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Originally Posted by injuneer
Telewest have 55 switches which were manned on a 1 man per switch basis, Ntl operated on 1 and a half switches per man and had about 70 odd switch engineers left after the last cull. I've heard that around 20 or so engineers will have to go now that they have rationalised the areas to cover both company's switches. I don't expect for one minute this will be the last round for switch engineers. Both Ntl and Telewest have a network of transit switches as well as the local ones. I doubt they will need both sets of transits in the near future. It is envisaged that all switches will be replaced by VOIP technology in the next 5 years or so anyway.  |
I dont suppose for one minute it will be the last cuts, they had 2 men per switch not that many years ago. To have one man per switch is almost impossible from an on-call point of view, its no wonder comments have been made about people not being happy with the callout rota. I did a very short spell of one-in-two call out rota, and I was very pi**ed off with the situation.
Even when there were 4 headend people spread between 2 sites, it averaged out more like 1-in-3 with holidays and sickness. And believe me the sickness will go up if they start tightning the screws even more. They can make all the threats they want about disciplinary procedures, but putting people under that sort of pressure will make them go off sick with stress.
I cant believe with 3 switch sites in South Wales, about 20 miles between the closest and about 60-70 miles between the furthest, how they can cope with one man per one and a half switches.
When there has been cuts before in switch, network and headend, people have been moved around to save them. These people are usually the more experienced who are not directly in the front line, I guess these guys must surely be at the end of the road now.
I bet the Telewest switch guys are really happy about the merger.