Fragmentation and societal change have eroded the culture and commonality that bonded rail workers together, and it’s a shame
How will TOCs like South Western be remembered?
Last weekend, I watched the gripping Netflix documentary, Strike: An Uncivil War, about the 1984/5 miners’ strike. It was a fascinating watch, not least to see how different folk looked back then, but also a reminder of some of the borderline policing approaches that I used to witness at football matches. Anyway, I digress. What was really powerful was the strength of culture and community within the mining profession and that the miners’ dispute was very much a fight for survival, not just for this trade but for the working classes more generally.
All this made me reflect on the rail industry and the far less steadfast sense of its community these days. I had exposure to the railway culture in my childhood, hanging around Orpington station, befriending and getting in the way of the staff, listening to their moans, and witnessing their challenges and camaraderie between them. And then, in 1984, I started to go to depot open days, many of them in classic ‘railway towns’ and saw the staff environment close up and its unifying community. Joining London Underground in 1993 and then working on the railway, the working patterns, the pride in the job, the ‘in it together’ grafting in adversity, the technical rules and regulations, jargon and so on – well it’s been part of my life. As an employee, I’ve witnessed a not-too-dissimilar ‘culture’ at British Airways and Royal Mail, but never as manifest and profound.
In the last decade, the sense of the railway being a profession with a distinct culture has diminished
In the last decade, the sense of the railway being a profession with a distinct culture has diminished. Privatisation and creating a more fragmented structure was initially a contributory factor. The days of a ‘railway worker’ being truly multi-functional and able to engage with colleagues around similarly diverse experiences has declined. Shared experiences always help glue a community together. Cost-cutting, including staff and role reductions and outsourcing train manufacturing overseas, led to railway towns like Crewe, Doncaster, York, and Swindon being less synonymous with the industry. The railway landscape is now smaller, less unwieldy, more efficient and streamlined. Glance out of the window on a train journey, and you’ll see neat-looking electric multiple units, fewer sprawling fiddle yards and depots of old, stations less cavernous with superfluous platforms and buildings now redundant – less railway infrastructure means a shrinking workforce. Canteens, sports teams and social clubs have largely become a thing of the past.
The loss of a unique railway identity has perhaps been in tandem with it no longer being regarded as ‘working class’. Rail employees now enjoy ‘middle class’ pay and conditions (thanks admittedly to trade union lobbying) and a better working environment. Drivers’ cabs are sleek, modern and resplendent in technology, so too stations and signalling centres – far removed from the conditions at the front of a Class 47 locomotive in its prime or before then on the footplate or the signal box.
Diversity and inclusion has also been a contributory factor and welcomingly so – more women and a greater spectrum of cultures, backgrounds, perspectives and more emotionally empathetic and sensitive approaches, means that the classic, white, working class, male environment of the railway of yesteryear – and indeed the mines, steelworks and other comparable industries – has diminished. It doesn’t feel as macho as when I first hung round stations and depots.
The lessening of a ‘railway culture’ does, though, have a downside in terms of the way in which it has created gaps and a loss of identity, visible also to customers. The paucity of really dynamic leaders, the lack of vision and the absence of a desire to create a legacy is something I see, not just as someone working in the industry, but as a customer. Last week, for instance, I had a ‘what’s the point of it all?’ moment, and it was something as trivial as me sitting on a train early at Portsmouth Harbour and having 20 minutes staring bored at absolutely nothing but the side of a South Western Railway Class 450 next to me. I looked at the logo and brand – all aesthetically pleasing – and I reflected on the seven years in which the franchise had been in-situ under FirstGroup and whether history will look back at this period with anything but apathy and forgetfulness. It’s been a franchise that started in challenging circumstances. Four MDs in seven years – all good ones too – tells a tale of a franchise that struggled to meet the aspirations of those in charge. Running the South Western territory, both in the privatised or nationalised sector has always been one of THE plum jobs in the industry, and yet it’s become a little more of a secondment in recent times.
In recalling the period circa 2011 to 2024, I think there will be just a characterless void, but the move towards micro-management of franchise contracts hasn’t helped the TOCs
I suspect that South Western Railway will be one of the first franchises to come under the new structure in 2025 and then, looking back, I even wonder if First, despite modest financials for being in change, would feel that it’s been worth the hassle. Has it panned out for them as they’d planned regarding the vision and legacy they will have described in their winning bid? I think they have done a very good, though not spectacular, job. And for South Western Railway, read most of the other TOCs in recent times – almost all of them it has felt have either existed, maybe even ‘gone through the motions’ a little. In recalling the period circa 2011 to 2024, I think there will be just a characterless void, but the move towards micro-management of franchise contracts hasn’t helped the TOCs.
So, when I compare the ‘railway culture’ of the old with that of today, I see very little identity. At Network Rail, there is a sense of culture and this has grown stronger since Andrew Haines, as a hugely respected industry professional, took charge. In the TOC environment, culture and identify is visible, just about, in places. I see it at Northern, where there is a sense of camaraderie that reflects the close-knit communities in which it serves – though I do also see a sense of overt self-confidence that can grind at times. At LNER, there’s a bubbliness among staff, though a hint of some of the hoity-toity approach of GNER back in the day and at South Eastern there’s a sense of being approachable and of focusing on social value.
It’s interesting how, these DOHL TOCs seem to have a greater sense of identity and appear more on the front foot. Perhaps it’s a measure of them feeling they have more security of tenure and an ability to focus on running the railway without owning group distractions. I also see a discernible ‘culture’ at FirstGroup’s Great Western Railway, where there is a company with a sense of purpose, direction and something to show for its time running the railway – testimony to the strong, galvanising and longstanding tenure of Mark Hopwood at the helm.
Another noticeable change in culture has been the decline in the appetite to become a ‘middle manager’. This is a challenge experienced not just on the railway but in industry per se, with recent media reports suggesting fewer and fewer youngsters aspire to climb the ladder. A shifting of work versus life balance and a recognition that to become a middle manager brings with it limited work variety (in these more constrained times, particularly in transport), little pay inducement and a lot of hassle, means that we have a dearth in talent within this grade. When I was younger, almost everyone was motivated about climbing higher and quicker than their peers. In the rail sector, again, the fragmented and constrained nature of the structure means that middle managers have less variety these days.
Human resources departments haven’t helped the situation. In their obsession with empire-building, they have clipped the wings of middle managers and sapped their souls
Human resources departments haven’t helped the situation. In their obsession with empire-building, they have clipped the wings of middle managers and sapped their souls, either by interfering and overruling them or by taking over any responsibility for managing people. I know countless managers who now wash their hands of any difficult people issues by just handing them over to HR. The problem started emerging around 15 years ago, when ‘Personnel’ became ‘Human Resources’. Suddenly, these folks became too big for their boots, and the days of having a friendly, confidential chat over tea and coffee with your personnel manager were gone.
As these HR protagonists got ahead of themselves, their tentacles moved into ‘talent management’, ‘vision, values and behaviours’ and ‘culture’. Yet, as we look back on the current railway landscape, how successful have they been in these areas? I would say they’ve fallen flat on their faces. There are a few HR directors I have come across that have been brilliant, rounded leaders (I am working with a few gems right now), but others that just stare into your eyes, like psychologists analysing the behaviours of colleagues and staff, and then talking in mumbo-jumbo babble. And if they aren’t talking in riddles, many of them say absolutely nothing but icy, scripted, unopinionated, non-committal, text-book monotones. They are now so focused on ‘compliance’, that they’ve lost the art of building trust and relationships with the people they are there to serve. They are like this in their lives away from work too! All this matters because in some transport businesses, remarkably, the HR director has a more controlling influence than those actually running trains and buses!
Finally, of course, one of the daggers at the heart of culture has been home-working which continues unabated and can only get worse if Labour achieves its ridiculous aim of making this a worker’s right. With each passing month, homeworking makes the economy, in my view, less productive and more entitled. ‘Quiet quitting’ (doing the absolute minimum), along with ‘conscious unbossing’ (to refuse stressful middle management positions) are, I’m told, becoming increasingly popular. Folk are coasting – using their WFH days to catch up on admin at home, going abroad and working from the beach. The scam of switching your computer on so it shows that you are ‘online’ is now well known but never challenged, and so too is the use of AI to draft emails.
Where do we go from here? I don’t think it’s too late to try and re-create a ‘railway culture’
Where do we go from here? I don’t think it’s too late to try and re-create a ‘railway culture’. Some might say it doesn’t matter if there isn’t a culture. I prefer to extract the positives from the culture of old – the character and identity that transcended how staff looked and behaved, but also created an identity that was positively visible to customers and created a proposition with greater identity and a sense of a guiding mind.
At a time when the railway was faced with malaise and now awaits concrete details on its future structure, what it needs is a sense of purpose, shared vision, and reflection on what constitutes its heart and soul. There needs to be something more substantial than the superficial balderdash on social media to try and unify employees and collectively create lasting relationships built on substance. Time has moved on and no one surely wants to go back to the days of the miners’ strikes or some of the working conditions and approaches within the railway back then, but there was, at least, a sense of commonality and identity that has been lost. And as I watched that Netflix programme and reflected on parallels with the railway, I actually felt sad.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Alex Warner has over 30 years’ experience in the transport sector, having held senior roles on a multi-modal basis across the sector. He is co-founder of recruitment business Lost Group and transport consultancy AJW Experience Group (which includes Great Scenic Journeys). He is also chair of West Midlands Grand Rail Collaboration and chair of Surrey FA.
This story appears inside the latest issue of Passenger Transport.
DON’T MISS OUT – GET YOUR COPY! – click here to subscribe!
The post The railway’s lost sense of community first appeared on Passenger Transport.