Everyone off sick

I was supposed to be on a spare duty today, so I was hoping to have an easy day. As soon as I booked on at my home station at 06:30, I was informed that a colleague at one of our group stations had phoned in sick at short notice, as I was spare I drew the short straw and got sent to supervise the station.

Get there about 06:45 and by the time I got there both the CSA (Customer Service Assistant) and the CSAMF(CSA Multi-Functional(Ticket-seller)) have decided to have the day off (sorry) "phone in sick". Unfortunately, there were no other spare staff on duty so I basically had to do all 3 jobs.

Manage to open the ticket office by 07:10, and a customer gets their ticket stuck in the gate, so I have to leave the ticket office and retrieve the ticket from the now defective gate. Then I report the said gate to CTS so they can send a technician to fix it. And on and on the day progressed, had to close the ticket office every few minutes to alter the customer information boards, do station checks, assist one or two train op's who couldn't see the platform cameras because of the sunlight, etc etc. I was glad when the late turn supervisor booked on duty.

From September we are supposed to be getting a new roster which takes the shorter working week into account. All the unions from RMT - TSSA have rejected the proposed rosters as they are just crazy. The new roster is supposed to more customer driven but it is seen as more of a way to reduce staff and save money.

Some stations are losing there entire quota of CSA's and the proposed rosters are for the supervisors to cover the gateline for the entire shift, as well as do platform check/duties, book on contractors, deal with complaints etc etc. Many stations are replacing full-time CSA's with part-time CSA's instead, but not at extreme hours (very early mornings & very late at night)

I hope it doesn't come to it, but I can foresee Mr Crow et al ballotting for strike action if the matter isn't resolved soon.