North Yorkshire Moors Railway General Discussion

That seems to me to be an inverse way of looking at the situation. It seems to assume that volunteers are a hindrance, rather than a help, to the paid staff! To assume that fewer volunteers would necessitate fewer paid staff seems to me, at least, to be rather perverted logic! Perhaps I'm wrong but ~I've always worked on the principle that the volunteers reduce the workload of the paid staff, not that they increase it! It would be nice to see the logic that suggests I'm wrong explained in greater detail! Perhaps it could be tested by all the volunteers not turning up for a week or two and leaving the railway to by run exclusively by the paid staff? For a proper, significant and valid test it really needs to be for a lengthy period, though.

 

I think the P&DSR is a poor analogue.

Firstly, it is only about 1/3 the length of the NYMR, so correspondingly smaller infrastructure costs, and a lower motive power and carriage requirement to run a service of equivalent frequency.

Secondly, the railway is just one part of a wider network of boats and (I believe) buses, which sustain a very complex network of tours and itineraries. In a way, the railway is a feeder to the boat traffic. Strip away the boats, and I suspect the P&DSR would struggle as a standalone attraction. There are also significant economies of scale on the non-operating side (commercial / marketing etc) by the way the separate businesses are aligned.

The NYMR is three times as long as (but can't charge three times the fare) and has no equivalent to the boat traffic; I just can't see the business model being remotely comparable.

Can you point to anyone on your paid staff whose role exits, in part or wholly, to enable volunteers to have role? Let's suppose you became solely paid staff: your commercial team would still need to exist, the marketing team, would still need to exist, you'd still need to maintain the track, locos, carriages and so on. Are you really saying that if it wasn't for volunteers, you'd need fewer people in all those roles?

I can't help thinking that while you are keen to make the point that "a charity can't exist solely for the benefit of its members", you have slipped lock stock and barrel into a mindset of "a company can exist solely for the benefit of its paid staff". Your entire mindset seems to be based around the need to protect paid staff at all costs.

Tom

 

As a responsible ethical employer I would expect the NYMR to look after the interests of its employees. There are many back office roles that tend not to appeal to volunteers but that make it possible for them to perform the roles they volunteer for. The relationship is symbiotic. Volunteers and employees on the NYMR as it exists currently depend on each other. 60044 postulates what would happen if the volunteers all downed tools? The corresponding question is what would happen if the paid staff all walked out. In either case the railway would cease to function immediately.

 

I only proposed all volunteers "downing tools" as a method of testing the viability of the railway continuing to function without them. You have suggested that it could, I for one do not believe that. You have also suggested that if it were a commercial concern it could actually need fewer employees, but have yet to expound why that should be the case. Lastly, you make the case that the NYMR is a responsible, ethical employer and needs to look after the interests of its employees. Bearing in mind that it is effectively inextricably linked with an effective subsidy from the Trust, how does that fit in with the charitable objectives you are fond of mentioning; personally, I have yet to see one of its charitable objectives stated as being anything "to provide secure, lasting employment in preference to the cost of funding essential long term maintenance of its assets".

 

Hang on a minute! In post #7638 you say

Yet in post #7643 you say

So which is it? At one point you are arguing that a commercial-only NYMR would be possible (and you give the very strong subtext that without volunteers, the overall operating costs would be lower). A few posts later you are arguing that the railway is dependent on both volunteers and paid staff.

So which is it - a railway that could be commercial only and would be more cost-effective to operate without volunteers, or a railway that depends on its volunteers?

(And as an aside - you still haven't explained how, if the first proposition is true, which staff costs could be avoided, which is the inevitable conclusion to be drawn from both the view that a commercial-only railway would be cheaper to operate, and " If, heaven forbid, the NYMR was to become a purely commercial business it wouldn’t need the level of paid staff it has currently. That doesn’t mean they’re surplus now because they are necessary to enable a volunteer centric organisation to function. The reality that paid staff make it possible for volunteers to sustain the railway seems to be hard to grasp." Where in your current structure are the roles necessary to enable volunteering - and how much is the value of the volunteering they enable, relative to the costs of having those roles?

Tom

 

Again, we step back into a technocratic defence of the railway as a good employer. That’s a given.

The question is about balance, and how the charity fulfils its objectives. I have no objection to a good employer providing security and progression to employees. I do struggle with the idea that these basic needs are somehow off limits for volunteers, and that providing a return to volunteers is unacceptable. It is both false and, in setting up a dichotomy, encourages divisiveness in thinking.

It comes to a basic question, better articulated by @Jamessquared than I’m capable of, of how you generate impact using the labour of those, like you, who choose to give it freely (and indeed at personal cost) rather than as paid for activity. I’d go further than Tom, and say that if encouraging and nurturing volunteering is a financial cost to the railway, then something is grotesquely wrong.

 

As it exists currently the NYMR could not survive without its volunteers. I acknowledged that in a previous post. The possibility of operation as a purely commercial business would involve a much slimmed down operation requiring fewer staff. That reflects the exercise done some years ago that showed the optimum financial model was just two return trains a day to Whitby. The resource required to sustain that would be a fraction of today’s level. Directly the Trust doesn’t employ anyone and ideally the subsidy should be the other way round with the railway operating company generating funds for the charity. In any event I’m sure that the Charity Commission would expect that even those indirectly employed in helping to achieve the charitable purposes would be treated responsibly and ethically.

 

... .. But you have previously said that the Trust and PLC are inextricably linked! The PLC has its losses made up using Trust funds, so although employment contracts lie with the PLC, so their pay is effectively being subsidised by the Trust so I think you arguments are somewhat flimsy, at best. Should ethical employment considerations be followed so far as to endanger the survival of both organisations? Do you see that as a reasonable conclusion for the Charity Commission to accept?

 

Being blunt, I doubt the Charity Commission can afford to give two hoots about how a legally separate company conducts its employment - they've too little capacity for their regulatory duties as it is.

As much to the point, treating employees responsibly and ethically is not the primary duty of an employer - and certainly not of a charity. Employment law governs how employees must be treated, but that employment is always based on the needs and purposes of the employer.

I, and I suspect others, find it personally offensive to have concerns for the structural health of the organisation misrepresented as implying that we wish people to be made redundant. That is absolutely not the case.

What I do observe is an organisation that depends on volunteers has, for the sector, a very high paybill relative to income, and is making significant losses. The idea that it is sustainable to not look to increase the role of volunteers seems to me to be for the birds. What I then observe, and suspect that neither CC nor (God help us if it should happen) administrators or DfT inspectors would think very highly of a set up in which the charitable purposes so recently modified to specifically include the promotion of volunteering were being made subsidiary to a determination that volunteers are somehow to be discounted from influence. To recap, the relevant purposes are as follows (my emphasis):

 

It would certainly be ironic if the responsible and ethical employer goes bust, putting all the employees out in the street. Surely the very top priority of a responsible and ethical employer is to succeed as a business - so their employees don't all wind up in the street?

Noel

 

Again, that should be a basic standard for any organisation.

 

But an organisation’s reputation as an employer can directly affect its ability to attract and retain the staff it needs. The NYMR’s role as a substantial local employer has successfully influenced grant awarding bodies and is hugely significant in terms of relations with local and regional government.

 

Again, the ground is moving.

I do not suggest that any employer should be anything other than "good". From my point of view, that's a matter of basic ethics; I fully recognise that there are then also reputational reasons to be good employers in terms of both being able to attract good employees and in relationships with external bodies.

However, fine words butter no parsnips.

If there isn't the money, there won't be the jobs - or a railway. That employment is there for a purpose, and that purpose needs to be primary.

That brings us back round to the role of volunteering. The clamour for enhanced volunteering is not because of a desire to render people redundant, but because of a deep felt sense that the balance is wrong - and that this jeopardises the railway's future. Organising the railway workforce so that skills are transferred and retained, and to get the most from the free labour being offered, should be a no-brainer - not something to be feared. If that is genuinely so difficult, then that raises real issues.

And as the spectre of the Charity Commission has been raised, statements by a trustee explicitly disdaining the objectives only recently committed might be of great interest to them.

 

So you are saying that it is impossible to reduce the numbers of employees in an ethically responsible way? How does that tally with earlier statements by you that employee numbers have been reduced in recent years? I will repeat, as it doesn't seem to have sunk in, that none of us commenting here really want to see redundancies at the NYMR, but nor do we want to see it dragged down by an unsustainable pay bill. Equally, we do not wish to see necessary track repair and renewal works unable to go ahead as a result of a lack of funds (which may also be a false economy if it leads to an increase in repair bills as a result of broken springs on locos and rolling stock - or worse if the state of the track causes safety concerns at ORR). In the end, though, these concerns come down to the poor financial performance in recent years, and that poor performance seems to lie with its roots in a series of poor advertising and commercial decisions by the PLC staff - who seem to be solely responsible for these areas.
I don't have a problem with paid members of staff struggling with absolutely minimal budgets for even materials for repairs, bu I really do question whether they are being unfairly asked to shoulder more than their fair share of the ongoing hardships. I have asked the question before and have not received an answer - if there have been reductions in recent years, where have they come from? I'm not looking for names, just the numbers per department, and whether they were redundancies or natural wastage. Surely those figures can't be commercially sensitive?

 

As to the last comment the charitable purpose is not the promotion of volunteering as a benefit to the railway. That’s a given. It’s promotion of the health , social and welfare benefits of volunteering as a social good. That’s not inconsistent with simultaneously protecting the NYMR’s reputation as a good responsible employer.

 

Red herrings! Sometimes even the most socially responsible charities (those delivering social care services - which, arguably the NYMR does not!) have disclosed plans to cut their staff numbers by 45% in recent months - e.g. Christian Aid, Oxfam - so it can be done by employers who are seemingly no less ethical than the NYMR - and it seems to me to be for much the same reasons - survival!"

 

I didn't suggest that they were inconsistent. I suggested that if the railway isn't living and breathing that promotion, in the terms in which they are laid out in the objectives, it is not fulfilling those objectives. To repeat, the objective is as follows:

The advancement of citizenship, community development and individual wellbeing for all ages, backgrounds and ethnicities through the promotion of volunteering, learning and training including training and development in at-risk heritage skills.​

 

It seems ironic that you seem to be having to remind the underlying principles of these objectives to someone who I think largely wrote them!

 

Not sensitive as far as I am aware but I suggest the appropriate way to ask that question is at a Staff and Volunteer open forum or the AGM.