few people capable of fulfilling the roles should pay more than roles that many, many people can do.
People that train to become electricians, plumbers, bricklayers etc presumably do that as apprentices, and therefore have their courses and training funded. The other jobs MrsDV mentioned (miners, car production workers) I was under the impression that these were well-paid jobs, as there was skill involved, and one had to be trained to fulfil the role. I'm too young really to know what they got paid, as those jobs all went when I was tiny.

FWIW I have no objection to people striking- how else can they get better conditions, or for that matter hold onto the conditions they have? I have been on strike on a number of occasions, over conditions/contracts rather than pay levels.

And I don't know many high earners that have much humility or empathy! Quite the opposite, most are sociopaths, though hard-working sociopaths, obviously.

Nurses start on £21k btw, rising up to 100k or more (if they go into management. My SIL is on £1k per day, she's a nurse). That's far in excess of what someone working in a hospital could expect if they just had GCSEs, and rightly so, considering how long nurses have to train.

Its hardly an open and transparent recruitment procedure, is it? So is it right to say there are no required qualifications, other than being on "the inside", as it were?

The average chimp could drive a tube train with a few hours instruction

Wow.

Not nice and not accurate.

I wonder how many people on this thread would not be upset / go on strike if they were all suddenly forced to manidotry night shifts irrespective of if they had children etc

i bet that would be pretty much zero can you imange the uproar if office jobs started to become mordernized and be open 24 hours a day and instead of hiring new night shifters they would force exsiting staff to do said job ...... I highly doubt most people would not willing allow that to happen or I trully dispair for the intellance of people

You lost me at 'still to much IMO', OP

OR EVEN 'STILL TOO MUCH'

I agree that the salary is too high for this job. I also think that the argument that high tube salaries should be a benchmark for bringing other salaries up is ridiculous. I think Tube salaries should be benchmarked against the cost of living and the relative value a tube driver brings and the required qualifications needed. It's a 18-30k job.

DH just reminded me that he was one of those rare breed of direct recruits - didn't start as a CSA (though he did 6 months in the control room). He said out of the 16 people he started the training with, only 4 of them made it through. The failure rate for the training can be very high. The training has also been condensed from 6 months to three months training, no less rigorous just a hell of a lot more intense in an attempt to save money and he was tested throughout, any failure meant starting all over again. I have never seen him so stressed during those times. Had to learn all about signals, how to fix the train in event of breakdown, countless rules and regulations, route knowledge for several different lines, safety etc. He also has to have 2 day annual tests to check that he is still fit to practice which if he fails means losing his licence.

As someone else has mentioned, their leave includes BHs, time back for overtime and shift allowance. He doesn't get to decide when he takes that leave so can be a nightmare to plan school holiday cover, you have to find someone kind enough to to swap leave periods with you. His shifts can start as early as 4.43am and latest finish is 1.40pm. He does 8 hour shifts and can work 7 days in a row. There are days when he gets home on his rest day, then is back in the same day and he is absolutely shattered because he wasn't able to sleep. He has run a signal as result, stress and tiredness can take its toll and I do worry about his health long term.

However, he absolutely loves what he does and his remuneration is in line with other train operators; in fact he recently looked into switching to Virgin trains as they earn more. In many ways, I'm envious that he has found something he likes doing that pays well, many of us aren't that fortunate in that regard.

We all make choices in life, my mother was a nurse and so is my sister. I work the least hardest out of all them admittedly, for the job I do despite earning pretty much like my DH. DH is creative, has qualifications in graphic design and is brilliant at it but the ad hoc nature of it doesn't pay the mortgage so...

We can actually be rostered to work ten days in a row.
London overground, cross rail and Eurostar are three sets of drivers I know off the top of my head who get paid more than tube drivers for a comparable job.
You have to bear in mind that a tube driver has to live in London ir close enough to be able to travel in for 440 am. If we earned less money we wouldn't be able to afford to live close enough.

Lots of comments about 'race to the bottom' but how on earth people seriously think we can raise pay up to tube driver levels and have a functioning economy is beyond me.... Inflation thought the roof and even more debt... It's a nice pipe dream but in reality the UK would be another Greece.

I understand that tube drivers have challenging conditions, unsocial hours, and that there's more to it than pressing a couple of buttons... And that they should therefore be paid accordingly.

However, the unions have prevented the job from being paid at the market rate as is the case in all other jobs... If the market was able to set the rate for the job it would probably £30-£35k level - still a decent salary on a par with other similar skilled and responsible jobs.

Many will say, 'good luck to them and more power to their union!' but replicated across the workforce we'd be back in the 70s..... And union-driven self-interested socialism has never worked, and I'm glad the majority in this country also recognise this.

I'm not arguing for unrestrained capitalism - workers need rights - but muscular protectionist unionism isn't the answer.

The reason some subway systems have driverless trains caroldecker, is because they have been built specifically, our system is far far older.
The systems that do have driverless trains are not as deep tunnel and also have walkways trackside along the length of the track. If there was a fire on one of our trains in the tunnel you could be a mile from the closest station underground, would anyone seriously want to be without a trained member of staff in such a scenario.
I'm reluctant to bring 7/7 into it but no member of staff really? Systems like the DLR are considerably easy for help to access in an emergency but even they still have someone on board at all time.

Probably once a week I have a parent run at a train when doors are closing, pushing a pram or buggy into the doors jamming them so they don't have to wait two minutes for the next train. There have been many instances of people being dragged along the platform with items being caught in doors and it's the drivers monitoring our in cab CCTV applying emergency brakes that save fatalities there.
A couple of years back a small child fell between the train and platform in the wide gap at finchley road just as the train was about to move off, had that train driver not been on the ball, or if there hadn't been one at all, the consequences of that would have been devastating.

We do have many suicides on the network, but we also have many more 'near misses', this is when people may fall accidentally or simply go wandering on the track, in the majority of these cases the driver will spot them and apply emergency brakes mostly stopping so there is no harm done. If there was no driver in the cab again you'd be looking at more fatalities.

Flashbang- rate of pay for tube drivers is at market rate. It's been mentioned on more than one occasion that other train drivers on ther networks are on similar salaries if not more. I don't understand your line of reasoning. Or is it just because TFL is public sector so they don't deserve to earn in line with their peers who have been privatised?

As for the strike, it's not about asking for more money it's about the shifts being imposed and the rosters incorporating them. The union were trying to negotiate a 4 day week on the same weekly hours to try to help combat the fatigue of working 2 night shifts and 3 midday turns in a week.
I of course appreciate many professions may do this,but we have to be on very high alert at all times, and the environment we work ie alone for 4 hour stretches in a dark cab can make it very hard to concentrate if you've had an erratic sleep pattern

London needs a 24 hour tube service. It's crazy it hasn't already had one. Whatever the merits of the strike I think they do need to find some way to introduce this, perhaps by recruiting new staff with different terms and conditions.
In the long term they should move to driverless trains.

I agree that the rota Daisy03 describes is crazy. I have worked nights before, it was a month of night shift followed by a month of day shift. Doing 2 night shifts and 3 day shifts in a week would have destroyed me.

I don't believe tube drivers' pay can be the market rate. If TfL announced 1,000 new jobs tomorrow at £40k, I'd be amazed if they couldn't fill them with suitably competent and professional people. TfL don't do this because of Union power. It may be comparable to train driver pay but this reflects the power of the unions across the industry.

Of course, we could say that this is good, and that unions should have the power to impose pay levels above the market.... This is a socialist ideology though, and nice as it sounds, socialism just doesn't work.

Of course we don't live in a utopia, and there is poverty, but in the UK, by and large, child nutrition, life expectancy, healthcare and education provision, peace (developed countries don't go to war with each other - people have too much to lose!), and a whole host of things are immeasurably better than they were 100 years ago, and this is all a result of a capitalist economy.... It may not be perfect, but it's the least worst option we have, and for all it's noble idealism, socialism has never delivered what capitalism has.

The tube unions may have some valid points, and I'm not disputing those, or even their right to strike, it's their stranglehold on the industry that I have an issue with, and how it impedes the development of London and Londoners as a whole.

Which is exactly why the often cited generous pay offer was rejected by all four unions because it came with the condition of allowing those sort of shifts. It really isn't about the money this time, my DH is a member of TSSA, they don't down tools easily. Eventhough I am married to a tube driver and have a bit more insight than most, I'm not arrogant enough to think I know better than those who live and breath the reality of the job day in and day out and what a change to their working pattern would mean for them. I trust that they know what they're talking about. I agree the night tube is a good idea but how many of you know that the first most tube drivers heard of it being implemented in September was through the media? In my organisation, any change that affects conditions for staff have to be carefully managed and negotiated with unions over several months with all options considered because we recognise that we are dealing with human beings. TFL bosses have handled this situation abysmally and if there is to be any blame it should be laid squarely at their door. They should have considered the impact on their staff months in advance, consulted the unions and worked with them to find a solution, not just try and bulldoze it through and expect people to roll over and take it. Chucking money at a problem doesn't always make it go away.

The normal route to becoming a tube driver is to start as a CSA on gate line and these are advertised externally regularly. I can't remember the exact salary of CSAs but it was closer to £30k per annum iirc and they often do have many applicants. Tube driver jobs are normally recruited for internally due to high failure rate of external applicants so you often find that most drivers have worked their way through the system.

EthelDurant123 wrote a long, clearly-worded post outlining exactly what the underground staff (Note: not just 'overpaid' tube drivers) are striking for. For the last time, it's NOT about the money!

Would all the critics please read it before going off on one. Or alternatively, you know, don't let FACTS get in the way of a good moan

I am sick of hearing people like my 'friend' bitching about tube drivers' salaries, just because he - a fit young man - had to endure a 40 minute walk to work instead of his usual 10 minute tube journey. Work, by the way, is in a bank, for which he is paid £100k+ and gets more holiday than a tube driver. How is he qualified for this life or death job? Well he has a degree in GEOGRAPHY of course