Industrial Action by Underground Workers

Today, the RMT and TSSA unions combined to instigate a withdrawal of labour by Union members working for London Underground. Having seen the propaganda put forward by both the Unions and Management, I feel I need to put my own views across as to why I believe that this dispute is necessary.

The management, quite rightly claim that this dispute is about the 800 job losses in Ticket Offices, and that in fact, no staff will be made redundant. What they have deliberately omitted, is that they have not covered any of the positions left vacant by people leaving the company, or retiring. So they have already reduced the current workforce by the necessary 800.

Instead of employing people to fill these vacancies, management have been covering the duties through overtime. When their budget was exceeded, they tried to cover the duties by relying on the goodwill of the staff to change duties and times at short notice. This is how they have been masking the reduction of workforce already achieved.

Having read the Evening Standard article about the strike yesterday, the way they reported this left me speechless as to the slant of their reporting! I thought that the press were supposed to make unbiased reports about events, not act as a glorified press release for the benefit of management!

Now, I fully understand why management want to reduce the workforce in an effort to reduce the cost of operating the Underground. What I feel aggrieved about is how they are not telling anyone the whole story. This is what I believe this dispute is really about....

London Underground have for the past few years concentrated on driving forward policies to reflect their catchphrase slogan "A World Class Service For A World Class City". With this in mind, they have set targets for customer service as a major priority. Staff are constantly being assessed on the quality of their interaction with the customers. These assessments are conducted through an independent company using mystery shoppers. On the strength of these reports, London Underground then decide whether to pay any bonuses to staff or not.

Last year, London Underground reduced the the frontline workforce by 1000. Customers using the service may have noticed that Ticket Office opening hours had been reduced, and fewer staff around the stations, especially early mornings, late at night, and at weekends. Management have decided to reduce the workforce the the bare minimum allowed to operate the stations. They leave no leeway for any unforeseen problems that arise. Management will tell you that the Oyster Card they have introduced is a runaway success and that is why their is no need for staff to be available in Ticket Offices, as the amount of sales through Ticket Office windows have dropped by over 70%. Of course this has happened. Management deliberately engineered this to happen. Don't believe me? Then think on this -

In the outer zone stations, they are staffed by supervisors who have Ticket Office licences to sell tickets to customers. Before the first round of Ticket Office closures, these Supervisors manned the Ticket Offices from 07:00 to 23:00. At present, management have instructed these same Supervisors to open only during the morning peak hours (07:00 - 10:00), and in some cases the evening peak too (15:30 - 19:30). The rest of the time they just sit in their office monitoring the station! Now this is where I believe the Unions missed a golden opportunity. There were some Supervisor's who tried to keep their ticket offices open as they originally had been. Management then threatened these Supervisor's with disciplinary action if they continued to open the Ticket Office outside the designated times. The Unions should have backed these Supervisor's, and forced a confrontation with management over this. I am sure that the media would have had a field day vilifying management over this ludicrous policy! It's still not too late for Union's to do this, so if any Union member reads this, then perhaps this idea could bear further scrutiny!

Now let's look at how these proposed cuts in Ticket Office staff will affect the customers (passengers) who wish to travel on the Underground. If you are coming to London for the first time, you will have two choices. If you go to a Station where the Ticket Office is closed (almost certain early morning, late at night), then you can buy a full priced ticket (minimum £4.00). You might be lucky to find a newsagent nearby, or possibly an Oyster card dispenser where you can purchase the Oyster card. Then you can use the Oyster Card to get a discounted journey for £1.80. There will be some stations, though, where you will not be able to purchase an Oyster card if the Ticket Office is closed. Management believe it is good customer service to tell the customer they must leave the station and go somewhere else to purchase an Oyster card.

Sorry, from a customers point of view, that is NOT offering a World Class Service!

O.K. You now have your Oyster card and start your journey. You try to "touch in" on the reader and it doesn't work. The staff member at the gateline tries to check your card, and finds that it is faulty. If you are lucky, you can go to the Ticket Office to get a replacement. At this station you entered, the Ticket Office is closed. Either you go and find a Ticket Office that is open, or you have to purchase a full priced paper ticket (£4.00 again), and then have to contact Oyster Card Helpdesk for a refund later. Or you can hope the staff member will let you travel for free (especially if you have no means to purchase another ticket!) to your destination, as at your destination, the Ticket Office there might be open. With the new proposed closures management want to implement, you might find the Ticket Office closed at your destination too! Now you have travelled for free to your destination, the staff there cannot direct you to an open Ticket Office, so they have to let you out of the Station. Result for you! You have just had a free journey, thanks to managements policy of closing Ticket Offices! There are a lot of savvy people out there who now take advantage of travelling very early, or very late, with faulty Oyster cards, knowing that they will get a free journey! I wonder if the customers who have to pay for their journey feel they are getting a World Class Service?

Now let's look at another problem. You have loaded up your Oyster Card with money, expecting it to last for all the journeys you intend to make. For some reason after a couple of journeys, it stops working due to insufficient funds. When a staff member checks your Oyster Card it shows there is unresolved journeys. Basically this means that the card hasn't registered the entry point or exit point on a journey. What a lot of people do not realise is the discounted journey is only given on completed journey's. If the card has not registered a complete journey, £4.60 is deducted instead of the £1.80 you expected. This can easily be resolved though, just go to the Ticket Office, and they can re-credit your card.... er.... sorry, the Ticket Office is closed. You can either add more money at the machine, or try phoning the Oyster help desk, only you will be held in a queue for a very long time before they answer, or even worse, this problem will happen outside their opening hours of 08:00 - 20:00 Monday to Friday only!! Again, do you consider this to be a World Class Service?

I could go on about all the different ticketing issues and problems customers face every day, that an open Ticket Office could quickly and easily resolve. If Management are determined to reduce Ticket Office hours, and ultimately close them eventually, why can't they be honest with the public and staff, and no longer promote their policy of providing a World Class Service. A World Class Service means that we should provide a service that does not inconvenience ANY of our customers AT ANY TIME. Closing Ticket Offices is doing precisely the opposite!

This is why I agree with the Unions fighting these job cuts, as I believe we will be providing a "Worse Class Service" instead of a "World Class Service". If the staff don't make a stand now, who's to say how far Management will go in their reduction of frontline staff in the future?

One busy afternoon

After getting home from work, I decided to cut the grass in the garden. Then I used the electric rake to clear up the cut grass. I was just about to get the strimmer out, when the phone rang...

It was my wife asking me to collect her from work. I said I would be there in 15 minutes. As this was at 16:45, I had a brainwave to prepare for the Mystery shop I had to do near where my wife works. As this survey had to be done between 17:00 and 20:00, it seemed sensible to incorporate this task into my journey across town.

As I was about to get in the car, my daughter decided she wanted to come along with me on the mystery shop. While I was waiting for her to change into different clothing (typical teenage psychology), the dog decided she wanted to come along too!

So after leaving home, collecting the wife from work, conducting a mystery shop, we all ended up at a nearby park and spent the next 90 minutes walking round the lakes in the afternoon sunshine. This was the first time I have visited this park in the 15 years I have lived in this area. There we're Celtic stones, a Peace Pagoda, and a strange maze (just marks in the ground) to wander around and see.

We all arrived back home worn out and hungry!
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Currently Reading... Again!

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Computer Gremlins finally beaten??

After spending nearly a month trying to get my computer to record VHS video, I think I have finally cracked it!

After struggling with problems of no video, then audio clicking noises, and lack of synchronisation between video and audio, I was getting nowhere fast! Every time I managed to sort one problem out, I created two other problems to fix! As you can see, I am not very good with finding a simple solution to my problems!

I finally found what actually works for me. I had to upgrade my sound card, and install a newer version of Pinnacle Studio. By upgrading from version 10 to version 14, I have at last managed to successfully transfer VHS video footage onto my computer, and burn a test DVD from it. It all worked!

My friend Warren has been pestering me, wanting to know when he can have his DVD! I could have simply given him a straight forward video transfer to him, but I decided that I can do better than that! I am now attempting to break the video footage into chapters, and create a menu for the DVD. This I have finally achieved, and as I write this, my other computer is busy preparing to write the video footage to disk.

When the computer has finished processing, I have one final task to complete. I have to create some artwork for the Jewel case inserts! I don't think I should have any major problems doing this, but judging from past experience, you never can tell!

My computer has Gremlins!

Last week, my friend Warren mentioned that he had a video recording that was very special to him and his wife. He had made enquiries about transferring it to DVD, but had discovered that the shops would charge a small fortune to do this, and also would refuse to touch any copyright material. I told Warren that I had a video capture card on my computer at home, and would be happy to transfer his video for him.

That's when the Gremlins came visiting!

Everything started off fine. I installed the software for the card, and connected the video. Picture and sound were showing on the computer, so I started the recording process.

After about 40 minutes, the computer froze. The keyboard and mouse would not respond. So I hit the soft reset button and restarted the computer. Once the computer was up and running again, I discovered that the video capture software had sound but no video!

I then spent hours un installing and re-installing the software numerous times. Eventually, the computer gave a message that essential drivers were corrupted or missing and that I would need to repair Windows!

I dug out my Windows XP disk and started the repair installation. The only problem was that all data would be wiped if I tried to repair Windows! The repair is no different from formatting the drive and starting again! Before I could repair the drive, I had to save all the essential data first.

I have 3 hard drives in my computer. What I did was to replace one hard drive with an old smaller one I had removed a couple of years ago. Install Windows on this temporary drive and then commence transferring data from the original C: drive onto one of the other hard drives. Once this was done, I formated the corrupt drive.

The next day, I started the slow process of re-installing all the software, and transferring the data stored on the other hard drive. I initially had a problem getting the internet to work, until I found I needed to load in some drivers for the motherboard.

This project had taken nearly 6 days to get to this stage (admittedly only 3 or 4 hours each day), but every time I sorted one problem, another took its place. Things were heading in the right direction until yesterday morning.

I had just loaded Microsoft Office onto the computer, and I decided to put the video capture card back into the computer. When I restarted the computer, I was asked to install the drivers. I put the CD into the computer and waited for the drivers to be loaded... And waited... And waited. Then I noticed that the computer had stopped recognising the CD and DVD drives!!!

When I resumed my battle this morning, I eventually found a website that explained what to do. I had to go into the Disk Management section and search for "UpperFilters" and "LowerFilters" and delete them. When I did this I got my CD and DVD drives back... Only to find all my PCI card slots had stopped working!

Next I tried to update the BIOS on the motherboard, only to find the computer crashed halfway through the process. Now I had to reset the BIOS by removing the graphics card to get to the on-board battery, remove the battery and temporarily set a "Jumper" to reset the motherboard. When I put it all back together again I found the video capture card worked... But the sound card didn't!

I tried to reset the BIOS again, only this time the computer refuses to start at all!!!

So its back to the drawing board again.
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Mystery Shopping Again!

This weekend, I have undertaken to do a number of mystery shops. This time it is to visit some Tesco Express outlets.

Since the recession started a couple of years ago, the amount of money I get reimbursed has dropped substantially. Now it is hardly worth the effort any more!

I have been a mystery shopper for over 7 years now. When I first started, we were paid an allowance for the use of our internet (£2), mileage allowance (£3.50 maximum with T.N.S.; unlimited with N.O.P.), an allowance towards the cost of the purchase, and finally, a small payment for actually doing the work!

After about a year, the internet payment stopped. Then N.O.P were amalgamated with GFK. They changed their payment system to a one off payment, varying from as low as £6 up to £26 for the more involved and complex tasks. These prices now include all purchases and travelling expenses! To add insult to injury, I have to pay income tax on it too!

T.N.S have also reduced their payments too, but not quite as drastic as GFK. Now they no longer pay any mileage for the assignments.

So far, I have done 2 surveys, and have another 2 to do in the next few days. The first one I did actually cost me money. I think now with the second survey, I have made a small profit (£2)!

What I normally tend to do is wait until the agencies become desperate to complete a survey within a certain deadline, and they call me to see if I can help them out. That is when I begin to negotiate a better price with them, specifically including mileage allowance. Sometimes they say yes, sometimes they will try and call someone else who might do it for less.

I have never wanted to do this sort of work for peanuts. I don't expect a lot, but I will be dammed if I should be out of pocket for doing the work!
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Day Excursion to Hilbre Island

Today, we decided to take a trip up towards Liverpool, or to be more precise, the Dee Estuary at West Kirby. The aim of our excursion was to visit Hilbre Islands. There are, in fact, actually three separate Islands. The only way to get to them is by either walking, or driving across the mud flats at low tide.




Hilbre Islands Ahoy!



As we walked across the mud flats, we were very glad that we had decided to wear Wellington Boots, as there were areas where we had to splash through water channels on our way to the Islands. Bonnie, our Golden Labrador, at first didn't want to cross the mud flats, and kept turning back heading for the shore. Once she got over her initial hesitation, there was no stopping her adventure!



Bonnie having a mad moment!

On the third and biggest Island is where the houses are, and the derelict lifeboat station, and the old Telegraph Station. The Lifeboat Station was decommissioned in 1938, and now is just the walls standing with no roof, and the slipway has half disintegrated. The house owners have to pay a ground rent to the Wirral Council. As soon as they stop paying the rent, the the Council do not renew the lease and remove the building. The Council's aim is to remove all the buildings eventually.

Largest, occupied Island

Whilst I was wandering around the Island, I got talking with one of the Rangers. The girls merrily went off exploring by themselves, while I chatted with the Ranger. This is where I got the information from above. He also told me that there were grey seals swimming off the end of the Island. I went out beyond the derelict Lifeboat building and had the pleasure of seeing a couple of seals swimming nearby!



Hello there!

Whilst watching for the seals to appear, a grey Heron decided to pay a visit, much to the annoyance of the sea gulls nearby. I managed to get a few interesting pictures of the gulls dive bombing the Heron!




Get out of here!

Finally, about five hours later we finally made it back to the car, exhausted!






Can I sleep now?