No reader of Monthly News will be surprised to hear that since our strike in June 2009, there have been at least five more wrong-side door openings (WSDOs) with management trying to hush them up and rightly not referring any of the staff involved to disciplinary action. Management know that these incidents have only happened because of their failure to provide the safety device used on all other stock on all other lines - Correct Side Door Enabler (CSDE). No one has been sent to a disciplinary hearing, that is, except the person most unlikely to have been sent to one.

Medical Restriction

We are expecting the outcome of a driver who, two weeks before he was involved in a WSDO, had been put on severe restriction by London Underground’s own occupational health service (LUOH) and ordered that he must not carry out ANY TRAIN OR TRACK WORK, AND SHOULD NOT MAKE ANY SAFETY CRITICAL DECISIONS due to his very high blood pressure caused by the harassment he was receiving due to an earlier incident.

Get back to work!

The day after he handed in this letter to his manager, he was hauled into a meeting alone with his TOM and instructed to have two days off – one being his own rest day – and come back driving trains. When he mentioned the restrictions stipulated by LUOH, he was told that the manager will have a word with LUOH and get them to change their minds. But this was ‘high blood pressure’ he insisted, ‘How can having a word change that, or even having a rest?’ ‘Don’t worry, I’ll sort it out,’ his manager assured him ‘and when you come back, there will be a new letter from LUOH’. ‘I cannot pick up until I have a medical decision,’ insisted the driver. ‘Don’t worry’ replies the manager, ‘if its not here when you get back, we will get it for you’.

‘Shut up and pick up your train’

Everyday the driver reported for duty, he asked first for a copy of the letter restricting him, but it was refused. Then he asked for the letter lifting the restriction, or the letter standing him back up. Each time he was refused. It got to the point where he was being told by one desk manager to ‘shut up and pick up your train or you know what will happen to you’.

Selected for discipline

Seven days after returning, he had a WSDO. Other drivers had also had WSDOs since Carl Campbell was sacked, yet he is the only driver being sent to a disciplinary hearing. When the brief was presented for the CDI, none of the paperwork about his retraction by LUOH was provided. Due to the insistence of the member and his representative, the hearing has been forced into a fourth day because they insisted that these and other pieces of evidence, which prove that our member’s health and welfare has been totally neglected, should be made available to the CDI panel. As his representative said at the hearing, ‘These managers, all of them who have forced this driver to work while restricted by the company’s doctors, have been criminally negligent’.

Managers with stethoscopes

At the time of writing it appears that once again LUL are attempting to change the Attendance at Work policy(you have guessed it to make it more draconian!), and the Government are putting GPs under pressure to decide on workers fitness for work. It is all an agenda to increase productivity at any cost and it is likely that LUL managers will be putting more pressure than ever on you to come to work when you are not fit in order to meet their targets. It appears they are prepared to go to any lengths to achieve this. Again it is only the RMT who have consistently challenged the imposition of these draconian policies and you are strongly advised to make sure that you take an RMT rep with you at any meeting with management to discuss your employment.

What kind of managers are they who, despite being unqualified in medicine, think they can make medical decisions without reference to a doctor or to LUOH?

Article from Feb 2010 edition of Finsbury Park Monthly News