The duty sheets for the Olympics have appeared and from a quick perusal it appears that on weekdays there is only one late shift that finishes after 01:30 and qualifies for the extra payment. I didn’t check what the situation was at weekends or how many of the weekend shifts are longer than 8 hours but ten shifts during the Games themselves and another five during the Paralympics split between the 120 or more TOps at my depot means that the majority of us will be getting the £500 bonus and little else. Perhaps the Daily Mail, The Sun and all the other Tory rags that were howling in indignation about us getting an extra £1800 or whatever for working the Olympics will make up the shortfall.

Indeed it could be the case that no one gets anything more than the £500. We are all being sent a memo from management where we will be asked to indicate whether we are willing to work the longer and later shifts or not but there is a rather disturbing bit in the blurb that goes along with it which states:-

“it is expected that Train Operators who volunteer for enhanced working would not undertake mutual changeovers, one to one or via a syndicate”.

If you’ve been following this blog for a while you’ll know that I don’t particularly like doing earlies or working down the W&C to the extent that I recently joined a “Mafia” in order to avoid those shifts. As we probably won’t know what duties we will be doing until about a month before that means that if I tick box saying I’m willing to work the longer or later shifts I could end up with two weeks of earlies with some down the Drain while for others it could mean working lates or nights that they don’t want.

So what seemed to be settled is now up in the air again thanks to management sticking in a line of text that they must have realised would be a problem for a lot of TOps.

I’m off for two weeks, no doubt there’s going to be all hell breaking loose while I’m away but frankly I could give a monkeys. Safe travellin’, amigos!