Workers' Liberty

Yesterday's derailment on the Central line was in the same place as another incident just six weeks ago. On May 21, a train struck a P-way storage bin left by the track, and was lucky not to derail. Union health & safety reps complained to management and demanded an investigation. This was not the first time that union reps had complained about lineside scrap in this area. Six weeks later, no investigation, no action ... and the inevitable derailment.

This case shows clearly why union health & safety reps should have the right not just to complain but to order investigations and action. We obviously can't trust management to do so!

The apparent negligence of Metronet defies belief. This time, a bale of tarpaulin came away from a licensed storage facility in a cross passage in the tunnel between Bethnal Green and Mile End. Which begs the questions: Was the storage facility properly secured? Was it even fit to be licensed for storage in the first place?

But we shouldn't allow LUL management to pass the buck entirely to Metronet. It is responsible for ensuring the safety of its own employees, in this case the driver. Slagging off Metronet, although well-justified, is becoming a convenient excuse for LUL. And the fact is that it is the Public-Private Partnership (PPP) set-up that causes these appallling incidents, and LUL management continually urge us to "make it work" rather than urge the government to scrap it and reintegrate the Tube system.

Meanwhile, TfL big cheese Howard Collins appeared to play down the incident by saying that it was the first derailment of a passenger train for a number of years. He had to be careful to use the word 'passenger', because there have been several depot derailments; and the "number of years" he referred to is the four since the Chancery Lane crash - not exactly an era, eh?

It was fortunate that there were not more serious injuries - or worse - but for the hundreds of people on the train, and on the train stuck behind it in the pipe, it was a horrendous experience. With the country on critical terror alert, many passengers were terrified that they had been bombed. Hundreds of thousands of people have had their travel disrupted, and Tube workers have been landed with extra workload and a shedload of grief.

For staff trying to manage the disruption across the network yesterday morning, the flow of information from the company was typically poor. Station staff - responsible for getting information to passengers - found that they could get more up-to-date information from the BBC website or the Evening Standard than from London Underground! Some even found that passengers knew more than they did. This is not just embarrassing - it can become a serious problem if customers think that you are either withholding information from them or don't know what's going on.

RMT banged out two press releases within hours of the derailment. ASLEF made a statement too, but with nothing really to say about the issues. TSSA at least managed to link the incident to PPP.