TAKING TRACK SAFETY SERIOUSLY

www.rmt.org.uk :: july/august 2006 :: RMTnews 23 In a piece inexplicably entitled ‘Silly Season’, regular Railstaff contributor Graeme Bickerdike has decided to criticise my views published in the April edition of RMT News under the headline ‘Performance Above Track Safety’. Graeme claimed my article was a ‘grand exercise in table- thumping without any obvious grip on reality’, but I would suggest that it is his criticism that lacks a semblance of reality. The proposed extension of T12 would not be ‘largely cosmetic’ as he describes it, but a major shift in the way many staff are currently protected from the danger of trains while working on the track. Network Rail estimates the rule change will lead to an extra 60,000 occasions per year when staff will be required to use T12 rather than T2 as a means of protection. My concerns about the risks from such a proposal derive from the industry’s own research findings and safety data statistics which have led Network Rail to confirm the change will create at least one additional T12 irregularity every month. However, as they also acknowledge, being a single failure method of protection as opposed to a T2 which is a double failure method, any one of those T12 irregularities has a much higher potential of causing a multiple fatality accident. It only needs one thing to go wrong with a T12, and the only hope for the track staff then is if they manage to spot the train and jump clear in time. There is no back-up or double check, and that is of course the reason why this form of protection will not be allowed where the work could endanger a train. For some strange reason Graeme felt it was ‘utter claptrap’ for me to suggest that double standards were being applied, and that staff working on the track should be entitled to the same degree of protection as the passengers on a train. He also questioned my assertion that the proposed extension of T12 was motivated by a desire for improved productivity. In their defence, Graeme said the leading lights of the group who devised the changes had years of practical experience ‘on the tools’, but I would equally like to remind him that I also have 20 years experience of working on the track. No one has denied that a T12 is far quicker to arrange than a T2, and I find it hard to understand his argument that reducing the protection arrangements will provide the staff with greater safety. Graeme also criticised the union’s previous objection to the introduction of the COSS handbook, which he was personally involved in. The reason given for the production of this handbook was that the current rule book was not user friendly because the rules for a COSS were scattered over several hundred pages, and so were difficult to find. However, the same argument applied to a far greater extent to the rules for a train driver or signaller, but no-one was proposing a handbook for them. RMT’s view was that if it was agreed the current rule book was not user friendly, the right thing to do would be to re-write it, not issue a publication for just one set of staff that grouped and expressed the rules in a different way. This flew in the face of the 1999 public inquiry into the Southall train accident which recommended that the use of more than one document (whether rules, group standards or otherwise) to cover a single operational issue should be avoided, save where proper reasons exist for use of multiple sources. In the case of the COSS handbook, no such justification was ever forthcoming. Assistant general secretary Mick Cash responds to an attack by rail newspaper Railstaff on RMT’s view of the proposed extension of the Railway Rulebook T12 protection procedures for track staff Taking track safety seriously