Proper studies are required to lead us to great diversity

After my little spat over exaggerated claims about the railways having been largely funded by the proceeds of slavery (on Twitter and in RAIL 908), I thought I would look at a rather more relevant issue around race.

I tried to find out how many BAME people are employed in the industry, and whether this was being monitored. And the shocking reply from industry spokespeople is that there is no such work taking place.

While some train operators and Network Rail do monitor numbers, there is no overall industry monitoring and around a third of companies do not collect any statistics at all.

The RSSB and Network Rail have produced data on wage gaps between

BAME and white staff.

Drivers’ union ASLEF produced an excellent report, On Track with Diversity, which was very thorough and honest. It started with an admission from General Secretary Mick Whelan that at his annual conference, too many train drivers resembled him - ‘middle-aged, male and white’.

ASLEF’s survey revealed that 6.5% of drivers (the vast majority of whom are represented by the union) are BAME. That struck me as quite low, but then as a Londoner the numbers I see are greater than elsewhere in the country. Indeed, I can hardly remember ever seeing a long-distance non-white driver when I travel on inter-city trains.

There is clearly a need for such honesty to be shown more widely in the industry. It is, frankly, a scandal that at the various rail industry events I attend, the number of nonwhite faces can be counted on one or (at best) two hands.

Over the course of my 25 years of writing about the industry, I have interviewed perhaps a dozen non-white managers, of whom David Waboso (in his various roles) was by far the most senior.

This has to change, but can only do so if data is available. So, as a start, one of the first tasks of whatever new bodies emerge is to institute ethnic monitoring across the industry.