East Lancs Railway

I don't believe the response from the ELR is as affirming as they would be hoping, nor likely to halt the wave of opinion against them.

They openly mention two grievances. One grievance has shown in Ms Crompton's favour, the other is non conclusive. To give the railway the benefit of the doubt, I'll assume they have not removed volunteering privileges from Ms Crompton in regard to the grievance found in her favour.

So to tackle the latter. A second grievance raised, but could neither be proven nor disproven. As a result, the person raising the grievance has been told to leave the railway. We have been given no further comment regarding any additional actions the railway has taken regarding this grievance, such as improving on systems to avoid any future allegations of similarity, nor that any other persons involved in the grievance have similarly been removed from volunteering privileges.

Again, we could be missing the information on those points and the management at ELR could already be well into tackling these. However, a lack of transparency (which could be acheived without actually breaching confidentiality of any possible additional parties), does reinforce the public image that the whistle-blower is the one who pays the price.

The wording, "We share her sadness", essentially feels as an attempt to paint the ELR as also the victim alongside Ms Crompton. To play judge, jury, executioner but also the bereaved in one statement has to be commended on attempt however!

 

The square root of sum of absolutely nothing. Going off comments over on Twitter, the initial assumptions made about the ELRs side haven't been assuaged at all.

 

It certainly does not make the ELR look good that they do not say why Crompton was asked to leave.

That said, it appears that the discrimination-related complaint was held to be inconclusive, if the ELR are telling the truth.

 

Joanne Crompton stated in her tweet (link in post #362) that she was sacked for being (inter alia) a “drain on resources”.
I suspect that repairing reputational damage will now be a far greater drain on the ELR’s resources than retaining and dealing fairly with her would ever have been.

 

Judging by the replies to ELR promotional tweets, almost certainly.


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

 

The responses to Mr Kelly’s post about International Women’s Day are uncomfortable as well.

We don’t know for certain what has gone on here. Not exactly. However, you would have to say that the action of declining Joanne the opportunity to volunteer was obviously going to be problematic for the railway’s reputation without the need for hindsight.

It does remind me of an incident of an incident on another railway many years ago where someone fell from a bridge into a river. The answer to that incident (which fortunately caused no lasting injury or worse) was not to thoroughly overhaul the arrangements for working on the bridge, but to not allow that person to work on the bridge again.

In the absence of a better explanation from the ELR which I do not find very compelling, I will on balance continue to think that Joanne has been discriminated against. And so will many others I suspect.

Reading between the lines it could be (massive benefit of doubt being given) that the ELR came to the view that the making of the complaint by Joanne and the subsequent investigation had created a situation where (as Peter seemed to hint) others in the loco dept no longer wanted to work with Joanne. If so then this is regrettable. However, if she has done nothing wrong, if the complaint was in no way malicious (and we have no reason to think it was) then everyone just needs to put their big boys (or girls) trousers on and get on with it. Otherwise, even if Joanne hadn’t previously been discriminated against, and even if the root of this “sacking” was not intentionally sexist, she has become a victim of an unfair treatment.

 

If I hinted at this I had no intention of doing so. I have no inside knowledge of Joanne's relationship with her colleagues in the loco dept or the wider ELR and wouldn't comment about it even if I did know.

Peter

 

If that were the case, and we don’t know that it is, then the wrong person/people have been asked to leave.

Simon

 

It was this comment that led me to believe you were hinting at something from a position of knowledge. Sorry.

I don’t think it changes my hypothesis. Maybe just had less back up?

 

That was the point I was trying to make.

 

Every story has a beginning and an end. From reading what has been said it appears to me that only the second half of this story has been told. For completeness, when can we expect publication of the first half?

 

I wonder if other volunteers become unavailable over the Bank Holiday weekend. Without volunteers the Heritage Railway movement would be significantly reduced in size

 

That may of course not be possible. The ELR are backed into a corner, largely of their own making whatever way you look at this, and it will be hard to emerge from it. Saying nothing might be the only option.

 

I doubt if the ELR will comment presently. maybe the full facts will come later.
There are two sayings that come to mind with all walks of life in my experience.

"Be careful when skating on thin ice" and secondly "you can rarely buck the system".

 

Is it the complainant or railway you think was/is on thin ice?

 

It's doubtful that any organisation would make a full and detailed statement without running the risk of some kind of GDPR breach unless all parties agreed to it. What's been interesting to watch is how quickly people have passed judgement on the ELR and it's General Manager without knowing any of the facts except what has been posted on social media by Joanne Crompton and the statement issued by the ELR. From reading both statements I doubt that this was a simple case to deal with; the topic of the allegations never is. Perhaps we should be careful about rushing to judge the organisation or the individuals involved with only the basic viewpoints that have been articulated.

 

I'm not sure why you would deliberately block anyone following Joanne or any of the railway press?
If you don’t want to comment then just say that. Blocking people makes it look like you've got something to hide.
Or maybe I'm missing something?

 

Who exactly doing the blocking? Is it an ELR account or a personal one eg Mike Kelly?

 

It was Mike Kelly's twitter account @elrchairman

 

It's the ELR chairman account, currently operated by Mike Kelly.
As such, it is representing the railway as it is not a personal account.