(29 Mar 2017, 6:13 pm)James101 wrote BIB: I think the system probably is 'cast-iron'. My comment was in response to northern156's suggestion drivers could have the bank holiday weekend off because they fancied it. 

I see your argument for the 4 week notice for an issued roster, but it's only reasonable to expect GNE to impose the same rules on driver's holiday or day off requests. In effect, if a driver doesn't request to be off on a particular day with 4 weeks notice, they can't expect to get it. 

The loadings on some key routes have been so high on Good Friday in the past have been so high I'd suggest GNE could even staff then with agency drivers and still turn a profit.

If it had been a normal Mon-Fri, then yes I'd expect a good amount of drivers to be at work for the amount of buses on the go.
However, with it being a bank holiday (with a near Sunday service resulting in that), drivers would be entitled to have the day off as long as enough of them are in for the services ran. This would be forecasted a good way back and as you can probably imagine, a good number of drivers would have that as a day off.

To then change it again and say instead of the previous number of drivers, we need more, is as Adrian says, detrimental to a good work-life balance which unions would be dead against.