Health & safety

I’ve been working with the electrical team routing cables through the plant. Cables need to be kept as dry, clean and secure as possible, following logical routes. I’ve learned that they are often in filthy and inaccessible places.

The control room computers have been on the blip; the signals from the PLCs (portable logic controllers), which communicate with all the plant’s instruments, have been switching themselves off and on at random. After a process of elimination, the ‘tricians A and J decide to replace the cables between the PCs and the PLCs.

First, A and J plan the route. The control

I’m in the Control Room with two older operators, ‘N’ and ‘V’, an electrical engineer ‘M’, an older mechanical fitter ‘I’, and an ops assistant, ‘MC’. N is a generally serious and capable shift leader who rides motorbikes. V is a high-voltage electrical engineer sometimes called “Colonel” because his beard is very like the KFC logo. V begins:

“When I was an apprentice, I used to get punched all the time! But you can’t do that now — you’re not allowed to.”

“No, you can’t.” I reply “And that’s a good thing.”

“Look I used to work in a massive steelworks — yeah?” V looks me in the eye the way he

Rail union RMT has called strikes on Virgin Trains, West Midlands Trains, and South Western Railway (SWR).

On the latter, the union has named a calendar of strikes throughout November and December, which will see walkouts on 16, 23, and 30 November, and 7, 14, 21, and 28 December. West Midlands Trains is the latest Train Operating Company to see its workers plan industrial action over the imposition of Driver Only Operation (DOO).

On Virgin Trains, train managers, a grade of customer-facing train crew, on the West Coast franchise will strike on 19 November to demand the reinstatement of an

Last week there were two lime leaks at our Combined Heat and Power plant. A problem – yet to be identified – caused the Ventura to blow instead of suck, and the harsh white powder covered the plant.

Operators needed full face-masks and huge torches to get through the thick grey clouds on every level, and we lost half of the lime supply.

Lime is highly alkaline, absorbent, and turns hard as rock when mixed with water (like concrete). On the plant lime is used to absorb the pollutants in the gases emitted by the furnace, so it’s critical for preventing toxic waste. Its also eats through pumps,

USDAW, the shopworkers union, is facing a financial shortfall due to large numbers of its members being made redundant.

This is particularly felt at Tesco, which is the largest employer for the union’s members, but also where the union has refused to put up any resistance to the loss of around 9,000 jobs this last year.

Instead of launching a massive recruitment campaign or fighting back against the bosses, the union is instead considering getting rid of the part-time rate for new members, at its next annual conference, presumably a prelude to getting rid of it all together.

This would double

London Underground’s response to the successful ballot for action on the East End of the District Line over workplace violence has been to announce “20 additional colleagues”.

Good news, you might think. An acknowledgement that lone working and understaffing are the fundamental problems. But alas, the reality is not so encouraging.

These “colleagues” aren’t additional tube staff, but staff drafted in from Transport for London’s (TfL) Surface Transport department – workers who deal with taxi enforcement and revenue issues on buses. They are not trained or licensed to work on tube stations. They

London Underground station workers at the east end of the District Line began industrial action from Friday 27 September, in a dispute over workplace safety.

Workers will refuse to detrain or attend incidents alone, and will work from a place of safety, after their union, RMT, launched a campaign to demand safe staffing levels following a spike in antisocial behaviour and staff assaults. Workplace safety is becoming an increasingly acute issue on the Tube, after a serious assault on staff at West Ham station.

Drivers in the RMT on four lines — Victoria, Central, Northern, and Jubilee — will

Strikes in Bristol, Nottingham, Colchester, Newcastle and South London have continued the campaign by Deliveroo riders and the IWGB union, for better pay and conditions.

The Nottingham riders demands included reverting the fee change back to the previous minimum of £3.90 for cyclists and £4.15 for motorised vehicles and removing the vehicle priority which has seen cars and motorbikes get priority over bicycles.

In Bristol an ongoing issue is the safety of riders, particularly moped drivers who have found themselves attacked and victims of robbery while they go about their work.

In Brixton,

Tube vote for action on noise

Driver members of the RMT union on London Underground’s Victoria, Central, Jubilee, and Northern Lines have voted to take industrial action short of strikes over excessive noise.

Drivers are demanding a permanent engineering solution to the problem of excessive noise in trains. The issue is caused by noise cancelling technology fitted to tracks to avoid excessive noise at street level, which has the effect of forcing the noise into the cabs, where it becomes unbearably loud for both drivers and passengers.

The action, which has yet to be formally named by the RMT,