East Lancs Railway

Worth noting that Joanne's tweet has been viewed by 460k+ people, the treatment of her has been appalling.

 

Whilst it would be great to hear a response from the ELR, I strongly suspect (and to be honest, I hope) there won't be one, at least not one with any detail.

Surely details of disciplinary procedures* are not for the company to make public, though I accept the injured party might well do so and I hope has every right to do so.

So whilst my curiosity would love to know the facts as ELR see them, I'd feel uncomfortable if they were revealed.

It's an almost impossible situation IMHO. An apology would be a start, but many would think it was insincere; reinstatement would be good but no-one would blame Ms C if she felt unable or unwilling to do so.


* As in her dismissal and the reasons for it - I know she did nothing wrong

 

My jaw has hit the floor on this one, talk about an almighty own goal by the ELR here. Joanne has been inspirational and a trail blazer for women volunteers. Unfortunately, what encouragement is there now going to be for others to speak up now? No one should ever be dismissed for highlighting inequality and discrimination, especially when those grievances have been upheld.
The fact that the ELR had a massive publicity event for their female volunteers and this decision was made by one of the few female GM's in the industry, just makes this an even more gob smacking decision. Perhaps this just highlights what Joanne has been pointing out all along, there are major deep seated issues in the industry and little protection for those who do speak out.
This has truly shocked me tonight. I know Joanne volunteers elsewhere, I hope she finds happiness and a better welcome there.
This does feel like 1 step forward and 3 steps back..

 

Honestly, you would have thought these days that the culture of railways being "boys toys" would have been finished by now.
I guess you just cannot change people, especially men in high power.

Mind you, I'm not entirely suprised.

 

It’s quite embarrassing that it’s took a female to stand up to how volunteers are treated but full respect to her I met her a few times at elr when I was on the roster as a cleaner and she always came across as a fighter but I’m with her on how they treated you there I drove all the way from Staffordshire 1 day at 4am only to find my name on the roster had been crossed out and another cleaner had been put on so I went home but that’s nothing on how I was treated at cvr after 10 years of volunteering there

 

I'm having trouble getting my head round this one. AIUI Joanne brought a discrimination action against the ELR which she won. Thus showing that the railway's management were at fault. They then lay her off for "bringing the organisation into disrepute" when it is their own actions which have brought the disrepute. Now they have doubled down on it by trying to blame her !
Seems a few people in East Lancs need to take a long hard look at themselves.

 

The best approach by the management would surely have been to avoid stoking the flames and just leave her be.

 

East Lancs have done themselves no favours at all. Totally disgraceful.

 

So your solution is to brush it under the carpet?
No.
Absolutely not.
The best approach would have been to apologise to Joanne and immediately overhaul all ELR policies and reporting procedures so that it never happens again.

 

I do wonder if we’ll be reading about this in any of the railway press shortly?
I have a feeling we won’t though.

 

The ELR Chairman seems to be on a blocking spree on Twitter today. My Twitter feed has several tweets like this one:
https://twitter.com/Clinnick1/status/1643928546425946115

 

It’s been noted by others.

 

Unless you contact the railway press and alert them to it !

 

Fred, I would have thought any journalist (transport or otherwise) that was half decent would have picked up on what’s gone on with the East Lancs and West Somerset. Ms Cromptons twitter post has been viewed well over 657k times.
I don’t want to sensationalise things but with in the space of less than a week there’s been two similar stories of discrimination in the heritage railway world and it’s trade association has pretty much stood by and done nothing.

There’s some pretty serious issues here, are we going to see someone from at least one of the mags ask some serious questions about the events of the past week or are we just going to see a pretty picture feature with something like 4079 on the GW set at the SVR in the next issue?

Someone like Melissa Cole from my industry would tear quite a few people a new one regarding what’s happened this week.
It really is disgusting.

 

They all know, the chairman has been busy blocking them all on Twitter this morning!

https://twitter.com/eastlancsrly/status/1643946665219616768?t=jfb0VrZWo-CPMEKyPutgGA&s=19

Ill-timed tweet from ELR yesterday morning about a dinosaur event at the railway. Unsurprisingly most of the comments have been about the management being dinosaurs.

 

Savage is how I’d describe it.
How stupid can you be posting something like that?

 

This, and the WSR saga, both have the potential to do a lot of damage to our movement, it highlights just how poorly volunteers can be treated, yet, theres no recourse, other than to go elsewhere, or give up completely , the HRA even if it wanted to can't stop bad management, only the management of each railway can, in the shape of pressure from its members and shareholders, hopefully someone in government who is interested in our industry might bring this matter up, ideally a volunteer should have the same rights to a fair hearing as anyone else, and a change in definition is needed, where there is discrimination based on a persons gender, it shouldn't matter if they are paid, or not, it should not be acceptable, dinosaurs died out, because they could not adapt to a new climate, and its time those dinosaurs did likewise.

 

I would be interested to hear @Lineisclear 's thoughts on this and whether he thinks the HRA should take action over such blatant discrimination?
Time to stand up and be counted

 

I find most journalists in trade presses are little more than editors of press releases because that's cheaper than doing any leg work. Beer/ alcohol is one of the worst for it in my experience. I've met and hung out with Melisa Cole a few times and she is a one woman force of nature which definitely marked her for a few years before the voices joined her. Feels like that's the intersection of where we are in rail preservation. We can either ignore those not of standard deviation, haphazardly virtue signal like the ELR have or work constructively to widen the tent to bring more people of different economic, social and ethnic backgrounds in.

 

Given the level of noise, I can see the possibility that this gets traction not just in the railway press, but the general media. My memory is that the ELR has relied heavily on support from local authorities, which would leave it exposed.

And when the commentary online includes words like “boycott”, then this could be existential.

Like others, I’m wondering how HRA are considering it, in the context of how they appoint their directors.


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