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“Bomb Train”: Where Tory Rail “Modernisation” Ends Up
By Paul Atkin - Greener Jobs Alliance, February 15, 2023
This report from “Democracy Now” on the rail disaster in Ohio last week, in which a 150 car freight train carrying toxic chemicals derailed and a “controlled burn” by the company released “a fireball and mushroom cloud of smoke” into the environment, shows where the Tory “modernisation agenda” for the Railways ends up.
All their key themes
- cuts to staffing
- cuts to safety procedures
- restrictions on the right to strike
are all in place in the USA; which is a model for the government’s attempts to deregulate employers while tying up workers’ capacity to resist.
The interviews with Emily Wright, community organizer based near the site of the derailment; Ross Grooters, a locomotive engineer and co-chair of Railroad Workers United; and Julia Rock, an investigative reporter with The Lever tell a cautionary tale everyone in the UK should know about.
Please think of this next time you hear a government minister chuntering on about “modernisation” and “outdated practices” and pass this on.
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