CRIME & SAFETY
travelling arrangements to get people – particularly track
maintenance people – into the areas where they needed to work.
“In my own sector we have temporarily employed people, but inevitably they spend quite a lot of time trying to think where the next job is going to be. That is not a situation which is going to encourage safe working practices.
“To me the situation isn’t sustainable. I’m sure senior people in the industry will explain how it is sustainable, but I can’t see how it is. And I can’t see the sustainability of an industry that isn’t creating safety specialists.”
Skills gap
Additionally, there were concerns raised about the ongoing skills gap in the industry, given the age profile of many sections of Network Rail.
This is a topic that NSARE, the National Skills Academy for Railway Engineering, has analysed in-depth for Network Rail, as reported in RTM in recent editions.
Prof McKay added that some of the good things people talked about were the apprenticeships and training at Network Rail, which most respondents rated very highly.
“The problem is that they say the working 46 | rail technology magazine Aug/Sep 14
conditions people had after training meant that there was an enormous drop-out rate,” she said.
“So the industry, in their view, was spending large sums of money on training people to a very high level and then other industries were taking advantage of this.”
Recommendations
Prof McKay, who was formerly an employment law researcher at the Labour
Research
Department (LRD), added that, in her view, if the industry was interested in safety and how best to spend its money, it needs to look at why there seems to be a relatively high drop-out rate of trained personnel.
The report recommends that the industry needs to move away from its attempts to confine much of the track maintenance to weekends and re- consider the allocation of jobs on the basis of their multi-tasking responsibilities.
In particular there is a need to separate responsibility for budgets from those of safety.
Additionally, the industry has been advised to conduct a detailed review that takes account of the age profile of its existing staff and which also looks at the reasons for staff movement into other employment, to understand what
the workforce of the future will consist of, particularly in terms of its skills profile. On top of this, the industry needs to urgently clamp down on zero-hours contracts.
Prof McKay added: “Looking at it from a non- specialist point of view, but as someone who has a lot of specialism in employment law and work conditions, I think long working hours must also be addressed.
“We know that tiredness increases safety risks, and zero-hour contracts issues – again this unknown factor – of who is working elsewhere and how do you know they haven’t come straight off another job? – needs to be addressed.
“I also think changing the distances and travelling times is important. We were quite shocked to hear of some people travelling 100 miles to do work on line maintenance. This is just not an acceptable or cost- effective way of working.
“I do hope that this research will act as a wake- up call to the industry.”
Professor Sonia McKay FOR MORE INFORMATION
The WLRI report is at - W:
http://tinyurl.com/ohc66oh
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