Irish Rail - Risk of Strike Action

Jamie2k9

alcaline wrote: »

No, the twitter, Facebook are done by outside contractors.
People get angry at the wrong people, get angry at the people who actually do the twitter and Facebook and not the IE/DB/BE staff.

Interesting!

I suppose it's probably way cheaper to employ outside staff than ones directly, they would probably be looking for pay rises every week the number of responses increase :rolleyes:

end of the road

devnull wrote: »

You honestly think that every single PSO route makes a loss? If that is the case then it speaks volumes for how inefficient that the companies running them must be.

yes, i think a lot of the routes are loss making. efficientsy takes many forms. what you see as inefficient is possibly efficient in terms of what way the company runs the routes.

devnull wrote: »

Just because one company cannot make them pay doesn't mean another one can't

doubt much of what bus eireann runs can be made pay but who knows.

devnull wrote: »

If no company could run a service or a product better or cheaper than another one, we may as well live in a communist state like North Korea. We should also nationalise supermarkets, and all types of shop, all airlines and have one company in every industry, since after all no company can offer things for a different rate or do it cheaper than the other can they?

whats any of that got to do with this discussion? we are talking about loss making socially necessary bus routes here. many which run to places that wouldn't have enough patronage to justify the route on a commercial basis.

devnull wrote: »

The fact is in any industry a monopoly is bad for consumers.

not always.

devnull wrote: »

If you look at any industry, competition always brings prices down

except it didn't on britains railways, or infact from what i can see, none of the privatized industries over there. but i'm open to hearing how it has if it has.

devnull wrote: »

the key is that the most important people in a public service are the public themselves, although the unions seem to think that that is not the case and that their members are the most important and their terms and conditions are.
The unions are representing staff of the Public Company, but their first concern is the welfare of the people within the company, whilst at the same time preaching that private companies are bad.

the union is there to represent its members. of course their terms and conditions will be the most important thing, that is the whole point of a union rightly or wrongly

devnull wrote: »

Basically it comes down to this. The unions are only too happy to moan about people making money out of a company and it being run for the benefit of management or shareholders and saying how it should be run for the benefit of the public and not for private gain. But on the other hand they only too happy to forget about the "benefit for the public" angle when something benefits them. Hypocrites.

not Hypocrites. just doing what a union is supposed to do. you may not agree with the union being simply there to look after its members and thats fine, but that is the reason why unions were set up whether you agree with it or not.

devnull wrote: »

They would have to pay for things that the current operators do not have to pay for. That is what makes me laugh about the unions arguing about having to bear "legacy costs" in the tender and how it was not fair, but at the same time wanting to retain their the infrastructure that they never paid for for their own sole use. that other companies have to pay for.

rightly so. being a state company which receives a subsidy, it is right they have access to facilities exclusively that others won't have access to. in my opinion, if private companies want to compete they should have to pay for their own facilities, i don't believe i should have to pay for facilities for private companies.

devnull wrote: »

Again it's hypocritical. They're saying if we are worse off than the other party in any area, that is unfair on them and the playing field needs to be leveled, but if they hold an advantage in a certain area, they don't want to give that up.

its not hypocritical at all. why would and should they give up their advantages?

devnull wrote: »

It is not for the incumbent operator to say whether competition of viable, because of course they are not going to say there is, because they are looking after their own interests

but CIE aren't the ones saying it, the fact many of the routes are loss making and don't have competition is enough to say it for us. even i as a simple ordinary member of the public who has nothing to do with CIE believes much of what CIE run is not viable for competition

devnull wrote: »

The current level of service as provided by the company means that I think everyone is vastly overpaid in that company, because nobody deserves the salary they are getting in any grade because the service they provide is quite frankly ****e for the most part.

thats fine but what you or i think doesn't matter. for the type of work they do they aren't over payed.

devnull wrote: »

for the current level of service that is provided, then the wage bill is vastly too high.

its not in terms of the type of job being done. you may not like it but its what it is.

devnull wrote: »

If they offered a better service people would be less annoyed about the wage bill

no, no they wouldn't. they really wouldn't

devnull wrote: »

it really annoys people to see pay of that scale

it does annoy people to see others being payed a decent wage when they don't get it themselves, but thats ireland. were not known as the land of begrudgers for nothing.

end of the road

Jamie2k9 wrote: »

Interesting!

I suppose it's probably way cheaper to employ outside staff than ones directly, they would probably be looking for pay rises every week the number of responses increase :rolleyes:

no, they would not be looking for a pay rise on the basis of responces

devnull

alcaline wrote: »

This is not CIE you are dealing with, it was a NTA idea and is handled by outside contractors.

No, Irish Rail twitter is run by Irish Rail, that is clear as mud because I've had discussions with Irish Rail about it.

devnull

end of the road wrote: »

yes, i think a lot of the routes are loss making. efficientsy takes many forms. what you see as inefficient is possibly efficient in terms of what way the company runs the routes.

No monopoly is completely efficient and does things for the lowest price, this applies to any industry, airlines, supermarkets, competition always brings price down as companies have to look for efficiencies.

I doubt much of what bus eireann runs can be made pay but who knows.

whats any of that got to do with this discussion? we are talking about loss making socially necessary bus routes here. many which run to places that wouldn't have enough patronage to justify the route on a commercial basis.

I don't expect the rural ones to the small villages can, no and for these there is no need for more than one operator, but for some other routes, of course there is a chance.

not always.

Name one other than public transport which you seem to claim.

except it didn't on britains railways, or infact from what i can see, none of the privatized industries over there. but i'm open to hearing how it has if it has.

Well as I stated before, for all the faults on UK Railways, they do a lot of things a lot better than Irish Rail, even if walk up fares are higher and the system is far from perfect.

the union is there to represent its members. of course their terms and conditions will be the most important thing, that is the whole point of a union rightly or wrongly/

The Public sector is there to offer a service to the public, of course the service that is offered to the public is the most important thing. That is the whole point of a public service, rightly or wrongly.

But this is my point, there are people in the state companies moaning about the GREED of private companies making money at the expense of what should be a public service, whilst at the same time when it comes to their own money, they're far more concerned about that than the public service.

If they were so concerned about the public service why don't they go on strike about how badly the service is run and how it lets the public down on a daily basis to make Irish Rail fix many of the problems the organisation has in serving the customers? Because quite simply once they get their money they don't give a toss and the public service element of Irish Rail is a smokescreen for the real reason, as a public service it's more beneficial to them, to hell with the actual public they claim to serve.

This is why the public service is so dysfunctional in Ireland, the whole idea of setting a public service company up is so it is run for the benefit of the public and the fact it will not be run for the benefit of a number of peoples best interests or a group of people insides best interest. But in Ireland it generally doesn't work like that and ends up serving anyone but the people it was set up to serve.

not Hypocrites. just doing what a union is supposed to do. you may not agree with the union being simply there to look after its members and thats fine, but that is the reason why unions were set up whether you agree with it or not.

But that should never come ahead of what is best for the public as a whole, as that destroys the very argument that the union are trying to make when they say that a publicly owned company is better than a private one because in the private one a group of people do not have any interest in the service offered to the company.

I'm all for unions to stand up for people who are unfairly sacked, but unions in a monopoly generally abuse their power time and time again because they know that if they don't get their own way they should just got on strike.

rightly so. being a state company which receives a subsidy, it is right they have access to facilities exclusively that others won't have access to. in my opinion, if private companies want to compete they should have to pay for their own facilities

If state companies want to solely use facilities that they never actually had to pay for themselves, they should have to actually buy them from the state at their book value. Otherwise they should be regarded as assets of the state and the state should have the choice to do whatever it wants them.

Again it comes down to the fact that once more the public transport system in this country is not being run for the benefit of the public, and that is exactly why the NTA had to be set-up in their current form to bang a few heads together and actually work for a public transport system to suit the needs of the public. You have the unions protecting themselves, the state companies looking after themselves. Nobody gives a toss about fully integrated transport and providing the public with a proper service, because they are too busy worrying about themselves.

I'll take you back again to the arguments for a publicly owned transport system, which is that in a privately owned transport system, it's often argued a group of people push their own interests over the greater good or the good of the public. Yet here in a publicly owned transport system we have a group of people who are more interested in preserving their own positions than providing a level of public transport that a country like Ireland quite frankly deserves. Again this destroys the whole ideology about having a public transport system that puts the public first.

its not hypocritical at all. why would and should they give up their advantages?

Why should private companies give up their advantages as well? That is what the unions are asking. To keep hold of their own advantages but to let the competition have none of their own. That is what it is about. The fact is the average joe on the street just wants a proper public transport service being provided, the staff in CIE don't want that, they just want to make sure the public transport service is provided by them.

If CIE paid for things out of their own money they can keep them all they want. But if not they should be considered assets of the state and the state should deploy them in the best way possible for the people of the state. If the state companies don't like that, that's just tough, it's the states job to run the country for the benefit of the people in it first and foremost.

thats fine but what you or i think doesn't matter. for the type of work they do they aren't over payed. no, no they wouldn't. they really wouldn't/

I'm telling you that what I actually think. You have a different opinion to me but that doesn't mean that either me or you are factually right or factually wrong, just different opinions. I would have a lot less problems with pay if the company could provide an adequate level of service or the staff actually care. But all the staff care about is money, not service, whilst at the same time moaning private companies only care about money and not service.

But every time I see people on here moaning about staff salaries and strikes, if people do not think that the pay is not worth the performance the companies give, how come the standard of service always is mentioned on boards in any pay dispute? The fact is some staff at stations couldn't care less about how well or how badly the company is run on the ground level. Nobody is going to try and so something about that. They don't care. But the moment any term or condition is slightly altered, they suddenly get very vocal.

As I said before if they want to get the public on their side, why don't they go out and make such a fuss about the various customer service issues that are prevalent on a daily basis and force their company to do something about them, since after all they are supposed to be working to provide a great service to the public, why don't they hold their company to that and force them to fix the many things wrong within the organisation. They'd really improve their standing with the public.

it does annoy people to see others being payed a decent wage when they don't get it themselves, but thats ireland. were not known as the land of begrudgers for nothing.

Ahh, the old lines, everyone is underpaid except for us, who are paid a fair wage and everyone in the same company who is paid more than us is overpaid.

devnull

alcaline wrote: »

No, the twitter, Facebook are done by outside contractors.
People get angry at the wrong people, get angry at the people who actually do the twitter and Facebook and not the IE/DB/BE staff.

I was told that the staff are working in Irish Rail central control and/or marketing.

Well even if that is the case that they are contractors and I have my doubts about it, surely Irish rail as a company took that decision, so they need to be responsible for the people that they contracted and the fact that they don't supply said staff with the appropriate level of tools and information to do their job correctly.

It is completely unacceptable that before 7.30am in the morning there fan be no trains running and nobody to tell anyone about it whether that be on the web, on social media or on the website or at stations. It is completely unacceptable.

alcaline

Jamie2k9 wrote: »

Interesting!

I suppose it's probably way cheaper to employ outside staff than ones directly, they would probably be looking for pay rises every week the number of responses increase :rolleyes:

Next time you are standing in the rain and transport does not show up and the twitter team reply its due to staff shortages, just remember there might be money to pay for drivers if it was not been used to pay for twitter.

alcaline

devnull wrote: »

I was told that the staff are working in Irish Rail central control and/or marketing.

.

You where told wrong.

alcaline

devnull wrote: »

It is completely unacceptable that before 7.30am in the morning there fan be no trains running and nobody to tell anyone about it whether that be on the web, on social media or on the website or at stations. It is completely unacceptable.

Blame the NTA who came up with the idea and the times which it must be manned.
No twitter or Facebook out side of office hours, what a waste of money. Then again what do we know compared to the geniuses running the NTA.

devnull

alcaline wrote: »

Blame the NTA who came up with the idea and the times which it must be manned.
No twitter or Facebook out side of office hours, what a waste of money. Then again what do we know compared to the geniuses running the NTA.

You remind me of a poster who was here under a different username before, in the Ask me Anything thread about Dublin Bus where you inaccurately blamed the NTA for everything, and you've already been caught out on another thread about the Free Travel Pass validation.

Anyway, I don't happen to believe that. There was a direction from the NTA which said the minimum times that it must be staffed, but this does not stop Irish Rail posting updates outside that times, even if they do not answer tweets.

It also doesn't explain why Irish rail are incapable of informing their staff or providing announcements at stations the vast majority of times before this and why they ignore their obligations under EU regulations to update and compensate passengers on delays.

The NTA have done far more for proper public transport integration in the last few years than any of the state companies ever have.

devnull

alcaline wrote: »

You where told wrong.

Well you should speak to your colleagues in Irish rail because they were the ones who told me that when I made a complaint to them which obviously fell on deaf ears.

alcaline

devnull wrote: »

Well you should speak to your colleagues in Irish rail because they were the ones who told me that when I made a complaint to them which obviously fell on deaf ears.

Of course it fell on deaf ears, it not them on twitter or Facebook, why would they care?

alcaline

devnull wrote: »

You remind me of a poster who was here under a different username before, in the Ask me Anything thread about Dublin Bus where you inaccurately blamed the NTA for everything, and you've already been caught out on another thread about the Free Travel Pass validation.

Anyway, I don't happen to believe that. There was a direction from the NTA which said the minimum times that it must be staffed, but this does not stop Irish Rail posting updates outside that times, even if they do not answer tweets.

It also doesn't explain why Irish rail are incapable of informing their staff or providing announcements at stations the vast majority of times before this and why they ignore their obligations under EU regulations to update and compensate passengers on delays.

The NTA have done far more for proper public transport integration in the last few years than any of the state companies ever have.

Whats this rant about?
I told you what is actually happening with the twitter and Facebook, it is run by outside contractors.
So when you complain about IE,DB,BE on twitter and Facebook it then up to them to pass on this complaint to IE,DB,BE, if they don't pass it on, how do IE,DB,BE know that a complaint have come in?
How can you fix a problem if you have not been told about it and don't know it exists?

LXFlyer

alcaline wrote: »

Whats this rant about?
I told you what is actually happening with the twitter and Facebook, it is run by outside contractors.
So when you complain about IE,DB,BE on twitter and Facebook it then up to them to pass on this complaint to IE,DB,BE, if they don't pass it on, how do IE,DB,BE know that a complaint have come in?
How can you fix a problem if you have not been told about it and don't know it exists?

This is just wrong full stop.

Irish Rail run their own Twitter and Facebook and so do Dublin Bus.

devnull

alcaline wrote: »

How can you fix a problem if you have not been told about it and don't know it exists?

If Irish Rail don't know that trains are not running or cancelled before 7.30am unless someone tweets them when passengers are waiting helplessly in the hope a train will turn up, then that is a damning indictment of how poor their internal communications are.

alcaline

lxflyer wrote: »

This is just wrong full stop.

Irish Rail run their own Twitter and Facebook and so do Dublin Bus.

Who told you that?
It is a outside contractor, as someone who works for DB when the new contracts for DB where given all of this was explained to us.

alcaline

devnull wrote: »

If Irish Rail don't know that trains are not running or cancelled before 7.30am unless someone tweets them when passengers are waiting helplessly in the hope a train will turn up, then that is a damning indictment of how poor their internal communications are.

Sure you would be on here complaining that the staff where in the station looking at twitter on their phone instead of sweeping the platform.

devnull

alcaline wrote: »

Sure you would be on here complaining that the staff where in the station looking at twitter on their phone instead of sweeping the platform.

In a properly functioning railway system both happen.

The first DART's leave at just after 6am. If one of them is not running or has broken down on the way out of the depot, is it really too much to ask that someone actually tells people about it, rather than people waiting at a platform for 20-30 minutes with the display being stuck on x minutes because the train hasn't left the terminus?

Even when there is announcements they are barely coherent. The only person who is good at making clear courteous announcements is the lady at Connolly, but often she is not the one doing it and some guy with a very unclear voice and muffled speech is doing it instead. The lady actually seems to give a toss whereas the rest couldn't care less and see it as an inconvenience.

Jamie2k9

devnull wrote: »

In a properly functioning railway system both happen.

The first DART's leave at just after 6am. If one of them is not running or has broken down on the way out of the depot, is it really too much to ask that someone actually tells people about it, rather than people waiting at a platform for 20-30 minutes with the display being stuck on x minutes because the train hasn't left the terminus?

To be fair they are generally pretty good about big disruption to DART services, in some cases isolated faults are a little sketchy with them. Overall I think they do a fairly good job on twitter but always room for improvement.

alcaline

devnull wrote: »

In a properly functioning railway system both happen.

The first DART's leave at just after 6am. If one of them is not running or has broken down on the way out of the depot, is it really too much to ask that someone actually tells people about it, rather than people waiting at a platform for 20-30 minutes with the display being stuck on x minutes because the train hasn't left the terminus?

Even when there is announcements they are barely coherent. The only person who is good at making clear courteous announcements is the lady at Connolly, but often she is not the one doing it and some guy with a very unclear voice and muffled speech is doing it instead. The lady actually seems to give a toss whereas the rest couldn't care less and see it as an inconvenience.

For all we know the rail staff are ringing the phone of the twitter crew of the hook to inform them of the breakdown, but its pointless as they don't start work until 730.

alcaline

devnull wrote: »

Even when there is announcements they are barely coherent. The only person who is good at making clear courteous announcements is the lady at Connolly, but often she is not the one doing it and some guy with a very unclear voice and muffled speech is doing it instead.

Come on now, this is a world wide occurrence, the announcements everywhere are hard to understand.

devnull

Jamie2k9 wrote: »

To be fair they are generally pretty good about big disruption to DART services, in some cases isolated faults are a little sketchy with them. Overall I think they do a fairly good job on twitter but always room for improvement.

if it's between 8am to 6pm during the week it's okay. But if it's late at night or before 7.30am or at the weekend there is no information whatsoever.

devnull

alcaline wrote: »

For all we know the rail staff are ringing the phone of the twitter crew of the hook to inform them of the breakdown, but its pointless as they don't start work until 730.

There should be a much better way of notifying staff than phoning them, it's not like we're in the early 90s. If a train breaks down at 6.30 the way it works in most civilised countries is driver informs central control, who make an announcement across all stations at once and update the displays themselves website and twitter and notify staff by some form of notification on their phone or computer in the ticket office. That is how it works in other countries.

But here half an hour after the train is due nobody still knows anything because the internal communication is piss poor.

alcaline wrote: »

Come on now, this is a world wide occurrence, the announcements everywhere are hard to understand.

Yet one lady can seem to manage it fine? You should go on the London underground, old systems, old infrastructure but the quality of information is vastly better and more easy to understand than on Irish Rail both at stations and on train. The onboard PIS system actually works on the trains. On Irish Rail on the Tokyi DARTS it's either turned off or completely lost almost all of the time, I've never seen a train on the London Underground get lost or have a non working PIS system.

Just because some countries do a poor job of it and some operators do, doesn't mean we can't do better than them. But it's the usual Irish "That'll Do" attitude and people wonder why this country is stuck in the past when it comes to infrastructure and healthcare and so many other things, people accept second best way too often

alcaline

devnull wrote: »

if it's between 8am to 6pm during the week it's okay. But if it's late at night or before 7.30am or at the weekend there is no information whatsoever.

Sure thats the time the outside contractors operate the twitter and Facebook accounts.
Why would you expect a service outside of their working hours?

Avatar MIA

In the recent past I spent approx 2 years heavily relying on IR for commuting to work.

I still have a huge sense of relief when public transport makes the news when after a split second I realise it's no longer an issue for me.

alcaline

devnull wrote: »

There should be a much better way of notifying staff than phoning them, it's not like we're in the early 90s. If a train breaks down at 6.30 the way it works in most civilised countries is driver informs central control, who make an announcement across all stations at once and update the displays themselves website and twitter

The staff don't run the twitter or Facebook, so how can they update it?

devnull

alcaline wrote: »

Why would you expect a service outside of their working hours?

If Irish Rail provide a service from 6.00am, there should be adequate procedures in place to ensure the proper running of a railway service from that time regardless of everything else.

Whether there is staff in Social Media or not, this still doesn't explain why they are not able to make announcements at stations or place messages on the platform displays.

alcaline

devnull wrote: »

If Irish Rail provide a service from 6.00am, there should be adequate procedures in place to ensure the proper running of a railway service from that time regardless of everything else.

Whether there is staff in Social Media or not, this still doesn't explain why they are not able to make announcements at stations or place messages on the platform displays.

The whole twitter and Facebook is a requirement of the contract drawn up by the NTA, they set the terms. So why are IE,DB,BE on the receiving end of you anger.

devnull

alcaline wrote: »

The whole twitter and Facebook is a requirement of the contract drawn up by the NTA, they set the terms. So why are IE,DB,BE on the receiving end of you anger.

I did not even mention Social Media in my last post, thanks for YET AGAIN avoiding answering a question directly. You would do well as a trade union leader as a politician

I'll say again:
This still doesn't explain why they are not able to make announcements at stations or place messages on the platform displays before 7.30am.

If Irish Rail provide a service from 6.00am, there should be adequate procedures in place to ensure the proper running of a railway service from that time and communicate with the public should that not be possible in some form or other.

alcaline

devnull wrote: »

If Irish Rail provide a service from 6.00am, there should be adequate procedures in place to ensure the proper running of a railway service from that time and communicate with the public should that not be possible in some form or other.

It must not be a requirement of the contract drawn up by the NTA.
Resources are spread thin, so why do something the NTA don't deem necessary?