North Yorkshire Moors Railway General Discussion

I was paid staff at a heritage railway some years ago, primarily in an office role with some other duties “as required”. At the weekends I’d also volunteer, driving and firing and working on the pway in the off season. I once spent three months without a day away from the place. I’d do it again like a shot!

(Although the family would probably use their veto these days)

 

It needs management. Sometimes active management like “ take some time off xxxx”, but in general if paid staff stuck their hours most railways would lose some of their biggest volunteers. Staff are staff, paid or otherwise, you just don’t want too many paid.

 

I’ve had three jobs in my working life. All three of them didn’t have their working hours laid down. You did what you had to do to get the job done. Most heritage railway paid staff I’ve known tend to do similar.

 

I was a scientist, and my contract (back then, it probably wouldn't be allowed now!) said much the same - you will work the hours necessary to do tyour job". I was a biochemist, and one soon discovers that biochemistry can take up very long hours!

 

Have seen/come across that/worked that (we run our own small business).

It's all good, until it isn't- there has been some interesting discussions in the safety community recently regarding working time & safety.

There's been a prosecution covered in the IOSH magazine recently involving worker who has had an RTC whilst driving for work resulting in a death.

The HSE have looked at the cumulative hours worked and driven in the period preceeding the accident and deemed that the person had not had adequate rest, and had fallen asleep/lost concentration sufficiently to have an RTC.

The article implied that the driver has been prosecuted by the police, and the HSE have prosecuted the employer, and elements within the management structure for breach of duties under the Health and Safety at Work Act- by not monitoring the hours worked and wellbeing of the member of staff.

This is very much under the spotlight from the HSE at the moment (alongside Telescopic reach rough terrain forklifts working at height and ATVs) in the sectors I mostly deliver training within.

Chris

 

I have always regarded my first job as a manager to ensure so far as is humanly possible that everyone goes home at the end of the day in the same state they arrived. I have had cause a few times to remind people that this is their #1 job too.

 

I work to an expectation like that. I also have contracted bours, and there are legal regulations about how long I work. For lower paid staff, there is also the national minimum wage to consider, if they are working unpaid overtime.

As @Chris86 points out, there are health and safety implications for the employer of overworking employees while there is also a risk of burnout to be managed - and offset against individuals’ genuine enthusiasm.

 

The NYMR would probably decide this needs another member of staff to be employed to manage this...

 

We seem to have arrived at a consesneus where the derided comment by the former Head of People can be put in context. Volunteering in a different role from the day job, especially in a non-safety critical role, can be a relaxing leisure activity. However if someone is employed to do a safety critical role five days a week and then is allowed to volunteer in the same role on days off the railway could be on a sticky wicket. If an incident occurred and it transpired that, say, a driver or signalman involved had been working in the same role for 10 or more days in a row it would be reasonable to expect some regulatory sanction. Management of fatique is becoming an area of increased regulatory concern with extensive guidance as to the fatigue monitoring and management controls that should be in place including for volunteers.

 

In the case you cite (paid staff doing a role for a certain number of days, and then carrying on doing a substantively similar role for additional days) I’d expect that simply to be covered by your fatigue policy about maximum permissible number of consecutive days - it is the work that is important, not whether or not you are being paid to do it.

Intetestingly in our fatigue policy, for the areas of explicit constraints (length of shift, rest time between shifts, maximum number of consecutive shifts and maximum hours within one week), the policy explicitly notes that time spent on another railway (whether mainline or heritage) should be counted towards your Bluebell total when assessing whether a given shift would be permissible. So for example, a mainline driver who finishes a mainline shift at 9pm on Friday night can’t start a volunteer shift before 9am on Saturday morning due to needing adequate rest; it doesn’t matter that the first shift was worked for one railway and the second for a different one.

So in your example above, what matters is just whether the combined working pattern complies with your fatigue policy.

I agree that the mental health aspect is important (and avoiding “institutionalisation” of someone who is never away). But that is a separate issue and one I’d suggest falls more in the realm of individual line management. It is impossible to be prescriptive about whether it is healthy or not, it depends on the individual.

Tom

 

You overestimate the level of consensus, but it depends how the role is defined. I would not expect an HR manager* to provide that operational management, but to create the climate where the management described by @Jamessquared can happen.

However, you also point to a further issue - the larger an organisation, the more likely it is that support roles will be required, and that they will need to be paid for.

* - I can't get hung up on the current titles, "head of people" is just modern jargon.

 

I used too work at BREL York and no matter what, as soon as the clock reached the appointed time you were out of the gate and down the road.
Later i worked for a National Rail Contractor on Track Renewals.
totally different mindset. You were on site until the job was done no matter if you breached time limits. You did all you could to finish early but the "Law of Sod" could rear it's head at any time.

 

HR Manager was modern jargon not so long ago.

 

Whereas, in my (desk, but technical) job, I never believed in putting in much more than the amount that I was paid for. For my last few years before retirement I negotiated to cut my official working hours to 95% of the normal amount, for 95% of the salary. If I then actually worked, say, 96% I was not going to worry about it, but it would have made no sense to work even 97% or 98% while being paid for only 95%.

 

Interesting that Durham/Teesside schools are off this week and the railway is closed tomorrow and Friday.

 

Not the only railway to consider what is happenning elsewhere than in their own area. We experienced another one who only considered their own area before Easter. They weren't running but all other attractions that opened were quite busy.

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'Rock and a hard place' seems to come to mind. My local area had the school holidays the two weeks before Easter (as, I believe, did many parts of the Country), yet Wales and some places such as near the NYMR are just in the second week of theirs. Were lines such as NYMR therefore actually ABLE to open for the latter as well as the former, or was it more viable to opt for the first two weeks when the majority of people would have been holidaying in the area?

 

So what do you suggest? Open because there might be enough people who come from outside the immediate area to warrant opening?

 

Not disputing your facts, but what is the difference to me working 45 to 50 hours in the office, stewarding a CME (20 hour day) and being so tired that even after a good nights sleep in a hotel I nodded off at the wheel, luckily with out hitting something.
So other than me, whose fault is that, my employer?, the railtour company? both?
Sure that bunch at the HSE would find someone to blame, or do they want to control our non work lives as well?
Safer to never leave the house.

 

All I can say is based on the number of tourists in the area probably lost some trade including 4 adults from us. Some of the adjacent education areas were actually on holiday too.