AROUND 170 safety reps will attend the annual RMT health and safety conference in York on February 21 and 22.

The conference takes place against a backdrop of Network Rail, London Underground and the train operating companies wanting to push through a jobs cull as they seek to take advantage of the Covid crisis to deliver a devastating short-term cuts agenda on rail on behalf of a government that wants to slash £2.5 billion from the industry.

RMT has been at the forefront of the current wave of industrial action, in taking 19 days of strike action to oppose these attacks — with more industrial action scheduled for March.

The theme of the conference is fatigue — an issue that is a huge problem for RMT members, many of whom work shifts. The issues they face currently will be exacerbated if the employers are successful in pushing through the changes to my members’ terms and conditions.

For example, Network Rail’s “modernising maintenance” plans involve cutting maintenance work in half and increasing night work. In relation to the latter, Network Rail commissioned a report last year from Nottingham University which looked at interventions to minimise the health impact of night working.

It found that the health impact of working nights includes cardiovascular disease, diabetes, metabolic disturbances, obesity, mental health problems and cancer. The report considers interventions to alleviate the health impact of working nights but explains that the evidence on the impact of these interventions is limited.

Many employers blame the poor health of workers on poor lifestyle choices, but the report notes that there is evidence that these choices may be influenced by the fact that the person is working nights at the time of eating meals.

The plans unveiled by Network Rail to cut front-line jobs, slash scheduled maintenance and inspection tasks by half and impose wholesale changes to working arrangements without agreement is a recipe for disaster.

These plans are untrialled, and Network Rail has no credible alternative contingency plan when things inevitably go wrong — save for flooding the railway with subcontractors, a major contributing factor to previous rail disasters such as Potters Bar. Our members fear these plans will lead to a crisis in safety for our railways and an increased risk of derailments.

Broken rails are already being picked up by chance where inspections have been slashed. Critically, Network Rail is hell-bent on ramming through these changes at pace despite the significant safety risks that have been raised by RMT.

The recent derailment of a freight train in Ohio, where coaches containing hazardous, cancer-causing chemicals erupted into fire posing a threat to residents and contaminating a local river, shows what can happen when rail standards are eroded.

The US railway has relied on a system called “precision-scheduled railroading” that aggressively optimises running as much cargo with as few workers as possible. President Joe Biden last year even intervened to prevent a rail worker strike over poor staffing and sick leave.

Here in Britain, although the threat to roll out driver-only passenger trains nationwide has been removed, individual train operating companies can still decide they want to introduce driver-only trains.

Also, the plan to close all ticket offices on the national railway network still remains. If pushed through this would impact the disabled and elderly, and increase the understaffing of stations, making them a potentially dangerous environment for women and vulnerable passengers.

RMT has hit out at unsafe staffing levels on London Underground following a series of reports suggesting waivers to safety regulations are being inappropriately used.

In connection with job cuts on London Underground, I recently wrote to mayor Sadiq Khan, highlighting a series of incidents where stations have had less than the required staff and, in some cases, no staff at all. These problems have been caused by de-staffing, in particular the decision to axe 600 station jobs, something RMT has taken strike action over.

One of the keynote speakers at the conference is Ian Prosser, chief inspector of railways at the Office of Rail and Road (ORR). I have been critical of ORR’s role during the current dispute in failing to exercise its role as the regulator in regard to the employers’ use of “contingency labour” to break the strikes and have raised many examples with them of rail safety breaches caused by contingency labour staff, who in many instances have not been properly familiarised or trained in the job.

This conference will be a chance for our safety reps to come together to share experiences and go away better informed and equipped to continue the great work they do in keeping RMT members safe at work.

Mick Lynch is general secretary of RMT.