How safe is the tube?

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Recent events on the Underground, not just in London, have raised many critical questions on safety for both travellers and staff. On the day of the Daegu disaster, the Daily Hazard interviewed Patrick Sikorski, the Assistant General Secretary of the Rail, Maritime and Transport union on the union's approach to safety and what the RMT believes should be done in the present situation. The RMT is the biggest union on the Tube, representing all grades and Patrick himself was a driver before taking up his present position

Derailment

Daily Hazard. Let's start with the Central Line derailment. The line controller decided to take the train out of service at Holborn and the train derailed before it got there. Do you think his decision was justified?

Patrick Sikorski. The driver reported that something was going wrong when he was at Leytonstone and it would have been possible to take the train out of service there. This should have been done. Instead a Station Assistant was put on to listen for engine noises who got off at Stratford reporting nothing unusual. There were then reports from drivers going in the opposite direction that something was happening at the back end of the train. It was clear by Liverpool St that there was something very serious going on. A second member of station staff at Liverpool Street was told to listen out for unusual noise but didn't report anything. I don't know if the members of station staff had any training or experience of this kind of thing.

There is a question mark about whether there was really an intention to take the train out of service at Holborn or whether this is just a rationalisation which is being offered with hindsight.

I say this because the culture now, and I put a lot of this down to the Public Private Partnership, is driven by commercial interests and commercial needs and not by safety first. Safety First used to be carved in tablets of stone and this was drilled into trainees on the induction course. If in doubt take it out was the watchword. There was no victimisation of anyone who did that and could demonstrate that they had a valid safety worry. Now the emphasis in training new entrants is on customer care and on the overwhelming need to keep the service going in order to avoid delays, which under privatisation incur penalty payments. Staff are just told to obey the line controller's instructions and can be disciplined if they don't.

DH. What do you think was the cause of this accident, what is your current view about that?

PS. There was certainly a problem with the bolts holding the motor onto the chassis shearing off causing the motor to fall off. There is a design fault with the location of the motor resulting in excessive vibration. In addition there may have been something wrong with the gearing of the motor and this meant that it was red hot when it fell off. It wasn't just a question of vibration and bolts shattering - the motor was red hot as well.

DH. There are reports of at least three other similar incidents, what do you know about that?

PS. There have definitely been two other incidents and there may have been a third. There are reports of motors falling off in Loughton sidings and at Hainault depot.

DH. So the management knew that they had a maintenance fault or a design fault or something systematic. How long had they known that?

PS. They would have known from the first incident at Hainault in October 2001. Then the Loughton incident was in September 2002 and resulted in a derailment. Following the incident at Loughton the management introduced inspections every five days but it turns out that a lot of these were cursory visual checks and some were done by sub-contractors. There are major problems with this as their people are not trained as fully as London Underground staff.

DH. Do you think it would make a difference if there was a guard on the train?

PS. Yes. Arising out of this incident we are going to propose two issues to London Underground. The first is the introduction of a "No Victimisation – Safety First" clause in all staff contracts so that when staff act upon legitimate safety concerns, they won't be victimised for it. We are also going to campaign for the reintroduction of guards on trains. In an incident such as this a guard – familiar with train running - would have been alerted by all the banging and clattering. In addition, in the event of a fire, you need someone at the back of a train to help with the evacuation. The driver is not going to be able to handle that on his own.

DH. Do you think there is any chance of similar incidents on other lines?

PS. There are problems with overheating of the axles of Piccadilly line trains. This has just come to light and is being investigated at the moment. Part of the problem is the age of the stock. It should be pointed out that under PPP only a handful of new trains will arrive each year during the early years of the contracts and it is only much later that we may get significant amounts of new rolling stock.

Terrorist attacks

DH. Let's move on to talk about the possibility of a terrorist attack. What precautions and preparations have been made in the event of an attack and has the RMT been involved or consulted in drawing up the plans?

PS. Management are relying on the normal evacuation procedures to get the maximum number of people away from the scene of any attack.

Very few people have been made aware of the projections for casualties in the event of a terrorist attack on the Tube that might have been made in confidential management or government reports. As far as I know, no-one in the union has been involved in the drawing up of plans in the event of such an attack.

There is only natural ventilation in the Underground. There are no extractor fans and their use is ruled out by the physical nature of the tunnels which are of an old fashioned narrow type not found in other cities.

Staff are trained to look out for suspicious packages and so on. That is under control.

The RMT issued a policy statement after the events of 9/11 in New York that launching a war in response would produce even more terrorists and increase the chances of an attack in cities like London. Unfortunately, that is even more likely now with the drive to war on Iraq by Bush and Blair.

DH. Do you know if the evacuation procedures are ever actually tested?

PS. Evacuation procedures are tested on a regular basis especially in the deep level tube sections. But by their very nature such exercises do not take place under real emergency conditions. And sometimes, even though there is no fire or collision, muddle and confusion can reign, as happened with the real incident at Highbury & Islington in 2001.

For a train stuck in a tunnel, there used to be an understanding between the driver and the guard on how and when to carry out an evacuation but this has gone now and I think there are big gaps in peoples' knowledge of how to carry out a safe evacuation.

DH. So the union is not involved in disaster planning. Would you want to be?

PS. No, we're not involved. And, yes, we would like to be.

Fire

DH. The Daegu tragedy has put the issue of fire back at the top of the agenda. And we know what happened at King's Cross. Have you got any concerns now about cleaning, maintenance issues and all the other basic precautions against fire?

PS. Basic housekeeping, the removal of rubbish and so on, underwent a massive leap forward after King's Cross. The ban on smoking was also key. But we are dealing with a crumbling infrastructure where there has been inadequate investment for 40-50 years. Under PPP, there are now going to be hundreds of work sites and hundreds of sub-contractors on the Underground. They are going to be replacing signalling equipment and cabling which is 60-80 years old. They don't have the training or safety culture that our people have. Our people are going to have to be on high alert to try and police what is going on, but the fire risk is going to increase exponentially.

Violence

DH. Under the previous regime, under the safety plan, there seemed to be virtually nothing being done about violence to staff and to members of the public, the subject was essentially not dealt with. Is that your view as well? What do you think needs to be done about the situation to minimise violence?

PS. This is a growing problem. Management are constantly trying to push through a policy of station de-staffing especially on the open air sections of the Tube and this is leading to an increase in assaults. There was a big problem of vandalism and assaults on the east end of the District Line a couple of summers ago and the management responded with police dog teams and even a helicopter. But that could only be kept up for a short time and after a period of quiet the assaults started up again. We want to see adequate staffing at all stations, with at least two people on duty at all times, with a guaranteed place of safety and the right to retire to it if necessary. And there should be educational programmes on how to deal with violence. We're worried now that staffing levels will get squeezed as all the money goes on sub-contractors.

Asbestos

DH. There has been a running battle between the RMT and the employer for 40 years or longer about dust and asbestos on the Underground. Do you think things are getting better or worse? From the safety case, it looks as though any systematic approach to monitoring asbestos is going to go by the board under PPP.

PS. Overall, the situation could get a lot worse as the contractors uncover asbestos. There is a lot of it on the Underground. The control centre for the District and Piccadilly lines is virtually made of asbestos. When part of the Central line was dug up a few years ago, it was found that the track bed was permeated with asbestos introduced in the 1950s. I'm not sure that there has ever been systematic monitoring of asbestos. Our reps try to keep a tight grip on this and where they suspect there is asbestos, they push hard for monitoring and proper treatment. We tried to get hold of an asbestos register but when we last asked for it, we were told that it was still being collated.

Organisation

DH. An RMT rep contacted the Hazards Centre yesterday and told us that a driver had reported for work while suffering from a quite dangerous infectious disease. The driver would be disciplined if he booked off sick under the sickness monitoring rules. Do you think this is an expected outcome of the sickness monitoring regime and do you think it is acceptable that people with infectious diseases are forced to go to work on the Underground?

PS. No, it is not acceptable, there is a procedure for dealing with infectious diseases. But the sickness monitoring regime is harsh and the interpretation varies from place to place. Obviously someone with an infectious disease should be in hospital and this shouldn't attract an item on the person’s sickness and absence record and this is what we would argue for because it is in the agreements. But there is a culture among the management that if you are not at work, then you are no good to the Company and this affects the more inexperienced members of staff.

DH.. What would you say was the employer's basic attitude to safety?

PS. We've already covered that in that there has been a major change of approach away from a safety first culture where everything humanly possible was done to eliminate hazards and towards a risk management attitude based on actuarial or insurance values which accepts a certain level of risk. To my mind this is a move away from a public service ethos towards a commercial and business ethic driven by PPP and privatisation.

DH. The safety reps we talk to on the Tube see the management as obstructive on safety matters. Do you think that is a reasonable attitude?

PS. No, it is not reasonable at all. I think the management addresses safety in a superficial manner and I doubt that they ever attempt to get at the root of it especially as good safety practice means the expenditure of money. You can't get safety on the cheap.

DH. Now, the safety case which the HSE produced for the Underground. Do you think that is a good blueprint for safety or has it got shortcomings and deficiencies?

PS. Yes, it would have. One of the people involved in the safety case is now the safety director of Tube Lines - the private consortium that has taken over the Jubilee, Northern and Piccadilly lines. The adoption of the safety case was a necessary part of getting the contracts signed. The structure resulting from privatisation, involving the separation of the running of the service from the maintenance of the infrastructure and which resulted in the disasters on the main line, is now in place on London Underground. That structure is wrong and unsafe and no safety case is going to be able to compensate for that.

DH. So the union's attitude to PPP is the same as it always has been?

PS. Yes, absolutely. The situation now is that the Government has cushioned the consortia against financial collapse with public money and the companies can raise money from the City on the back of this. There is no financial risk to them at all. Three deep tube lines have now been signed across. The rest will go across in spring. We will continue to campaign against PPP. In the first instance we are going to concentrate on the Chancery Lane incident and campaign for the safety first, no victimisation clause in contracts and the reintroduction of guards on trains.

DH. Finally, how do you think you are going to get on with the Mayor, and Bob Kiley and Transport for London?

PS. We've always had good relations with Livingstone. We supported him in his campaign to become mayor. We've campaigned with him against PPP. Kiley is a manager, a very capable, very tough manager, we believe. We've yet to do business with him. We'll do our job as a union and no doubt he'll do his as a manager. I expect we'll agree with him on some things and disagree with him on others.

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