Recruitment freeze

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May 24, 2012, 04:48:31 AM

Recommended service - hourly, according to the GWRUS. Let's work towards that service and towards ensuring all services are used.

7889 Posts in 5009 Topics by 97605 Members
Latest Member: pyxnukjxvvr

Following the early termination of a Cardiff Westbury train at Bristol because of driver shortage last weekend, the guard became apopleptic and explained to us that 50 trains are cancelled by FGW each day and that the main reason for this is their shortage of drivers as FGW refuse to recruit. He aslo said there is a shortage of guards for the same reason.
Maybe other staff members of this forum would like to confirm or deny this remarkable claim.
If it's true, this is another reason FGW should lose their franchise.

My understanding is that the franchise was awarded based on overoptimistic availabiity assumptions for both staff and trains. Then during the following 9 months they concentrated on merging the organisations at management level, reducing staff in those areas by 10%. I'm not entirely sure at what point they said "oops - we may have a problem" for December '06 - official line is that it was early which is why they did all the consultation, but there are no hints that they were recruiting drivers and guards at that point to be putting them through training to come on line during 2007.

Have a look at the various posts I've put up - re: Andrew Griffiths and Julian Crow's talks last week - you'll find Andrew came up with some figures of drivers/guards currently in training, and extra drivers/ guards being recruited. Of course, you must expect the "strong on the positives" line from FGW - it's called "Customer Relations". In summary, I would believe ...

* Two years ago, First were planning to operate without recruitment but with natural wastage if they won
* A year ago at this time, there probably was a recruitment freeze but perhaps just ending
* Today there has been a lot more recruitment but the staff aren't on line yet

Although things are being put right, I would be suprised if much slack is being put into the system Wink

Quote from: tonya on October 15, 2007, 10:01:50 PM

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I wonder if you had the same guard that I did on Monday... I was travelling back to Portsmouth from Bath and the guard spent much time berrating FGW's management of the trains, cheifly I suspect because his train was on time at Bath but was stuck behind a late running stopper service for southampton. To this end our train was half and hour late into Portsmouth.
I have every respect for the guard in question (I do know his name but im not sharing it). He was trying to do the best he could to make his service run on time in adverse conditions... its just a shame that the operating company he works for were the cause of those conditions.

Daniel

There are several Driver training courses currently on the go for a variety of depots including Bristol, Reading and Paddington. Some have only just started though and the total training time ranges from 10-14 months, so expect problems for a while to come! A friend of mine has just started on one of them, having been kept waiting over 2 years from originally passing all his pre-qualification tests due to FGW decision to 'undertake a review of training requirements'!

It's nonsense.

FGW has recruited 40 additional guards and 60 extra drivers over the last few months.

I think it is fair to say that the staffing levels in the original franchise bid were wrong and that's why additional frontline staff have been recruited recently.

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