Twists and turns on workplace safety

After the privatisation of rail was announced in 1993, the whole attitude to Health and Safety started to change as the costs of failing to meet legal requirements were astronomical. But as long as your management had something in place and you had signed for it, the buck fell on your shoulders.

Working outside of what was considered safe became a number one crime, if spotted by the management health and safety rep. There was no thought given as to how this might affect your ability to do your job. This led to much talk of “health and safety gone mad”.

Take one example: working at heights. No-one initially had a clear idea as to what working at heights even constituted. After much head-scratching, it turned out that any job where you were off the ground over two inches was officially considered as working at heights. In theory this meant that you need to be in a full climbing kit even if you stood on a chair to change a light bulb.

Most of us ignored the instruction for what were regarded as “common sense” jobs, but as time went on, we were sent on courses which meant we could not claim ignorance as an excuse for not being fully compliant, even if it meant work output decreased.

Cases of supervisors tipping the wink to us and making out like we were all in this together against the “bean counters” became common, especially where a bit of overtime was thrown into the mix, with the result that people began to not use the equipment even when it made perfect sense to do so.

As time went on, the union mounted a campaign on the issue, and we as workers began to realise that the loss of productivity was not our problem. Falling from a height and being made an invalid, and with the possibility of no compensation because we hadn’t used the right gear, was our problem.

That was one example, but others were things like use of power-operated machinery, handling of chemicals, breaks for drivers on long shifts and long distances, and lifting heavy objects. All came under health and safety law, and we always came under pressure from some levels of management to break this law in the name of “common sense”.