Fear over safety sparks rail staff strike threat
A RAIL union has threatened strike action after claiming that ScotRail is putting passengers and staff at risk by cutting its health and safety department.
All administrative, clerical, supervisory and managerial staff across Scotland, including its Glasgow headquarters were asked to consider voluntary redundancy, a matter of weeks after Abellio ScotRail announced a loss of £3.5m in its first full year operating train services in Scotland.
Now transport staff union TSSA has warned that a “strike threat looms” saying that railway stations in Scotland had been left without a health and safety department.
TSSA say the stations’ health and safety manager took voluntary severance whilst the remaining two members of his department have been told to find other jobs within the company.
TSSA general secretary Manuel Cortes who has already asked transport minister Humza Yousaf to stop the voluntary redundancies said: “It is incredible that at a time of heightened terrorist threat Abellio has done away with the department that looks after the health and safety of their stations. ScotRail are sleepwalking into a potential safety nightmare.”
He says that Mr Yousaf had previously dismissed their concerns over the redundancies calling them “only backroom staff”.
Mr Cortes added: “Now his laissez-faire attitude has put ScotRail passengers and staff at risk. I hope he’ll be man enough to admit he was wrong and intervene with ScotRail to put it right.
“TSSA will not be just “letting things happen” and we won’t be ruling anything out – up to and including strike action.”
Scotrail did not refute TSSA’s comments but said it had plans to expand its health and safety team to provide support for the stations. It did not put a timescale on this.
A Scotrail spokesman said: We are currently in consultation with the TSSA, who raised a question regarding this proposed change earlier today.
“The safety of our customer and staff remains our foremost priority.
“The changes we plan to make will ensure that Scotland’s railway remains one of Europe’s safest.”
Abellio, the state-backed Dutch rail company, has been running the Scottish train network since winning the franchise from FirstGroup in April 2015.