Register now for RMT Health and Safety Conference 2025
If you haven’t yet got your nomination form in for the RMT Health and Safety Advisory conference – then please sort this out now!
It is the biggest of RMT conferences – and it is an excellent opportunity to meet with safety reps from around the country and from difference sections of the transport sector, as well as to learn more about health and safety.
The conference and conference training will take place over the 18 and 19 February, with conference training on the afternoon of Tuesday 18 February and the conference itself on Wednesday 19 February 2025, at the Radisson Hotel, York.
The theme of this year’s conference is “Health and Safety under a Labour Government”: speakers for the main conference debate on this theme include Lord
John Hendy KC, Janet Newsham, Manchester Hazards Centre, Justin Madders MP, Parliamentary UnderSecretary of State (Minister for Employment Rights, Competition and Markets).
Conference training will be on the following topics: violence at work, focus on the health and safety six pack legislation, MSDs (Musculoskeletal disorders), safety inspections, ORR inspectors/what to do when an inspector visits and night work & impact on fatigue; all workshops will be delivered by experts in their field.
If you want to attend the conference, contact your branch secretary and ask that your branch nominate you as a conference delegate. If you experience any difficulties in the nomination process, then please contact RMT’s Health and Safety team by emailing: healthandsafety@rmt.org.uk.
RMT Health and Safety conference 2024: advisory committee members at the conference reception desk.
50 years’ anniversary
Warwick University: Modern Records Centre and the Railway Work, Life & Death (RWLD) project
Dr Mike Esbester (Portsmouth University) speaks about the RWLD project, at a training workshop held at RMT Health and Safety conference 2024.
RMT President, Alex Gordon, recently co-authored an academic paper: https://bit.ly/3DibXxq with Doctor Mike Esbester, co-lead for the RWLD project. Their contributions were based on papers they gave at an event organised in 2023 to celebrate the Modern Records Centre’s (MRC) 50th year anniversary at Warwick University.
The MRC at Warwick University holds records of RMT and archives of its predecessor unions the Associated Society of Railway Servants, National Union of Railwaymen, General Railway Workers Union and National Union of Seamen.
The RWLD project project is transcribing details of accidents to British and Irish railway staff before 1939. Many of these records come from RMT’s collection.
An example of what the project has discovered is the case of Caledonian Railway engine driver George Williamson, who, when at work in December 1911, realised that his locomotive had a defective water gauge. Knowing how much water they were carrying was crucial – run out of water and they risked a boiler explosion – Williamson climbed on top of the tender as the train was moving and intended to open the cover into the water tank and visually check how much remained. As he did so, the locomotive passed
under a bridge – which hit Williamson’s head and killed him.
We know from the ASRS records that:
l he belonged to the Edinburgh West branch
l the Fatal Accident Inquiry jury added a rider to the finding of ‘accidental death,’ noting the problem of the defective water gauge
l Williamson’s dependents received £300 in compensation (equivalent to £36,000 now)
l he left five children, who, between them, received six shillings per week in support from the union, until they reached the age of 14.
Alex Gordon wrote that that 3,929 worker accidents (777 fatal and 3152 non-fatal) investigated by the Railway Inspectorate between January 1911 and June 1915, constituted only 3% of the total number of accidents reported – over 130,000 workplace accidents during this four and a half-year period, or 2,425 accidents to rail workers on average each month.
Alex explained the importance of the RWLD project:
“Working-class people under capitalism are often not regarded as important enough to record or remember – the RWLD project rescues these railway workers
from the condescension of history.
“For RMT members and railway workers today, this is not only of academic or historical interest. Public and worker safety are issues of fierce public, political debate.
“In December last year RMT warned that funding cuts threaten the safety of passengers and rail workers
and the integrity of Britain’s rail network. A litany of rail crashes, including the deadly derailment at Carmont in August 2020 caused by poor infrastructure maintenance, are a testament to what can happen through lack of investment.
“The RWLD project acts as a reminder of how far we have come in the struggle for workplace safety and how far we have to fall.”
50 years’ anniversary of the Health and Safety at Work Act
Following on the heels of the founding of the Modern Records Centre fifty years ago, covered in the previous article, was the Health & Safety at Work Act (1974), another milestone in labour history.This year, UK safety reps celebrated the 50th anniversary of the Act.
TUC General Secretary Paul Nowak has highlighted the importance of the Act in defining employer duties and established the Health and Safety Executive (HSE), which has extensive enforcement powers backed by criminal sanctions.
The Act also gave trade union safety reps the legal right to make health and safety improvements, as well as introducing the obligation for employers to consult with reps of organised unions.
It is legislation that has saved lives. In 1974, when the Act was established and the official data starts, there were 651 workplace deaths. From then onwards, the number of fatalities has steadily
come down. The TUC estimates that the Act has led to around 14,000 fewer deaths at work since 1974.
However, even though there has been a lot of progress, work-related deaths in Britain have still averaged at more than 100 each year for the past decade.
And the TUC says there are three big challenges on the horizon:
l we must get to grips with the facts about health and safety and make a case for health and safety at work
l funding must be restored to the HSE so that no more lives are lost at work as it is severely underfunded, with 35% cuts to staff and 50% cuts to its overall budget
l we need more women, black workers and young people involved as safety reps.
Industry mock-up of the 1911 accident in which Caledonian Railway engine driver George Williamson lost his life
News in brief...
Research on the impact of night shift working
There has been a sharp increase in the number of night shift workers, who now account for more than a quarter of the UK workforce, compared to 19% in 2017. But new research, “Impact of nightshift working”, commissioned by the RMT, paints a bleak picture of the impact on their health and safety, as it links nightwork to a range of physical and mental health problems including cardiovascular disease, diabetes, and chronic sleep disorders.
Following the Modernising Maintenance project, Network Rail contracts now require 39 weeks per year of night shifts and 39 weekends. Given this,
RMT’s National Executive Committee agreed to obtain some qualitative academic research, and for this to be interview based using a small sample group (of Network Rail, Train Operating Companies and London Underground members) and to use the outcomes to strengthen our arguments in relation to night and shift work and the impact on workers and their families.
You can find the Greenwich University report here: https://bit.ly/3BKrXHE and more information on RMT’s fatigue website page here; https://bit. ly/405bXds
Lack of toilets an issue of dignity at
work and health and safety
The TUC published the research outcomes of their recent survey of union members on national toilet day in November.
In total 4000 workers, including 127 RMT reps, participated in the survey. When asked, thinking about breaks at work, over half of RMT respondents said they can’t always get access to a toilet when needed. Comments from RMT reps include:
“I work on track there is not always toilets at access points ,if desperate you have to get allowed to leave track and go find somewhere open to use toilet facilities as we work a lot of nightshifts.”
“The quality and cleanliness of train toilets make them sometimes unusable for ladies to use. On
some occasions, you may have to work 4/5 hours without use of a clean toilet.”
Lack of toilet facilities is a matter of dignity and a health and safety risk. The TUC explains “Workers who ‘hold it in’ when they need to pee are at a greater risk of urinary tract infections, incontinence and kidney disease”. They called on employers to allow staff longer breaks when necessary to allow staff time to reach a toilet, include toilet needs in risk assessments, and provide reasonable adjustments to meet toilet needs as part of their legal duties under the Equality Act.
The Office of the Rail and Road are convening an industry roundtable on welfare provision for railway workers.
UK’s Hidden Crisis in Women’s Workplace Heath Worsens
A year after issuing a critical call for change, the BOHS, British Occupational Hygiene Society, a charity for worker health protection, recently issued updated report the key findings of which are:
l An under-reporting of work-related illness among women remains a significant issue
l A rising long-term sickness among women, with female sick leave rates now higher than those of men
l Workplace exposures continuing to disproportionately affect women, notably in the 35-45 age group, with increased risks across a range of health conditions
l Sexual violence and harassment reporting mechanisms remain inadequate, and the BOHS calls for RIDDOR policy updates to account for the mental and physical impacts of workplace abuse.
You can read the full report at: https://bit.ly/3ZU1LUt
The BOHS is calling on policymakers, the HSE, and employers across all industries to prioritise women’s workplace health as part of a national equality policy. The Society is urging the implementation of improved data collection, monitoring, and regulatory measures to ensure that women’s health in the workplace is protected.
