Tube strike threat over sacked driver

[theblackferret]

Feb 17, 2015 13:22:22 GMT class411 said:

Because this is a matter of public safety, here is a suggestion as to what they should do:

1) All safety critical staff to take a hand held test at every clocking on.
2) If employees registers alcohol then they are sent home and it is treated as if they took unauthorised absence. This is feasible since there is a 'zero' limit and it's not as if an employee is going to drink far too much, too close to work, in the hope of creeping under.
3) If the employee objects they can take a blood/urine test but will be charged the cost if it confirms the hand held reading. (Obviously they cannot work that day but if the initial reading is in error they won't suffer the 'unauthorised absence' strike.)

That way LU won't just weed out a drink impaired driver if they happen to do a random check on the day, and staff will know that if the abuse they rule they will be caught and suffer some consequence.

Seems eminently sensible to me.

Yes, it IS eminently sensible. Plus, it protects the public a degree further.

So it discriminates against no-one, I'd tweak that slightly, so a urine sample can be requested by either side and not refused without good cause, and both parties to the agreement (ie LU & RMT) provide half the cost of urine samples up front. That way, if a employee is over, there is extra evidence if referral to the police is needed, and would also allow LU to dismiss people with just cause based on a medical back-up.

I would not, vide any responsible union leader, want the ultimate sanction removed from management, especially if the breath test showed just over & the urine miles over.

[trt]

Surely it is in the interests of the employer not to dismiss highly and expensively trained, experienced staff without being absolutely sure that they are doing so unavoidably.
Are they defending the cheapest way of random breath testing? Possibly. But balance the infrequent cost of a more diagnostic test against the cost of training a driver...
Are they making this driver an example? That's unfair.
Are they exercising their muscle? Well past experience should show that a head-on with the union is going to lead to a strike. They need a water-tight case, which they've failed to get.

This is why I can't understand LUL's actions in this without recourse to considering the management have a hidden agenda (possibly a chess game with the unions). Public opinion can easily be swayed by emotive language such as drunk driving. I have to conclude that although LUL definitely don't have a water-tight case for dismissing this driver, they have a water-tight PR bomb to use on the run up to a general election which could see the union totally declawed and thus allow them to push through pay freezes, changes of working conditions and umpteen other cost saving initiatives which will ultimately result in more pay in the management's pockets.

[class411]

Feb 17, 2015 15:06:03 GMT Chris M said:

class411
That would only work if all of staff, unions and management have confidence that the rate of false positives is extremely tiny as LU employ a huge number of safety critical staff - a 2012 FOI request identified that there were at peak 530 trains in service across all lines, all of which need a driver (and the peak requirement has increased since then). Obviously that's only one shift's worth, so lets say that there are on average 3 drivers per peak train in service per day (figure plucked from the air), giving ~1590 drivers who will drive a shift on a given weekday. Then there are spare drivers - who need to be able to do a safety critical job if required - let's say an average of 3 per depot, which is another 60 staff (based on CULG's definition of a train depot) per shift (4 per day?) - bringing the total number of drivers to ~1830
Then you need to add the depot staff - I'll pluck average of 5 safety depot staff per depot per shift out of the air (another 400).
Then you add signallers - an average of 3 per line per shift?
Then station staff - In 2012 there were 262 stations owned and/or managed by LU. Let's give a conservative guess of an average of 5 staff per station per shift - 5240 people.
Line controllers - 4 per line per shift? - another 160

I'll stop there without considering engineering staff, safety critical managers, etc. as even with the hopefully conservative estimates above we have 7750 safety critical staff working on LU each day.

This table shows the number of people on average who would receive a false positive test for different failure rates of the equipment

Failure rate	False positives per day	False positives per week
1%	77.5	542.5
0.1%	7.75	54.25
0.01%	0.775	5.425
0.0001%	0.008	0.054

So even if only 1 test in a million gives a false positive, you are looking at unnecessarily sacking 1 person every 20 weeks, or 2-3 people a year. Or in reality most likely more as I've tried to underestimate the number of staff.
At a 1 in 10000 failure rate you are incorrectly sacking 2 people every 3 days - which is unsustainable practically (you'd quickly run out of staff) as well as politically.

Your calculations are interesting but they don't apply to my idea since no one is getting sacked. That's the whole point of it. It means that no safety critical staff ever start a shift showing positive. There is no safety risk if someone turns up for duty with alcohol because they will always be turned away.

I'm also not quite sure I see the logic behind saying 'we can't test everyone because the number of false positives would cause us to be sacking too many innocent people each week, but we're perfectly happy to sack just a few innocent people a decade as that is all that will happen because we don't test that many'.

[Deleted]

First disclaimer: I'm a rep in another union in another area of work

The time limit for Employment Tribunal claims is 3 months. So if the employee or his rep didn't submit an unfair dismissal claim within 3 months, this part of the argument is a complete red herring.

There is then the matter of whether the employer followed the correct process. In order to have any chance of winning the case, you need to convince the tribunal that the employer's failure to follow their own processes made any difference to the ultimate outcome. If the claimant's side are certain that they can do this, then I wish them all the best.

Second disclaimer: It's over 20 years since I was last in a lab

My online research of fuel cell breath testing machines leads me to believe that they work by oxidising ethanol (in the breath) to ethanoic acid. Acetone can't be oxidised in this way.

[Chris M]

Feb 17, 2015 16:41:12 GMT class411 said:

Your calculations are interesting but they don't apply to my idea since no one is getting sacked. That's the whole point of it. It means that no safety critical staff ever start a shift showing positive. There is no safety risk if someone turns up for duty with alcohol because they will always be turned away.

I'm also not quite sure I see the logic behind saying 'we can't test everyone because the number of false positives would cause us to be sacking too many innocent people each week, but we're perfectly happy to sack just a few innocent people a decade as that is all that will happen because we don't test that many'.

If you are sending staff home then you need someone else available on short notice to do their job. The more people you send home the more people you need in reserve, which means you need to roster more people and employ more people - not a bad thing in and of itself, but the money to employ them has got to come from somewhere.

Even if you don't sack on a first offence you are going to need to keep records, and not only is that a lot of paperwork in itself, but you are going to have to deal with a lot of appeals. A few appealed false positives a decade is a lot different to a few a week. At that level you would need to employ people specifically to deal with the appeals - more money.

I'm not saying this idea is bad, but it's not practical unless the technology can support it.

[Tom]

Feb 16, 2015 23:17:58 GMT rheostar said:

If that's a page in support of the driver they're doing him a disservice! I didn't know it was that high. The driver doesn't have a leg to stand on.

Maybe, maybe not. We all know that in LU that the deciding factor is not the incident but if you follow the correct procedure afterwards. If there are sufficient procedural irregularities from the way LU managed it then an ET may decide in the driver's favour.

[rheostar]

Feb 17, 2015 12:42:07 GMT theblackferret said:

What also bothers me about this is the precedent LU have set.

Let's suppose the impossible happens, and a visibly-intoxicated driver turns up for work.

He is subject to a random test. They do breath & urine.

The meter shows 7. So, what now, if he insists on a second breath test and on the same machine?

And that registers 5? Can they do the urine now, because they've already set a precedent with how they've played this case & the testers should now throw it away; after all, two negative breath tests cannot possibly be wrong, can they?

And if anyone wonders why the union leader is hot under the collar about this, you try dealing with management that insists on moving the goal-posts of precedent and procedure when it ruddy well suits them, regardless of the consequences for anybody else, as the above hypothesis shows. I have experience of dealing with just that, and pleasant it is not.

If someone turns up for work visibly drunk we'd call the BTP and our own testers for a 'for cause' breath and urine test. It's not impossible, unfortunately I've had to deal with this several times over the years.

[rheostar]

Feb 17, 2015 15:31:56 GMT trt said:

Surely it is in the interests of the employer not to dismiss highly and expensively trained, experienced staff without being absolutely sure that they are doing so unavoidably.
Are they defending the cheapest way of random breath testing? Possibly. But balance the infrequent cost of a more diagnostic test against the cost of training a driver...
Are they making this driver an example? That's unfair.
Are they exercising their muscle? Well past experience should show that a head-on with the union is going to lead to a strike. They need a water-tight case, which they've failed to get.

This is why I can't understand LUL's actions in this without recourse to considering the management have a hidden agenda (possibly a chess game with the unions). Public opinion can easily be swayed by emotive language such as drunk driving. I have to conclude that although LUL definitely don't have a water-tight case for dismissing this driver, they have a water-tight PR bomb to use on the run up to a general election which could see the union totally declawed and thus allow them to push through pay freezes, changes of working conditions and umpteen other cost saving initiatives which will ultimately result in more pay in the management's pockets.

Actually, LU has a very good drink and drugs rehabilitation program. If someone says they have a problem, they're immediately put on a D&A program where they can dry out under controlled conditions. Once they're back at work they're tested on a regular basis for liver function and breath tested. I can think of five or six people I've referred to this program and are still working for LU.

[Deleted]

I think we need to let this one run as Donald Rumsfeld infamously said "Reports that say that something hasn't happened are always interesting to me, because as we know, there are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns -- the ones we don't know we don't know." !

[Chris M]

That Rumsfeld quote is absolutely correct about what we do and don't know (although there are also unknown knowns, things we know but don't know that we know) but was hardly the most elegant phraseology.

[whistlekiller2000]

Feb 18, 2015 20:02:39 GMT @xercesfobe said:

I think we need to let this one run as Donald Rumsfeld infamously said "Reports that say that something hasn't happened are always interesting to me, because as we know, there are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns -- the ones we don't know we don't know." !

Well, a breathalyzer machine's integrity may be up for scrutiny here but I can't think of a statement quite as likely to have the police reaching for theirs as the above would, originally proclaimed by the erstwhile US Defence Secretary's. Go on, try and say it without sounding hopelessly p155ed. The more I tried, the worse it got until I ended up sounding like Captain Mainwaring "Being Made a Cardinal".   

Oh, and by 9.30am I've usually only had a small bottle of whisky with my cornflakes.

[Chris M]

Apologies if I've missed it anywhere, but I don't recall seeing how long tests on LU drivers have been using this type of machine?

[Deleted]

Urgh, LU's policy makes it very clear that despite the zero tolerance, a level of 13 micrograms / 100ml or below will not result in a failure. This gives more than sufficient margin of error for any of the excuses people are trying to come up with about zero tolerance for alcohol at work. LU's official guidance is no alcohol in the 8 hours before clocking on and no more than 7 units in the 16 hours before that - if you simply follow that, it makes it near impossible to fail the test. This guidance is made clear in your induction and several other safety related courses thereafter - LU is pretty clear on it.

[North End]

Feb 21, 2015 9:51:57 GMT @mulderpf said:

Urgh, LU's policy makes it very clear that despite the zero tolerance, a level of 13 micrograms / 100ml or below will not result in a failure. This gives more than sufficient margin of error for any of the excuses people are trying to come up with about zero tolerance for alcohol at work. LU's official guidance is no alcohol in the 8 hours before clocking on and no more than 7 units in the 16 hours before that - if you simply follow that, it makes it near impossible to fail the test. This guidance is made clear in your induction and several other safety related courses thereafter - LU is pretty clear on it.

My personal view (which is fully open to change) is that whilst I am happy with the above as far as it goes, there are two issues which I'd like resolved:

1) What safeguards are in place to mitigate against a defect with the machine itself. I'm beginning to wonder if doing a second test with the same machine is acceptable in this respect.

2) The diabetes issue needs to be resolved with professional evidence, one way or the other.

The whole matter needs to be properly resolved, one way or other, to ensure everyone has full faith in the testing process. If the testing regime *is* fully robust, this needs to be demonstrated with evidence.

[rheostar]

Feb 21, 2015 0:39:02 GMT Chris M said:

Apologies if I've missed it anywhere, but I don't recall seeing how long tests on LU drivers have been using this type of machine?

LU doesn't own or use any of the machines.

All of the testing is carried out by an independent laboratory that uses the most advance equipment available, and I wouldn't be surprised if they're more advanced than the ones used by the police. The people carrying out the tests are employed by the same laboratory so are completely impartial.

The tests have been going on for all operational staff, not just drivers, for at least 25 years.

Fortunately, someone giving a positive test is quite a rare occurrence as we're all acutely aware of LU's zero tolerance policy.

In the area that I work, no one including the local RMT reps, have any sympathy for the driver. In fact, someone that's very active in the union remarked that the RMT's only kicking up because the the driver's an RMT rep. If it were anyone else they wouldn't have given a toss.

[superteacher]

All that needs to happen when a positive test occurs is to do a retest on a different machine.

Is it really that difficult?

[Deleted]

rheostar said:

In fact, someone that's very active in the union remarked that the RMT's only kicking up because the the driver's an RMT rep. If it were anyone else they wouldn't have given a toss.

I don't think that (the fact that the driver's an RMT rep) has been widely reported - it's the first I've heard of it.

[Chris M]

Feb 21, 2015 0:39:02 GMT Chris M said:

Apologies if I've missed it anywhere, but I don't recall seeing how long tests on LU drivers have been using this type of machine?

Feb 21, 2015 11:06:13 GMT rheostar said:

LU doesn't own or use any of the machines.

All of the testing is carried out by an independent laboratory that uses the most advance equipment available, and I wouldn't be surprised if they're more advanced than the ones used by the police. The people carrying out the tests are employed by the same laboratory so are completely impartial.

The tests have been going on for all operational staff, not just drivers, for at least 25 years.

Fortunately, someone giving a positive test is quite a rare occurrence as we're all acutely aware of LU's zero tolerance policy.

None of that is an answer to the question I asked.
If this is the most advanced equipment available, then it is not going to have been in use for 25 years.

If these specific machines have been in use for 5 years then there is a greater liklihood of them having previously tested someone with diabetes previously than if these specific machines were new last year. In the former case then there is also greater evidence of both positive samples being recorded and of what procedures were followed when they were recorded.

If on average a positive sample is only recorded once every 1000 random tests (figure plucked from the air for discussion), and 10 random tests are carried out every day (ditto), there should only be about 3-4 positive samples a year. If only a third of these are disputed (another wild guess) then unless the machines have been in service longer than 18 months it is entirely possible this is the first positive test recorded by these machines to be disputed.

Over the whole population of England, about 6% had some form of diabetes (2013 figures), 90% of whom will have type 2 (the relevant type here, same source) so about 5.5% of the population.

I've not found any reliable figures, so let's stick with the 7750 safety critical staff each day who could be randomly tested. Assuming uniform distribution of people with diabetes, 5.5% (i.e. 426) of safety critical employees will have diabetes. However, if only 10 tests are done each day each persons chance of getting tested randomly is 0.13%, meaning that the chance of testing a person with diabetes is 0.13 × 5.5 = 0.715%. Meaning about 140 tests before it is likely that someone with diabetes will be tested (I think).

[rincew1nd]

Feb 21, 2015 11:06:13 GMT rheostar said:

In the area that I work, no one including the local RMT reps, have any sympathy for the driver. In fact, someone that's very active in the union remarked that the RMT's only kicking up because the the driver's an RMT rep. If it were anyone else they wouldn't have given a toss.

That little nugget does cast a new light on the case.

[theblackferret]

Feb 21, 2015 15:11:40 GMT rincew1nd said:

Feb 21, 2015 11:06:13 GMT rheostar said:

In the area that I work, no one including the local RMT reps, have any sympathy for the driver. In fact, someone that's very active in the union remarked that the RMT's only kicking up because the the driver's an RMT rep. If it were anyone else they wouldn't have given a toss.

That little nugget does cast a new light on the case.

Well, it's interesting that little nugget has not been used by the politically-right media to berate RMT, nor by the politically-left media to berate LU so far. I don't believe either side would fail to've dug that out, especially as the driver's name has been all over the media from the start, & used it to satisfy their own agenda, so I'd say there must be something more important in this case.

Can anyone disabuse me of the impression I get that both breath tests were done on the same machine, please? If that was the case, and the urine sample was disregarded, then, regardless of any other facts, opinions or fancies, or indeed my own slant on this case, I'd conclude any reasonable person would say the procedure was botched from the moment the second breath test came into it.

What you feel should happen as a result of that may differ from me, LU, RMT or all these. But I don't think we should deny that this was a botched procedure, and that is not a matter of debate, it's a fact.

Feb 21, 2015 14:21:10 GMT Chris M said:

Feb 21, 2015 0:39:02 GMT Chris M said:

Apologies if I've missed it anywhere, but I don't recall seeing how long tests on LU drivers have been using this type of machine?

Feb 21, 2015 11:06:13 GMT rheostar said:

LU doesn't own or use any of the machines.

All of the testing is carried out by an independent laboratory that uses the most advance equipment available, and I wouldn't be surprised if they're more advanced than the ones used by the police. The people carrying out the tests are employed by the same laboratory so are completely impartial.

The tests have been going on for all operational staff, not just drivers, for at least 25 years.

Fortunately, someone giving a positive test is quite a rare occurrence as we're all acutely aware of LU's zero tolerance policy.

None of that is an answer to the question I asked.
If this is the most advanced equipment available, then it is not going to have been in use for 25 years.

If these specific machines have been in use for 5 years then there is a greater liklihood of them having previously tested someone with diabetes previously than if these specific machines were new last year. In the former case then there is also greater evidence of both positive samples being recorded and of what procedures were followed when they were recorded.

If on average a positive sample is only recorded once every 1000 random tests (figure plucked from the air for discussion), and 10 random tests are carried out every day (ditto), there should only be about 3-4 positive samples a year. If only a third of these are disputed (another wild guess) then unless the machines have been in service longer than 18 months it is entirely possible this is the first positive test recorded by these machines to be disputed.

Over the whole population of England, about 6% had some form of diabetes (2013 figures), 90% of whom will have type 2 (the relevant type here, same source) so about 5.5% of the population.

I've not found any reliable figures, so let's stick with the 7750 safety critical staff each day who could be randomly tested. Assuming uniform distribution of people with diabetes, 5.5% (i.e. 426) of safety critical employees will have diabetes. However, if only 10 tests are done each day each persons chance of getting tested randomly is 0.13%, meaning that the chance of testing a person with diabetes is 0.13 × 5.5 = 0.715%. Meaning about 140 tests before it is likely that someone with diabetes will be tested (I think).

Not to mention the fact that another percentage of the population may have developed diabetes later in life and not even be aware of it. Unlikely to skew your statistics that much, but it could be pertinent to the efficacy of using the urine sample.

And my sister-in-law is a SRN and diabetes-specialist clinician, btw.

[jamesb]

If somebody has a positive breath test, would a blood test [to measure alcohol level in the blood] differentiate between people with diabetes and people who had been drinking? What about forensic testing on a strand of hair (assuming the driver in question had some hair!)?

[rincew1nd]

AFAIK, yes. Blood and/or urine testing is not affected in the same manner as breath testing is by the presence of ketones resulting from uncontrolled diabetes.

[hobbayne]

The RMT has not named a strike date yet have they?

[Chris M]

I've certainly not heard anything about a strike, and the nothing more recent than last year is coming up in searches. There is also no press release with dates on the RMT website.

[DWS]

RMT have called for a train operators strike from 21:30 on Saturday 7 March until 03:59 on Sunday 8 March 2015.

[sawb]

Guessing that strike is only to keep the mandate "live"?

[DWS]

Feb 27, 2015 18:24:30 GMT sawb said:

Guessing that strike is only to keep the mandate "live"?

Seems to be a strange time to have a strike.

[Tomcakes]

Feb 27, 2015 18:02:37 GMT DWS said:

RMT have called for a train operators strike from 21:30 on Saturday 7 March until 03:59 on Sunday 8 March 2015.

Intriguing - how many turns would this affect, realistically? Or would it have a knock on effect the following morning although, since Sunday services start late anyway, there's still a good 2/3 hours to get things straight before the service starts.

[Chris M]

If the intention was to disrupt startup, surely the tactic would be to ensure trains stabled in the wrong place on Sunday night as the Monday morning rush hour is the most important (psychologically for commuters at least)?

I wonder if this is designed to inconvenience LU with the minimum disruption to Joe Public?

[Deleted]

Feb 27, 2015 23:16:02 GMT Chris M said:

I wonder if this is designed to inconvenience LU with the minimum disruption to Joe Public?

If so that would make a lot of sense, since - rightly or wrongly - Joe Public is being led to believe it's a strike aimed at getting a man who turned up to drive a train over the limit his job back. And even the RMT can't fail to notice that that ain't gonna get them a lot of sympathy.