Company Council Report
10 May 2012
In the last ASLEF journal an edited article appeared by the TCCC Secretary on behalf of the full TCCC. This is the full unedited article.
DB SCHENKER TRAINCREW COUNCIL REPORT.
From early summer last year to the December the Full Traincrew Council and our Officer meet under EC resolution with DBSchenker Management to discuss Productivity items that would provide financial savings for the Company and provide job security and financial recompense for our members on a 50/50 basis.
Although a lot of time and effort was put into this proposal the final out come has not led to any conclusion for either side.
What has become clear to both sides is that the current NDFTC does not meet the requirements of the Company to run a Freight Service that fluctuates from day to day and does not provide the stability that Traincrew have long requested and deserve from the Company and for the Council to achieve.
Many reasons can be found form both sides as to why the current deal does not work, for both sides, the average turn length being to short, but the 5 hour turns have become an easy option for DBS even though at the time of this being agreed, the Company were told by Council that this would happen, only to be told they would not become the norm.
Changes to the PNB rules took a lot of unproductive hours out of diagrams with the intention to make the diagrams more productive, which they did at first, but then the recession fell up on us. It was also agreed to a fixed amount of Rest Days instead of it been based on turn length, what a good decision that turned out to be, for us.
The issues above have gone a long way to create unused hours and RDW.
It has been difficult to convince Management that training will increase productivity i.e. reduce unused hours and rest day working. Work allocation has also been haphazard with depots within close proximity, usually different Business units, having large swings in unused and rest day working, which only really gets looked at in a positive way when surpluses were declared.
There are obviously more issues that both sides can raise where the NDFTC fails to achieve ours and their aspirations.
Voluntary Rest Working has now become the norm within DBSR
Can DBS Rail
The time has now come to review recruitment within DBSR
So where do we go from here, well the EC have chosen EC member Tosh McDonald along with our Officer, now Simon Weller, and two members from the Council, but this will not be the Chair or Secretary, unless they are told other wise, to meet with DBS senior Management and achieve a clean pay award separate from any Productivity.
May the Council place on record our sincere thanks to Nick Whitehead for all his time served with this Council and the help and experience he has passed on to us all as our Lead Officer and we all wish him well with his new Company Council’s. We are sure Nick will miss us but perhaps not DBS Management and may we also welcome Simon Weller to a new challenge.
For and on behalf of DBSR UK Traincrew Council.
Yours Fraternally
Michael Finn
TCCC Secretary
