Southern Railway guards are to go on strike for 14 days, the RMT union said this afternoon (Thursday 22 September).
The union said that there would be five separate strikes starting from next month as it steps up its campaign against proposed changes to the role of conductors.
Southern wants drivers to shut the door on new trains as they do on other parts of the network but the RMT said that driver-only operation (DOO) was less safe.
The company said that it would not be making any staff redundant but giving them a slightly different role as onboard supervisors.
Older trains rely on a guard or conductor to close the doors and services are cancelled when there is no guard. Under the proposed changes they would not normally run without an onboard supervisor but could do so, leading to union concerns that jobs will be at risk in future.
The dispute has absolutely nothing to do with opening and closing the doors. It’s about turning a safety critical role, which requires three months of intensive training, into a “trained to safety competent levels” (to quote GTR) role, with a three day training period. The job description of an On Board Supervisor is a world away from the job description of a safety critical conductor or Guard.
GTR says there will be no redundancies- great. But how good is that guarantee when the role is many levels below the standard of the current role? By that logic, a trained accountant should have no problem if their role was suddenly changed into being a supermarket checkout assistant.
Please be a check out assistant would make our lives a lot easier ??????
STOP STRIKING, and do your jobs please so it doesn’t affect half of Sussex, you are making my life and others hell, I only travel from Seaford to Falmer for work and I had to get a taxi which cost me £40 as two trains in a row where cancelled this morning, I buy a monthly ticket to save money not spend more. I am so sick and tired, I want driver only trains now please please do it so we can all go back to normal and not be late for work.
Give their jobs to people who actually want to work!!
(Seriously…..they have contracted jobs , with pensions , and travel concessions , and yet want to make everyone elses life a misery , over a technicality!!)