Chapter 4 - Work on the Railways - Rail, Tram and Bus Union of NSW

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*On Wooden Rails <strong>Chapter</strong> 4 8/30/05 8:28 PM Page 168 On Wooden Rails - Celebrating 150 Years of <strong>Work</strong> on the NSW Railways Ross demanded that the Railways department listen to the need for action to prevent more deaths. In the Railroad, Ross issued a challenge: 'Who says shunters are not men?' A challenge to both the Department and the shunters. Ross knew that he could not singlehandedly solve the shunter's problems, and nor could the union: the shunters had to help themselves. Within a week, the Department made a series of improvements for shunters - increased staff, a shorter working week, provision of gloves (the shunters had been grappling with the often greasy couplings with their bare hands) and improved lighting in the Enfield yard. Ross told the shunters that they had not only won those gains: 'men', he said, 'have defended their selfrespect.' …But the gains had been won at a terrible price: between January and July 1938 the ARU's 'red roll' recorded thirteen workplace deaths in the NSW Railways, four of whom were shunters. 10 Shunters were a relatively militant section of the railways workforce, and continued to campaign for improved conditions in the yards over the years since the tragic death of Timm Dwyer. One such campaign was for the removal of buffers from trains. Mick Schmitzer became active in the union and became the Shunter Section Representative at Broadmeadow before later becoming the State Secretary of the Shunters. It was the time when Jim Walshe was in Newcastle as the ARU’s Northern Organiser. “We were involved in a lot of campaigns then with Don McKechnie, who was the State Shunter’s Secretary at the time. We ran a major campaign to get rid of all the buffers because of the injuries. Even when they introduced automatic couplings they kept the buffers on to save the cost of removing them. We saved them the trouble, a part of the campaign involved ‘flying gangs’ that went into the yards and cut the buffers off with oxy gear, and just dropped them where they were. We did get rid of them.” 11 Shunting in the Rain In addition to the congestion in the yards and the usual hazards of the conditions, the weather caused its own problems in many of the yards. The additional dangers of work in wet and slippery conditions, with no or minimal wet weather gear,gloves or other protective equipment was compounded by flooding in a number of yards. Jack Sparkes was an acting examiner at Enfield in the 1940s, and describes the problems that came with the rain. 10 Mark Hearn, Enlarging Personality – <strong>Work</strong>ers Online Issue 101, July 2001 11 Interview with Mick Schmitzer, April 2005 12 Hearn, <strong>Work</strong>ing Lives, op.cit., p127 13 Interview with Dave Morris, May 2005 168 Senior Shunter Paul Dalmay, Sydney Terminal, 1990 “ See that yard is gravitated. All the water would run down the bottom of the yard to the out-going train section and there’d be a great lake right across the bottom of Enfield yard and when we rung up about it they didn’t believe us. But on the high tide at Cooks River it used to flood and it was in a shocking state, and they used to laugh when I told them that I had to tie sleepers up to a lamp-post to save them derailing the trains going out.” 12 New Times in the Yard Dave Morris estimates that in 25 years at Enfield there have been about 25 managers, often external to the railways and using it as ‘a stepping stone, or the one their management career perished on’. While Dave sees some of the changes made as necessary and some as contributing to improved working, he is frustrated at the more recent management approaches and strategies. He decided to stay in shunting at Enfield because it was ‘close to home, the work was to a regular roster and the money was reasonable’. “The numbers of shunters has dropped dramatically through changes such as block loading where it was previously mixed, abuses of multi-skilling, and combining the shunting and examining roles and duties… The guys develop a loyalty to the job that the company doesn’t respect. Until recently, the money was O.K (before aggregate wages were introduced in the Pacific National Enterprise Agreement), and you could reasonably predict your wages and work times. With the new work arrangements, you are all over the place and just can’t plan your time and family and social commitments outside of work.” 13 <strong>Chapter</strong> 4 - <strong>Work</strong> on the Railways
*On Wooden Rails <strong>Chapter</strong> 4 8/30/05 8:28 PM Page 169 Dave believes that the company is slowly ‘bleeding off Enfield yard, letting it run down’. “It used to be busy with a lot of different traffic. The volume has dropped, where you used to get for example, 10,000 tons from Botany now there is none. They are just doing miscellaneous contract work through there now.” Suzanne Molattam has recently been employed at Port Waratah as a trainee driver. At present she is working in the yard as a Terminal Operator. Unlike some of the conditions described in this section, there is no gravitational or ‘out of train’ shunting at Port Waratah, it is all done from on the train. The work combines shunting and inspecting wagons to ensure that brakes are working, wheels are in good condition, as well as other workings, and to check that the trains are made up properly. The locos are taken off the train and put in the fuel shed, and the terminal operator may have to ride out on the train as a second person. The approach to training hasn’t changed a great deal over time. Suzanne describes the preparation for the job Enfield Yard 14 Interview with Suzanne Molattam, June 2005 On Wooden Rails - Celebrating 150 Years of <strong>Work</strong> on the NSW Railways as consisting of “two weeks classroom training, and two weeks with a mentor. You have a handbook, and also refer issues to more experienced operators for advice.” The basic details are recorded in an allocated book of dockets, usually with details of the first three and last three wagons to verify that the train is complete, and these details as well as any anomalies are reported. If a problem is detected in the inspection or the checks in a slow-speed roll-by, the train will either be recalled, or depending on the problem, a fitter or maintenance crew will be called in to rectify the problem. With the new classifications and roles in the yards, some of the conditions of the past may have improved. Modern shunting doesn’t appear to involve the same daily hazards as experienced by many in the past, and certainly shunting deaths are significantly less prevalent as a defining characteristic of the work. It remains to be seen whether the new management practices and approaches to the work make it any more pleasant to work in the major yards in future. <strong>Chapter</strong> 4 - <strong>Work</strong> on the Railways 169
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Chapter 4 - Work on the Railways - Rail, Tram and Bus Union of NSW

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