This weekends London Euston closed for a couple of days over the bank holiday weekend. Now, I just read that Liverpool Lime street station will be closed for 3 weeks.http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-merseyside-40290923
What do all of the employees of the train stations and all the shops and restaurants do during these closures? I’m sure it is probably easy enough to move the train company’s staff to other stations, but what about the Costa Coffee employees and other service workers? I might be able to survive 2 days without work if I was a service employee but there’s no way i could go 3 weeks without pay and I don’t want to be forced to use all my holiday time. It seems like a pain for all the shops and restaurants to try to reassign their employees for just 3 weeks and potentially cut into other employee’s hours at other locations.
At least in the UK, you don’t have any choice in the matter. You are entitled to a certain number of vacation days per year, but you don’t have final say over when to take these. I imagine that for most of the shops in the closed stations, the easiest thing for the employers would be to oblige the employees to take their vacation during the closure. If the employee doesn’t comply, their only recourse is to quit. That leaves three weeks for the employers to find and train a new employee, which probably isn’t too much of a hardship, given that most of these jobs are unskilled.
They get plenty of advance notice for these closures, so are able to plan holidays then. Note that permanent employees get 20 days annual leave every year.
As for coffee shops etc; I suspect that many of their employees are on zero hours contracts, so they are just told that they are not wanted on those days. This is a fact of modern life at the coalface.
For some of the chain concession places (I don’t think Lime Street has any little independent shops), they probably will lend staff out to other locations.
I’ve actually worked for Costa, and it was really common for staff to go work at other branches in the area temporarily, to cover staff holidays, provide extra cover for busy periods, help opening new stores and for training. I worked at another location over ten miles away from my normal store (but within walking distance of my house, which was why I was offered it) for two weeks to cover for a staff member there who’d been suspended for fiddling rewards card, and as our store was a 24 hour airport location, they’d borrow staff from the nearest other branch to cover for our work nights out. No big deal at all.
I’d expect some of the other companies would do similar things, especially given that they’d have notice about such a long closure, and no-one wants to reopen in a busy location with all new inexperienced staff. ‘Unskilled’ doesn’t mean no training, there’s still at least a couple of weeks learning how all their systems work and getting up to speed, not to mention that it takes time to advertise, interview, do background checks (they may do a proper criminal record check for all staff in a location like Lime Street Station) and get paperwork sorted out.
I’d guess that some staff would be encouraged to take holidays then, but they may also take the opportunity to do a deep clean/refit, which could keep some staff occupied for a while, then many would be going to other stores. If the company has a branch in the station where replacement trains are running from, I’d bet many would be going there, they’ll be crying out for extra temp staff to cope with their suddenly increased customer numbers, and maybe extended opening hours.
Decades ago I worked part time as a student in the local Wimpy burger joint. They got (mostly) taken over by Buger King and our store had to close for 3 weeks for a refit. My contract would nowadays be classed as a zero hour contract as I wasn’t guaranteed any number of hours per week, so I fully expected to get screwed. But they paid all of us our average weekly income from the past 3 months for the first 2 weeks. And then the 3rd week was training on the new burgers etc in an almost completed kitchen.
The stores may well get compensation from Network Rail in the form of reduced rent for a few months as well as no rent during the closure. That may be enough for the companies to pay any staff they can’t relocate a small retainer. Or they could pay the staff nothing and increase their profits.
That takes a lot longer than three weeks and they take “seeking work” seriously.
Back in the good ole days, students used to register as unemployed during the long summer vac. They would often get jobs as well with wages paid in cash… Nudge nudge; wink wink.
Of course, many employers these days come to some arrangement to keep experienced staff; it’s just not a legal requirement. Remember that these people get a reasonable wage and don’t depend on tips for a living. I should add that staff who have been there for a while will have staturay notice periods and cannot be fired without good reason and due process.
In the US government, this is covered. You probably have known about the shutdowns threatened nearly every year in October. This occasionally takes place, we were shut down at least once when I was a civil servant.
During a shutdown, no one can use annual leave or sick leave to offset the loss of pay. You also cannot volunteer to perform your job so there isn’t a huge backlog when you get back. However, in all cases where this actually happened, we were reimbursed a few weeks after the shutdown ended.
Before you actually get paid the benefits due to you, yes. Before you’re eligible for them, no.
Yes, hence my proviso about hoop-jumping. You need to attend regular and patronizing meetings with your case worker, provide evidence of your job search, fill in humiliating forms, etc.
You can start your claim straight away, but under the new Universal Credit rules the first week is disregarded. You don’t get your first payment until 6 weeks after the claim date.
I would expect that worldwide businesses close down for various reasons for varying amounts of time ranging from fire to moving to a different location to remodeling to shutting down production lines for annual model changes or a lack of demand for product…
UK train station closures and bank holiday rail work are two very popular topics on travel forums that I frequent often. I didn’t want to hijack a travel related thread with a question on UK employment practices.
Most Amtrak stations in the USA have very few services available at the station. Sometimes just vending machines, others might have a convenience store or a food truck nearby. For the big stations, I couldn’t imagine they’d completely shut down Union Station in Chicago for renovations. Of course, most USA cities only have one rail station, even if there is another one, it is often very far away and not easily connected by public transit.
In the this particular instance, it wouldn’t surprise me if most of the shops just stayed open for the duration. Since the Tube station would still have been open, that would have meant that the main concourse inside still had to be open to the public. Like most big stations, it’s also a substantial hub for bus routes. No doubt footfall was very substantially down, but there would still have been a fair number of people about.
(There’s the additional factor with Euston that many of the bars and eateries associated with it are completely outside the main building.)