Employment rights

COMMITTING suicide on a railway line is a violent criminal act. Its effects on the train and tube drivers, guards and station staff who witness it can be so devastating that it can put an end to a career. That is why since 1990 workers on the railway have been able to claim compensation for the trauma of seeing someone commit suicide by jumping in front of a train or from having to deal with the aftermath of the suicide. It took a legal battle all the way to the Appeal Courts and debate in the House of Lords to persuade a then Tory government to include injury to railway workers caused by railway trespass in the Criminal Injuries Compensation Scheme. And now a Labour government wants it removed. In its consultation, Compensation and Support for Victims of Crime, the Home Office described the inclusion of railway workers in the scheme as “an anomalous provision”. It said it wants to find alternative ways of compensating drivers and others for the horror of witnessing suicides. But how? How is trespass on the railway and accidental injury an anomaly? If the government saw fit to bring railway workers into the scheme 14 years ago, what has changed to make the provision anomalous? The answer is of course nothing, apart from government spending. The CICS pays £200m a year to the victims of crime. Around £12 million goes to people injured through criminal acts at work. Just £0.5 million is linked with trespass on the railway because the majority of railway workers get the bare minimum under the CICS’s inflexible tariff scheme of £1,000 for witnessing a suicide. So in David Blunkett’s drive to slash the fund for victims of crime, railway workers are a cheap target, easy to describe as an anomaly because, thankfully, the incidence of suicide on the railway is still relatively uncommon. It is not just railway workers the government has in its sights. It is also proposing to find alternatives to state compensation for everyone injured in the course of duty. That means the police, NHS staff, teachers, bank workers, shop assistants, Jobcentre staff and anyone else who might face violent attack while at work. It would also include station staff who so often face violent assault at work. What are the alternatives to the CICS for workers? Making the employer pay appears to be the government’s preferred option in all cases where a worker is injured in the course of their duty (other than in trespass/suicide cases). Ministers are suggesting that compensating workers might be linked to arrangements that exist for when an employee is injured in a workplace accident, for example through Employers’ Liability Insurance. Employers are, the consultation document states, generally best placed to mitigate the risks to their employees. How can that be when it comes to crime? Whether it is a violent mental patient who attacks an NHS worker, a pupil who hits a teacher, a drunken passenger who assaults a London Underground worker, or someone intent on killing themselves with a train, what can an employer realistically do? Sure, there are health and safety practices that can reduce risk, and where it can be shown that the employer failed in their duty to protect a worker from assault then they could and would be sued in any case – for far higher amounts of damages than are available under the CICS. We’re hearing now that the Home Office might well back off from stopping any workers receiving compensation from the Scheme for workplace violence. But the railway worker suicides and trespass cases are still very much under attack. In the case of railway workers and suicide, what is the government seriously suggesting? While maintenance of fencing is of course vital to reduce trespass on the railways, short of somehow enclosing the entire railway network, Jubilee line extension style, how can employers stop anyone seriously intent on suicide? Again, if they could and they didn’t, then we’d sue them. But the government isn’t seriously suggesting that the employers are responsible for compensating railway workers who witness suicides. It just wants to end their right to compensation for criminal injury altogether. Ministers appear to believe that it is somehow in bad taste for railway workers to receive compensation for the trauma of witnessing a suicide. Isn’t it in far worse taste to deny compensation to people whose lives are wrecked by the criminal act of a person who chooses the railway as their preferred method of ending it all? RMT news – Employment rights Compensation rights under threat Jennie Walsh of RMT solicitors Thompsons looks at government attempts to undermine compensation rights for rail workers 25