Workers' Diaries

The Elizabeth line is two weeks old and the inevitable teething problems are beginning to show. Staff continue to raise the alarm about under-staffing and confusion reigns about roster times. Throw into the midst a London Underground strike and you’ve got a potential powder keg! Our cohort has been thrown in the deep end, out on fully open stations after two weeks of training. We’re supposed to be shadowing colleagues, but due to everyone being busy we’re given general customer service duties. It’s frustrating to be on the front line without all the tools to do a full job. Assessments come and...

With the pay, terms and conditions, and job security ballot taking place over recent weeks, some of the more routine things have gotten lost, and especially with Covid restrictions in place over those weeks. Network Rail management has now formally withdrawn all the Covid restrictions, and so the basic items now resurface. Our depot had a problem with parking which we thought had been solved with the use of some waste land and better markings in the car park. However, during Covid curbs some staff who were normally based elsewhere have been allowed to use portacabins so as to not be travelling...

With days to go until the Elizabeth Line [Crossrail] opens to the public, it’s all hands on deck to get things ready. Matters to be resolved range from a leaky tap in the mess room to whether the company has enough staff to safely operate. It’s my second week on the job and first time out on the stations. B gives me the tour and tries to put me at ease ahead of my impending assessment. I’m supposed to be receiving two tours, but it turns out only one can be conducted as a station can’t spare the staff to take me round. It doesn’t fill me with confidence. Later on I see the union Whatsapp group...

Recently a firefighter sent round a proposal to change to a 24 hour shift pattern. Currently we work two day shifts of 10.5 hours followed by two nights of 13.5, with four days off in between “tours”. The proposal is to move to either a pattern of a 24 hour shift followed by three days off, or 24 hours on, 24 off, another 24 on and then five days off. T, K and O are all tentatively in favour, seduced by the prospect of reduced travel time and expense, and no longer needing to stay at station between shifts as they often currently do because they live far away - time they feel they may as well...

Just when you thought that management could not come up with anything more stupid, they prove you to be hopelessly optimistic. The railway has become more electronic and less mechanical over the years. Electrical-power signalling has taken over, in large part, from wires, cranks and pulleys, and now the digital age is putting even more high-tech stuff on our districts. Obviously, we have adapted, learnt, and gained experience, but always there has been someone with the knowledge. If you were unfamiliar with a piece of equipment, usually the next level up, a supervisor or engineer, would be...

I turn up at my ambulance station for a nightshift to find a traffic jam. The station has enough parking bays for around 12 ambulances in the garage. Tonight there are over 20 vehicles crammed in. The few dayshift crews who managed to escape a similar scene in the hospital ambulance bays are late off anyway, queuing desperately for a place to park their ambulance on station. All the bays are full and vehicles are parked down the centre of the bays blocking the others from exiting. As I enter the garage and grab a vehicle to book onto, I’m greeted with the smell of fumes from all these...

The big vote approaches over our terms and conditions, pay, and redundancies. It’s a bit hard to describe how the feeling is running at work as there’s a lot of shouting and wishful thinking about redundancies, chances of winning, what effect our being on strike will have. Behind all of this is a long history of small things which have been let slip. Minor taking on of office duties or supervisory work, lack of support from our “supervisors”, allowing ways of work to be dictated by the office, and a general feeling of “what’s the point”. That has all been allowed to fester by a union head...

On Monday, all the remaining distancing measures are removed from the station. The sign giving a capacity limit for the mess room is taken down, and the barriers used to create “staff safe zones” on the gate lines are gone too. Our unions register concern about the removal of the measures, but there’s no big fight over it. Some workmates feel the measures, the enforcement of which had significantly frayed, had become more theatrical than effective. “Do you feel unprotected?”, a workmate asks on our first shift without the “staff safe zone” in place. He’s kidding, but I mull it over. I do feel...

I start my shift at 0700. There is already a queue of four ambulances outside A&E when we get there with our first patient an hour later. The queueing used to start mid afternoon as the department filled up but often now the backlog hasn’t been cleared overnight, so it’s all day. It’s routine now to log your position in the queue when you arrive and then sit waiting. Only an hour outside in the car park on this occasion. The next time we get to the hospital there are eight ambulances. A three hour wait just to get through the front door. The patient we are with has severe dementia and...

I spend both days of our recent strike (1 and 3 March) picketing the station I work at. It rains almost continuously on the first day of the strike, but the feeling of empowerment from seeing the impact of our action, and the photos and videos pouring into union WhatsApp groups from picket lines around the city, helps keep our spirits up. We’re also boosted by linking up with UCU picket lines at universities near our station, and by a visit from a striking Great Ormond Street Hospital security guard from the UVW. Two of my fellow pickets, joining us from another station on our line, were first...