News from Wigan trades council (WTC)
10th of June 14.
The proposal document for the Northern Rail/Transpennine express franchises due
to start in 2016 was released by the DFT on Monday June 9th.
Part of the document outlines measures interested party's will need to try and
implement, in order to satisfy the DFT.
These measures concern us greatly as they will reduce safety, security for
passengers and result in the possibility of hundreds if not thousands of jobs
being lost.
The proposals state, that the bidder must demonstrate how they plan to
implement Driver only operation (DOO) of Northern rail trains, on TPE this will
be left for the winning bidder to decide if they want DOO or not.
In Wigan alone this would result in 56 Guards losing their Jobs across the
Northern franchise the number would be 700 plus.
A safety critical member of train crew would be removed from all trains leaving
only the Driver to deal with any potential collision, derailment, fire etc.
Also the bidder must demonstrate how it plans to reduce booking office opening
hours through staff efficiencies to enable reduced costs.
This would see passengers stranded at busy stations and also reduce security at
stations with large numbers of footfall.
Part of the franchise process will be decided and micro managed by "Rail
North", this will be made up of councillors from all relevant ITA areas
including GMPTE.
As you may sit on this group in the future and have a direct input into how
these proposals are "guided" and "rolled out" could I
ask that you work with and support the RMT union in our aim of saving jobs and
protecting passengers.
David Dean.
https://www.gov.uk/government/consultations/future-of-northern-and-transpennine-express-rail-franchises
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