200 train jobs under threat in Alstom Pendolino cuts

The Oxley sidings is one of five sites that maintain and clean the trains and owner Alstom is planning a shake-up to make the operation more cost-effective.

Alstom built the tilting red trains and maintains them for Virgin which uses them on the West Coast Main Line, but after 16 years in service and in the face of competition from other, newer, trains, it is understood that the company needs to make them more cost-effective to operate.

That will involve a reduction in the number of people employed across the five sites, but none of the sites will be closed. The workforce is currently 1,200 strong – including more than 200 at the Alstom Traincare Centre at Oxley, overlooking Wolverhampton Racecourse – and the company is now consulting on proposals to reduce that number by around 200.

An Alstom spokesman said: "Alstom’s Pendolino fleet has been in service since 2002, and provides a high performing service to our customer. Given the current market context, we need to improve the competitiveness and efficiency of our maintenance activities while providing the same level of service.

"Alstom believes this can be achieved by consolidating our activities in fewer locations.

"We anticipate that this refocussing will unfortunately result in fewer jobs being required, and for this reason we have started consultations with trade unions and employees on a redundancy programme.

"Our top priority is to support our employees, through what we know will be a difficult process for all concerned, but this proposal is the right one to give the Pendolino as long a life as possible and preserve as many jobs as possible."

It is understood Alstom is hoping to secure the job cuts through voluntary redundancy.

Transport and travel union TSSA is among the unions involved in the talks. General secretary Manuel Cortes said: “TSSA will be meeting with Alstom and seeking to understand their justifications for the closures. But at the moment we’re not convinced that cost should trump safety and we want to see good quality, modern, safer trains that are maintained properly, not downgraded for a cheaper alternative.

“We will seek to minimise any job losses and we’re clear we are not in the business of selling out our members’ hard fought for terms and conditions for the company’s spurious economies.”

“The inevitable problem of our privatised franchising system with a fragmented approach to rolling stock procurement leads us here. Changing every time there’s a new franchise in town. If rail was in public ownership, it would be run in the interests of the public, not because the name on the door has changed.”

Alstom has been upgrading and modernising its sites in recent years, and in 2017 hosted a visit by Wolverhampton's mayor and two MPs to see how the 56-strong Pendolino train fleet was maintained and to see a new TrainScanner in operation.

The TrainScanner is able to automatically analyse data gathered by laser and 3D cameras, which goes off every time a train passes through a portal. It collects information on the condition of train equipment and then predicts its remaining service life.