I hearby decree that my manager has finally lost it. She is willing to play Russian Roulette with our lives to make sure she gets her bonus.
As of today, if we as guards work a train that is booked to terminate early due to engineering works, we have to get on a bus the same as a passenger. Now some of you may be thinking that we are mad, not above rail passengers,etc, but when you consider that we are often carrying about £500 on us, we have just been through said train selling tickets and chances are some of those are pissed at having to buy a ticket, you can probably understand that some of up are a little concerned for our safety.
My company have never run a risk assessment of getting on a bus at 1am with a load of pissed up scroats looking to battle all-comers. They havent because they would have to do it every weekend when a different bus service runs. As it is, the CCTV on our lovely Disastro trains rarely operates now so when there is even a fight on the train, the police have very little in the way of evidence.
Now I have no problem getting on a replacement bus service during the daytime, or when most of the calling points are staffed, but at 2am meandering down country lanes, is it REALLY a risk the company are happy taking? Even bus companies refuse to drive in some areas that we go through to get to stations on those late night runs.
This is a time when I will fully support Bob Crow if he were to call a strike over our safety. I disagreed with the call for 72 hours on the tube as it was an issue that would have been better resolved with other tactics, but I think that if we were to refuse to start any diagram with a bus involved then we would get somewhere and still pass on a service to our passengers.. well, the ones that dont try to beat us to a pulp.
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