Workers' Diaries

Articles and interviews recounting people's experiences at work. The "My life at work" series of interviews with workers; and the "Diary of an Engineer/a Tubeworker/a DWP worker"; and similar.

Diary of a Tube worker: Another day “up the wall”

“What the hell is going on with TfL at the moment?”, an angry passenger says as they walk towards my driver’s cab, squeezing past everyone else as they stand looking slightly bewildered on the platform, after an announcement that my train will be emptied there because of a signal failure. I’ve seen them with one eye and with the other I’m watching how many cars back the CSA [Customer Service Assistant, station staff] has got down the platform, shutting the doors. Their mask now pulled down, they address me again, “What is this? Will there be another train? What’s going on? And you are on...

The wheels on the train go thunk, thunk, thunk

Three shifts in a row it’s been wet for almost the whole time on the road. Fine for when you are in the pipe but an added faff elsewhere. The windscreen wipers are some of the noisiest bits of equipment on a train, drowning out all other noise and your own thoughts, as the wipers jerk awkwardly, barely pushing the rain out of the way. But what you really want to avoid is putting flats on the wheels. You don’t judge the rain by what you can see so much as by how it’s affecting the train. When you accelerate and feel the wheels spin and your speed sensing go haywire, then you know the rain is...

Diary of a health worker: Listening without prejudice

As I write we are in a two week consultation (closing 16 February) to see whether the “no jab, no job” law for health and social care workers will continue, but no clairvoyance is required to know that by the time you read this it will have been scrapped in one of the most dramatic U-turns of this Tory government. The spin will be it is largely because the Omicron variant is so different to Delta, so they were right all along. The reality is over 30,000 staff have left social care since November, tipping a service already in crisis to the brink of collapse. The same was about to happen in the...

Diary of a firefighter: Two per cent for a Kevlar vest

It was a day of contrasts. In the morning, a primary school visit, the first the watch had done since Covid hit, to talk about what we do as firefighters and some basic fire safety. We spent an hour answering questions about why we wanted to join the brigade, what station life is like, and the almost mythic cats-up-trees rescues. This wholesome activity was immediately followed by a zoom call with senior officers about their plan to send us into active terrorist situations in ballistic vests alongside armed police. I know what I’d rather spend my time doing. This recent chapter in the saga of...

Diary of a Tube worker: "We are the union"

It’s always easier to “talk union” on the job when the union is balloting for industrial action. I often tell workmates, “the union isn’t an insurance policy, it’s a tool for us to win change at work.” It’s easier to grasp that when we’re voting about whether to go on strike. Workmates for whom our recent ballot on the Tube was the first experience of an industrial action ballot, and who aren’t well-versed in the restrictions of the anti-union laws, had pretty good instincts about it all. “I don’t get it,” says one, “why can’t we vote online? Or set up a ballot box in the mess room and all...

Diary of a trackworker: Havoc, thy name is lease-hire

This goes back and forth over the years, with every new transport manager reinventing the wheel, no pun intended. Ideas go something like this: 1. If we buy vans to get workers and equipment to sites on the rail needing work, then they will depreciate; so instead we will lease them and all the costs of repairs, maintenance, and depreciation will fall on the hire company, not us. 2. If we own the vehicles, then we will have more control over costs, and can sell them after we’ve finished with them, while being able to use them as we see fit and purchase the right style for our requirements. We...

Diary of a paramedic: Who will pick the next Margaret off the floor?

I arrive on station early to check my ambulance unpaid, knowing the alternative is to arrive at a patient missing vital equipment. Meeting my crewmate for the day, a terrified-looking newly qualified paramedic, I can’t help but visualise her probable remaining career countdown hovering above her head. It says five years. We exchange pleasantries and head straight out to the first call: Margaret, an elderly female who had fallen on the landing without injury. When we arrive her husband looks at me with a familiar mixture of relief and suppressed anger. I ask when she fell. “I rang eight hours...

Diary of a firefighter: Food first and foremost

One of the officers, B, strides into the watch room. The tell-tale bing-bong of the PA system sounds as he commands: “All hands to the mess in five minutes”. He’s a friendly bloke but not one you want to get on the wrong side of, and he is not happy. Four minutes later, we’re around the mess table. “The way we’ve been working has been driving me up the wall, and I know it has for some of you too. We get everything essential like inventories, tests and visits done because they’re non-negotiables, but it’s all over the place, it’s not organised, and it takes forever. “And where we’re not...

Diary of a paramedic: The worst in twenty years

I’ve been off the road on a secondment and returned to station for the first time in six months this week. The changes in that time are dramatic. The situation for crews and patients is by far the worst I’ve ever seen it in twenty years on the road. On my first day back we’ve just about checked the vehicle when a job comes through. Nothing new there. We visit an unresponsive man. It takes a while to get to the bottom of the situation. He appears to be suffering from an extreme stress reaction. His carer says he has been deteriorating over the last year after having little contact with his...

Diary of a Tube worker: Trying to do the sensible thing

“Well, you are early,” the Train Manager says to me as I come downstairs to ask what is happening with my train. “I could just call you on the platform if there is an issue”. “I am giving myself plenty of walking time, my meal relief has finished but I can see my train number isn’t running yet”. I wonder why me trying to do us both a favour is so controversial… “I have no idea. I will call service control... Hello controller, I am ringing about Train 420. I have the driver here… Oh right, yeah, I did make a note. OK, that’s fine”. She hangs up and goes over to a sheet of paper. “Yeah, sorry...

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