The RMT's own very selective kind of safety for events that occur once in a blue moon; where we are apparently safer with someone sealed away in a back cab than someone patrolling the train, even though 99.9% of the time it will actually be the other way round. But there's no point trying to reason with them. All we can do is make sure the travelling public know the truth.
Its quite possible to retain someone with the training for those rare emergency situations but also have them patrol the train fairly regularly . The second person on board all Northern trains who is currently trained for emergency eventualities should already be doing that . And if they are not(which I accept happens) they should be brought to task , if there are security concerns on certain routes (i know I have raised some) these should be addressed by the provision of travel safety officers or BTP resources . Patroling the train is already part of the role . It could also be made easier by fitting intermediate door controls on traction types that dont currently have them .
We have had trains coming into the franchise from other tocs with intermediate door controls which would make it even easier to carry out revenue duties or patrol the train and operate the doors without having to go back and forth . Guess what happened to those intermediate door control panels ?
That is right , covered up and told not to use .
What makes you think that a guard that sits on their behind in the back cab all day as a guard not making any announcements and being rude and unprofessional with customers when they do venture out is going to behave any differently if you change their job title from "Conductor" to "OBS" or worse yet make them a roving "RPI"
I dont know on what basis you are making the claim that it would be the reverse in 99.9% of cases . But I suspect it is not a factual one .
Therefore that requirement does not exist in the rule book and so is not included in the defined responsibilities of the guard and so does not form part of the employment T's & C's. Ergo RMT has no current interest in its existence or otherwise. As things stand first aid competence is no more than a "nice to have" that nobody actually wants to pay for and so it has been dropped. IME nearly all guards would have no issue with being properly trained in first aid but you may be sure that if it was to be written into employment contracts, and therefore become a formal responsibility, some payment would need to be made.
I dont necessarily think a payment would be needed . In my experience it did used to form part of the training but it was dropped and it was never something that payment was mentioned for previously. As long as the initial training and refresher training is done in work time it would be just like any other kind of off train brief or training
As you say though , it's seen as a nice to have . However in the privatised railway model the cost of initial training and maintaining competency means it cannot be justified on financial grounds .
How is opening and closing a door safer for the passenger than being able to provide emergency aid to someone? Its a simple question. the RMT seem to think that its safer for the passengers that a guard opens the door than they are trained to provide emergency aid - I would like to know how.
Firstly the RMT is not just campaigning to retain the dispatch competencies of the guard , they are in dispute because they want to retain all of the competencies , the dispatch competencies are just a small part of the overall training a guard has to keep passengers safe in a range of situations . Its not just about opening and closing the doors as much as that is what the TOC and DFT want you to think this boils down to .
as has been mentioned the provision of first aid training is not a rulebook requirement so as far as the RSSB is concerned it is not an essential component of a guards competencies , nor is it mandated by the ORR who regulates the industry . So it is down to individual TOC's what training in addition to the minimum competencies that they provide guards with . in this case the decision is not to provide first aid training .
The RMT at a local level has on more than one occasion raised it with the company that it would aspire for conductors to have first aid training and the response was that the cost of providing training and maintaining the competency is too high .But with it being something that has never actually been mandated and reversed like the provision of a guard , or subject to a local agreement and so included in terms and conditions there may be some argument that a dispute over it would fall foul of the definition of a trade dispute as per s244 TULRCA 1992 . In that case it would not be possible to have a trade dispute over non provision of first aid training .
