Health and safety

Campaigning for higher health and safety standards at work, and opposing the employers' shortcuts

Detraining On Your Own - Proposed Rule Change

A proposed change to the rule book, dated the end of last year, suggests that train operators could detrain on their own if a train is stalled without communications in a tunnel for more than half an hour.

The proposal document details how you should walk ahead of the customers making efforts to ensure they are all following and get them to pass on information amongst themselves about trip hazards. At points using telephone wires to turn of traction current. When you get to the next station get staff assistance if this is possible. This would suggest that it may not be possible to find staff at a section 12 station.

Download the full document to make up your own mind about whether it is safe and what it means for the future of staffing levels on stations were it to be implemented.

Training workshop: Refusal to work on the grounds of safety

Venue: Exmouth Arms, Star Cross Street, near Euston

All workers have the legal right to refuse to work in unsafe conditions. By using this right, we can protect ourselves and force employers to provide a safer workplace for us, our workmates and our passengers. With employers under increasing pressure to cut corners in order to save money, this issue is more important than ever.

The workshop will ensure that you understand your legal rights and how to use them.

This training workshop will look at:

Plan to Cut Block Training to 3 Days

Senior train operators will recall a time when LUL took their training seriously. With sole responsibility for several hundred passengers, often in inaccessible locations, it’s essential that a driver knows how to take remedial action to get a train moving should it become defective. Likewise, drivers need to know and understand the rules and regulations that help make the underground system operate safely.

The Bakerloo Line Hokey Cokey

Great headline. Crap idea.
In an unprecedented show of common sense, the higher echelons of Team Bakerloo have finally voted off this ridiculous notion of cutting the High Tone Whistle in /out in / out etc etc when entering/leaving the depot at Stonebridge Park.
The 137 decibels this whistles generates is enough to deafen the poor old workers it’s meant to protect.

Kenton One-Under. An Update

At the hastily arranged ad hoc meeting on Tuesday to discuss our concerns the “heroic” actions of the agency staff were mentioned by the management team of Messrs Smith, Senior, Cullen and Toplis. They were of the opinion a commendation was in order. We countered with its not a commendation she should receive, it’s a full time job she should be awarded with. With LUL. With the requisite pay increase. And with full and adequate training to be able to carry out the important tasks necessary of a station worker.

Leaked Tube Staffing Plan Raises Alarm Over Safety

SOSTUBE UNION RMT today revealed leaked details of an internal London Underground management report titled “Minimum Staffing Levels” which the union is warning would lead to the loss of hundreds of station jobs, hacking back to the absolute bare bones staffing levels agreed in the aftermath of the Kings Cross fire in 1987. Even Victoria, the busiest station on the underground with 76 million passengers, could see its current twelve staff cut to just two during “degraded” operation.

Pigeon Poo

pigeonYour Trains Health & Safety reps write ...

As LU's purse strings tighten we have noticed standards falling across the combine in regard to pigeon guano all over the place. The manager who carried out the water points survey across the combine has been tasked by the Trains Health & Safety Council to look at the worst offending areas; he is the new 'guano guy'.