Taxi Driver Online

£50,000 transfer fees for train drivers
From the archive, first published Wednesday 20th Sep 2000.

A train company is proposing football-style transfer fees of £50,000 for drivers to prevent them being poached by rival operators.

The move by Connex is aimed at making up for a shortfall of drivers.

The firm is now spending about £10 million training 250 new drivers and wants to protect its investment from other companies who may try to lure them away.

Connex is now asking the Shadow Strategic Rail Authority to consider introducing measures where rival companies would have to pay for the drivers' training costs - an average of £50,000 - before being allowed to offer them jobs.

The firm also proposes that all rail companies should pay into a central fund to pay for driver training.

Driver shortages have become so acute at Connex, which runs services across Sussex, that it may have to cut future timetables unless it can make up the shortfall.

A Connex spokesman said staff poaching was causing the firm great difficulties, especially as working hours were being reduced.

He said: "We regard £50,000 spent on training a driver as a contribution towards the industry and we want the industry and not just Connex to pay for it.

"We are in discussion with the SSRA to see how this could be resolved. We would rather have a fund for contributions by all train companies for the cost of training, which is high."

Connex is competing with Govia to run the South Central franchise. The result is expected this autumn.

A war of words erupted between the two companies earlier this month when Govia accused Connex of "poaching" its staff by sending letters to drivers.

Connex claimed it was approaching ex-employees who had been poached by Govia to begin with.



Imagine spending £50K to train someone and then they leave and work for a rival firm

CC

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Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that.
George Carlin

The way we were taught the knowledge was that we were given a loose leaf folder with 25 roads on each page, obviously with the names of the roads at each end, ie: Silver Avenue: (South) Gold Avenue
(North) Ruby Road
(East) n/a
(West) n/a
then at the end of the book a list of all the establishments
We learnt either 1 or 2 pages each eve (25 or 50 roads) and each day got tested. It took about half hour/40 mins. each day Monday - Thursday. Whole thing only took 2 - 3 months for the district i learnt. He had all the old test papers and at the end of the course it's those we concentrated on. He sat at a computer reading out the names and we'd give names of each end. He reckons the £1000 is to pay his wages and for the computer system.

How many drivers are there on each course?

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IDFIMH

The thing is you don't Rent the train off the company. and they don't take it away from your house

I wonder if he is sueing the other 5 drivers, if so he stands to make another 5 grand on top of yours, maybe in your best interest you should contact with those drivers and see if they also are being sued, then maybe if he is, between you all you can get a solicitor, share the cost, note down every cost you use to defend this, things like telephone calls, motor expences, loss of earnings etc etc to add on to your your counter claim

make sure you fill in the county court paper work correctly and be sure to put down you are defending this action, think you have to put down a brief summary with the paperwork of your defence, and that you are counter claiming the action, failure to do so gives him an advantage, he will get judgement in the 14 days from date of documents being served in default
is he sueing at a local county court near where you live, if not you can ask the court to move the venue court near to where you live