CRIME & SAFETY
Some verbatim quotes and quote extracts from the focus groups
1) “They might be in the local news but the person working on the track gets hit by a train does not get anywhere near the publicity that somebody travelling on the train gets. A member of the public gets hit on a level crossing, it’s big news. A guy gets bowled over in the middle of a Saturday night from a possession – ‘Track worker injured’. One line.”
2) “Very, very senior management are trying to put out the safety message and I think they’re doing quite a good job of putting out the safety message at a very high level. But the people in the middle of the sandwich, from section manager up, are saying ‘yes I hear what you’re saying but I can’t deliver what you want’.”
3) “You’ve also got people driving to diff erent places of work instead of work being local, and being familiar; so all that local knowledge has dropped.”
4) “But also they’ve also weakened down the protection arrangements, so when you used to have possessions you would have it properly planned and everything, engineer possessions, T3s [‘absolute possessions’]. They’re now weakening that down because that doesn’t give you the access to the track as quick, so they make them at what they call line blockages which basically only then has a signaller protecting the people out on the ground. And they don’t always put any secondary protection, so we used to always have a secondary protection, so belt and braces that the guys on the ground knew. What you’ve now got is eight people on the ground, with the only protection being in the signal box and yet that signaller as I said before, could have seven of these blocks. But the reason they’ve done it is because of the time constraints from the train companies to get access to the track. So it almost seems like Network Rail, because of fi nancial constraints, is actually led by the TOCs.”
5) “Yes, there are still some people who really love the railway but there’s a lot of people who’ve retired over the last four or fi ve years who lived for the railway and who could not wait to get out.”
things like track maintenance. So, one concern is that you didn’t seem to have safety experts operating solely with regards to safety.”
Network Rail is in the process of overhauling its site safety procedures to tackle issues like this, by ensuring the person in charge of the job is also responsible for safety, stopping staff from tier 2 and 3 contractors from having that core responsibility for safety (they may feel unable to stop a job for safety reasons if they depend for employment on the people whose work they are stopping), and reviewing the range of safety roles that exist (see page 43).
Sample size issues
The researchers organised two focus groups, both held in London, facilitated by the TUC, involving RMT, TSSA and Unite members within Network Rail and its major contractors.
The two two-hour focus groups had 11 participants in total: two full-time trade union offi cials (one RMT, one TSSA); fi ve directly- employed Network Rail staff ; and four staff employed by contractors.
RTM asked whether this was a fair sample, especially as all the participants were union members. Prof McKay said: “The focus group members were not presenting us with a
completely negative assessment of everything. It seemed to me that they had genuine concerns and were trying to raise serious issues. We guaranteed total anonymity. Not even the TUs know who said what.”
Even Network Rail’s operations director Robin Gisby said that despite this report being based on the views of just fi ve of its 35,000-strong total workforce, parts of it echo its own recent analyses, and give Network Rail an interesting glimpse into areas it needs to overcome and address.
He added: “We are very appreciative of the ongoing, constructive dialogue with our trade unions about improving the safety and productivity of these essential and skilled workers.”
Under-reporting incidents
Another issue raised by the report was an increase in the under-reporting of incidents involving safety concerns. Among the participants there was a widely-held view that reporting had not led to changes, and that non- reporting had now entered into the culture of the rail industry.
Prof McKay said: “Meeting targets seems to have over-run the desire or need to report safety
rail technology magazine Aug/Sep 14 | 45
concerns. You need a system where workers are aware of the fact that reporting safety – even if it has an impact on targets – will not aff ect their employability or their future employment.
“This is about delivering a diff erent culture, but one of the things that struck us is that they [participants] were quite clear that there is a senior level commitment to safety. So they didn’t doubt that there is an overall institutional commitment to safety, but what they were saying is that the commitment is impeded by what has to happen on the ground and how work is organised.”
A focus on more maintenance at weekends is also said to have had a consequent negative impact on the personal and family lives of staff . There was also a strongly-held view that wages had declined in relation to those in comparable industries.
Zero-hours contracts and fatigue
In both focus groups, the issue of zero-hours contracts was raised in relation to contractors. Workers on zero-hours contracts were doing safety-critical work, participants said. Such workers felt pushed into accepting work even when they knew that they were not fi t to carry it out (for example, due to tiredness or fatigue) as they were concerned that if they did not do this they might be excluded from future off ers of work.
Additionally, as an accumulation of these factors, participants felt that there would be another major incident before long, that it was not a case of ‘if’ but ‘when’.
Prof McKay said: “That came through in a number of the diff erent interventions. Participants were convinced that what was happening was going to lead to a serious incident at some stage.
“I was also surprised at the hours some of the people were working, and the way they were working. I was equally surprised at the use of zero-hour contracts and long Continued overleaf >
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