A system for recording incidents or near misses that could have led to dangerous situations must be established. The safety culturemust encourage individuals to report situations, even if the individual reporting is involved in the situation. Railway companies should establish safety managements systems clearly setting out how the work is to be safely carried out. Involvement and participation of workers and unions is a crucial part of both any meaningful incident reporting system and safety management system. Safety management systems should be open and transparent, upholding principles of ‘whistleblowing’ and ‘no blame culture’.


It is also important that independent safety regulatory and investigative authorities are established. They must be independent frominfrastructure managers and railway companies and be responsible for approval of the safety management systems of companies, carry out inspections to monitor that the day to day operations are conducted in a safe way and have the authority to stop the railway operations in the case of serious observed safety breaches or non compliances. Special links should be established from unions to the safety authorities to enable the free reporting of safety concerns. Safety authorities should not be involved in activities related to the development and promotion of open market conditions. Also, safety authorities must publish the results of compliance audits.


In some countries, trade unions have taken the initiative to establish safety committees, in many cases jointly with management, at company level to discuss safetymatters and in this way try to establish a common understanding with the management on how to deal with safety related issues. Whistle-blowers exposing problems and expressing safety concerns must not be punished for their actions. Workers are on the ground and they are the first to see problems.


In case of accidents


Every country should have an independent accident investigation body. It is especially important that it is independent from the criminal investigation system. The accident investigation body should also investigate incidents that might lead to serious accidents. The purpose of the investigation should be to find the root cause of the accident and go beyond mistakes made by individuals in other words they should not apportion blame. The important thing is to identify why the accident was allowed to happen and why it was not prevented. This is about establishing a just and fair culture to avoid future accidents. The ITF also strongly opposes the ‘my hands are clean’ culture, where management excuse themselves on the basis of acting according to procedures- if the accident happened, it is proof the procedures were inadequate.


The trade unions should be involved in the accident investigation and should have unlimited access to the results and details of the investigation.


Safety vs profits


Neo-liberal policies are a huge hindrance to the development of a sound safety culture. Safety costs money. When the hunt for profit is the main driving force behind the running of a railway company, the workers and the users of the railway face several challenges in keeping safe. Understaffing, reduced time for training and increased stress at work are all problems trade unions have to deal with.


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