TODAY, Thursday 12 December 2013, will mark 25 years since the Clapham Junction Rail Crash that left 35 people dead and hundreds injured.
The accident happened in 1988 when the crowded 06:14 train from Poole to London Waterloo crashed at 08.10 into the back of the stationary 07.18 Basingstoke service, which had stopped at a red signal.
A third train, travelling empty in the opposite direction, hit the wreckage only minutes later.
The resulting Hidden inquiry into the crash found the primary cause to be wiring errors made by a rail worker who had had only one day off in 13 weeks, and that a culture of excessive hours was to blame.
The inquiry made 93 recommendations for safety improvements, including a limit on working hours.
However, Hidden recommended that the maximum staff working period should be 12 hours, a recommendation that has now been sidelined and replaced by a 14 hour door-to-door limit, including unpaid hours, a period which RMT believes piles on stress and fatigue.
Today, RMT is issuing a renewed call for ‘constant vigilance’ on rail safety with a blunt warning that cuts to rail staffing, and the drive to casualisation and zero-hours contracts amongst rail agencies supplying engineering staff, risks dragging the rail network backwards to a culture of fatigue and overwork.
RMT General Secretary Bob Crow said: ‘25 years after the Clapham Disaster we remember those who lost their lives and those who survived thanks to the work of the emergency services and staff from within our own industry.
‘The tragedy is an eternal warning of what happens when staff are suffering fatigue and are operating within a culture of excessive hours and impossible demands.
‘25 years on from Clapham, RMT is issuing a renewed call for an end to the casualisation and zero-hours contracts culture which is being rolled out across the railways by stealth and where fatigue, and a lack of clear management control, is once again being flagged up as a major issue by our members.
‘RMT expects our concerns to be taken seriously and for immediate action to be taken to bring Network Rail works back in house within an environment where safety is paramount and where staff are on decent pay and conditions and where working hours are properly managed and controlled.’
Meanwhile, the RMT has issued a powerful ‘VOTE YES’ call in the Tube strike ballot which began last week.
The union put the case that the proposed axing of nearly a thousand jobs, alongside the closure of every single ticket office, will impact on all Tube staff and reduce the network to a hollowed out and unsafe shell just at the time when increasing passenger demand requires more staff and not less.
Brian Munro, RMT Trains Functional Council, wrote to drivers:
‘Comrade,
‘Alongside every grade on the tube LU train drivers will shortly be receiving ballot papers for strike action and action short in defence of our jobs on the tube.
‘LU’s plans to slash staffing on stations will affect every grade in every function and will impact directly on drivers’ ability to do our job safely and professionally.
‘You know already that station staff are critical to our work and are part and parcel of our safety procedures on a daily basis.
‘LU’s proposal to de-staff the stations and introduce mobile supervisors with iPads will massively hamper our ability to deal with incidents.
‘Serious incidents such as one-unders and SPADs will be a lottery as to whether you get the support you need.
‘And there will be knock-on consequences of this sharp reduction of safety-critical support: daily late running, short meal breaks and chronic overcrowding. Assaults on drivers will increase.
‘But LU’s plans to attack the job are not just limited to de-staffing stations. The company also wants to de-staff trains.
‘RMT wrote to LU seeking assurances on the much publicised “driverless trains” issue.
‘London Underground refused point blank to give us the assurances we need. Management stated in black and white that they will design, plan and commission any train they see fit.
‘RMT’s position is clear: any new stock must have a cab on the front.
‘That’s what we want and so do the public.
‘We cannot allow LU to commission a train without a cab because then it will be too late to campaign and stop the beginning of the end of the driver grade.
‘Mike Brown’s “promise” that any driver who wishes can remain a driver until the end of their career is not worth the breath that was wasted when the measly words came out of his mouth.
‘If we allow LU to commission trains without cabs then that will be the end of our grade for existing drivers and the next generation.
‘Every driver and every grade across the job must resist LU’s proposals. They represent a sea change to our culture at work, our culture of safety and our ability to provide a public service for London.
‘Please use your vote and vote YES to strike action and YES to action short of strike action.’
The RMT has hit back at what it describes as ‘lies and dirty tricks’ from the management side in the dispute which are designed to divert attention from the core issue which is the savage impact on safety and working conditions because of the attempt to bulldoze through the jobs and ticket office cuts.
LU/TFL are still trying to peddle the lie that the dispute is over longer running hours – a totally separate issue that Tube bosses are pumping up in a desperate attempt to shift public attention from the lethal consequence of de-staffing stations and platforms that are already rammed full of passengers and operating at the edge of their safe capacity.
The RMT has called for the totally fictitious and misleading management statements to be withdrawn during the ballot, which closes on January 10th.
RMT General Secretary Bob Crow said: ‘The planned staff cuts impact on every single member of tube staff both in terms of future employment prospects, recruitment freezes and in terms of the safe and efficient running of Tube services.
‘That is the issue we are balloting on over the coming weeks.
‘That is also why the RMT campaign is running under the banner “Every Job Matters’’.’
• Mick Whelan, General Secretary of the Aslef railwayworkers union, has spoken out after new figures revealed that commuters spend a quarter of their salaries on getting to work.
‘New research by Hay Group management consultancy says workers in Birmingham part with 23% of their annual income on travelling by train to their job, and those in London are paying nearly as much.
‘Passengers are fed up with the poor value they are being offered by Britain’s privatised train companies and want the government to do something about it.
‘We warned a year ago that more and more people are falling into transport poverty and these new figures underline the point.
‘It cannot be right that passengers are being forced – and they are being forced because they have no meaningful choice – to pay through the nose just to get to where they work.
‘The fare rises next month are only going to exacerbate the problem and drive even more people into transport poverty.
‘It cannot be right that prices are going up when most people’s wages are falling. The privatised railway isn’t working properly and the privatised train companies are ripping off the taxpayer and ripping off their passengers.’