“This is about the public and their safety”
Striking UK rail conductors explain their struggle for public safety
By
our reporters
14 March 2017
Sheffield
At Sheffield station’s Arriva North depot, three pickets manned a stall.
Joe, who was previously a ticket officer, explained the safety role of conductors: “In case of emergency you’ve got two safety-critical staff on board trains in the Arriva North franchise. Under the new proposals that’s going down to one.”
The drivers would have sole responsibility for the platform-train interface, including emergency evacuations and assisting the disabled. “A lot of the stations we call at are unmanned, so there’s no staff to help people get on and off. If they’re going to be running trains without us, who’s going to be helping these people?”
In his experience, “even at manned stations, you don’t always have time with all your other duties, so it helps to have a conductor there to help people on and off. The way it’s portrayed in the media, it’s just about who’s going to open and close the doors. But we fulfil a safety-critical role and all of a sudden the safety rule book is being thrown out.”
Mark, the depot’s health and safety rep, said conductors dealt with a range of incidents, “It’s evacuations, fires on trains–we’ve had that recently. There’s three types of evacuations, but emergency evacuations—in the event of a collision or endangerment to life–are the most important. You’ve got to get passengers off as quickly as possible in the safest possible way.”
Mark and Joe explained that in train collisions, where the driver may be critically injured or killed, the safety of hundreds of passengers would rest on the…