Disgusted at the amount of people jealous of tube drivers pay

[Itsawd]

They do a job dealing with the public, unsociable hours and god knows what when they get a jumper. We should congratulate them on doing well, not look at them with green eyes.

Its a free market so if anyone wants a job as one they are welcome to apply!

And I still want to know whether somebody who had driven a Paris metro for ten years would be able to apply for a job as a tube driver.

merrymoues - Doesn't sound like it. They have to get a station job first. It is a closed shop.

There are plenty of other professions that could cause more damage by striking. Maybe the power that the tube drivers have is that withdrawing their services causes just enough disruption to be annoying, but not enough to be disastrous

Agree - they have a sweet spot.

I don't support a 'race to the bottom'. Not at all.

My posts about H's bus driving job were made for comparison.

Many of the tube drivers skills - ability to concentrate over periods of hours at a time, with the slightest lapse in concentration potentially resulting in the death or serious injury of up to 100's of people - are needed by bus drivers. Like Tube drivers, they work in physically uncomfortable conditions: either hot, stuffy. Often the heaters are broken in winter and H is driving with feet half numb/ riddled with chilblains. Unsociable hours, Monotony. The lack of toilet breaks has left H with a bladder condition which will now need lifelong treatment.

Miss your stop by more than 2m more than 3 times in a week? You'll be in trouble. Speak rudely to a customer who is trying to spit on you / throw hot coffee in your face? Verbal warning. Accidentally miss a stop due to re-routing due to road accident? Written Warning. Stress, stress, stress. Momentary lapse in concentration (even a sneezing fit).
Ooops, injured/dead person (potentially).

But bus drivers ALSO need to remember a huge variety of routes and stops (which can change almost daily in a capital city with endless roadworks/festivals/demos etc). They deal with money and are responsible for it / issuing tickets etc. They deal with the public in all it's guises. As I said in the last 48 hours there have been fights, vomiting, drink spraying etc on the bus. Previously H has had to deal with a gun being pulled (no Police help either!), a woman going into labour, LOTS of people collapsing (drink, heart failure etc). An old man who simply died, quietly, on the back seat one day. The training doesn't cover that. There is no time off for stress. You just get on with it, or you lose you job.

H has 4 friends who have had to leave the job after they 'ran over' people.
2 stepped right in front of the bus and the driver had NO chance of stopping a 10 ton vehicle in time.
One jumped off a bridge onto the road in front of the bus.
One pushed a buggy out in front of the bus. Can you imagine.
Very little workplace counselling or support and no job at the end.
Nightmares for years, potentially.
My H has nightmares sometimes about becoming 'one of those drivers'.
Those sort of incidents are not that uncommon in a Capital City, sadly.

I don't think Tube drivers should get £23K because H does. Not at all.
Clearly they have a much more active Union than TGWU.
I would prefer my H's salary to be zooming up nearer the £49K.

All I wanted to say was, there are others in very comparable driving jobs
who are far worse off so maybe the Tube Drivers should appreciate what they DO have a bit more. There are plenty who would gladly fill their shoes, and have the 'skill set' to do so.

We all know we are moving to driverless tubes and the sooner the better.

I will never understand why on these threads people begrudge others so much and moan that others wages should come down to match theirs

Irrespective of what you get paid, if someone changed your working conditions without consulting you, you'd be pretty annoyed about it. You can't expect people to just be grateful about their (actually, very average) salary so should just shut up and accept the worst conditions.

The poster who said that her dp would "chew off his arm" for a tube driving job, I presume you're making the move to London as we speak? So he can start as a station staff member, working on low wages for a few years before moving up? Or I presume that the £50k salary doesn't seem so attractive comparing the living costs of Scotland to London.

People shouldn't be trying to get others' working conditions worse, they should be trying to get their own better.

A bus driver's job is infinitely more difficult than a tube driver's.

For Londoners messed around by these tube drivers we have a core dislike because they make life very hard for working parents. We have things like 5am starts on strike days to get to work, 16 hour days, nights in hotels and all sorts just because of these men. The underground song sums it all up.

Queen - have you READ my posts about wanting my H's wages to increase to the Tube Drivers level, rather than their wages reduce to his???

Re the 'move to London' - have you looked at property prices in Edinburgh?
Not London prices to be sure, but look at the salary of £23K and the cost of a family house in Edinburgh and do the maths. Food, petrol, schooling, clothing, utilities - it isn't all 'cheaper up here' you know?!

And, yes, he would be happy to start as a station minion with the prospect of a £50K wage in a few years. As it is, he started 15 years ago on £17K and has risen to the dizzy heights of £23K (inc overtime).

Should he want to go part time (due to medical condition caused by working conditions) he would have to be re-employed by the same firm, and his working conditions would become dramatically worse (inc a drop in salary to around £8 and a loss of pension / paid lunch break, time off etc).

Once again, for the hard of hearing - I would like ALL pay and conditions to be suitable for the job - but Tube drivers should be aware that, in direct comparison, their pay and conditions are not that bad, actually.

So he can start as a station staff member, working on low wages for a few years before moving up?

What if he already had experience on a different underground or train system?

It just seems odd that working in customer services is more relevant to driving a London Underground train than experience of actually driving a train.

It's not a closed shop at all, you can only apply from within the company. I decided I warned the job so I applied for the CSA job which is quite regularly advertised.
I spent 3 years as a CSA and applied for the drivers job 3 times before getting it.
To say the job is only open to union members is extremely misinformed, would also be illegal.

Also starting salary is final salary, there is no progressing through bands or levels unlike other comparable jobs

But that doesn't make any sense at all daisy. If you are a nurse and you want to work for a different employer, you don't have to get a job as a porter before you can apply for a job as a nurse.

Why on earth not allow everyone to apply on the basis of merit? I know you don't make the rules, but can you explain the thinking behind the system? To an outsider it seems barmy.

tell me the 'other comparable jobs' where you 'progress through bands' ?

You are a trainee driver, then a Driver. That's it.

There are no 'band increases' for bus drivers either.

Definition of a closed shop includes;
"An area of activity that is restricted to a particular small group"

Also starting salary is final salary, there is no progressing through bands or levels unlike other comparable jobs

In other jobs you have to transfer to a job in management to increase salary - presumably this is also the case at tfl.

The only thing the op has achieved by starting this thread is to generate more people to be disgusted at! Pretty poorly thought out op, wonder what they thought it would achieve? .

OP?

Merry mouse, quite some time ago they did recruit drivers from outside the company, even advertising in magazines like cosmopolitan to try to increase the number of female drivers.
Unfortunately there was a very high failure rate, people applied for the job based on the salary alone not thinking through what the job was about, impact on social and family lives for example, and how it would affect them spending such long periods alone.
I don't know the figures but the number of dropouts, combined with the high cost of the training made it more viable to recruit from within, with candidates more realistic about what the job entails

When I mentioned bands I was mainly referring to nurses, who for some reason are the job we are most compared with, for whatever reason I do not know.

I don't know the figures but the number of dropouts, combined with the high cost of the training made it more viable to recruit from within, with candidates more realistic about what the job entails

I also read an article (not sure how true) that the unions protested about outside advertising because of the impact on its members. Do you know if this is true?

That sounds like a cop out. Presumably advertising externally didn't stop people from applying internally, and allowed people working in similar industries and companies with relevant experience to apply.

We reject LUL's assertion that "the agreed internal processes have been exhausted without success". We believe that the implication that internal applicants, primarily Customer Service Assistants, are not good enough to become drivers is inaccurate and insulting. There are very few promotional opportunities for CSAs; this move further reduces those opportunities.

Said the RMT when tfl tried to recruit externally in 2013.

It's a bit baffling really. Why would a customer services role imply suitability as a train driver? Why would lack of promotion prospects in one job imply a right to a completely different job?

Because its a cushy number and RMT want to keep it a closed shop to benefit their members and only their members.

Market forces dictating salary is just a lie when the workforce can hold TFL and the general public to ransom. I don't believe for a second that noone would do a tube drivers job for less than 50k. Unfortunately, the minute TFL recruit any staff on lower salaries, they are able to join the union and join those holding the public to ransom.

I'm another person that thinks only recruiting internally is barmy. I'm not sure how being a customer service advisor makes you more aware of the realities of being a tube driver than a bus driver, train driver, etc. It's not hard to screen out applicants with no relevant experience who wouldn't have a scooby what the day to day is like.

On another note - how can I support the strike? As this is actually one I do agree with. TfL aren't losing any money from me when I am inconvenienced because of the strikes - I have a season ticket that I get no refund on. So seemingly, the tube staff are hitting the public where it hurts without actually costing TFL huge amounts of money - I think this is why so many find it hard to empathize!