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Letter of the Week
Red for danger or open door policy?
There is a worrying safety aspect to your report of the red waistcoat dispute on South West Trains (News, 24 April).
The rail employee pictured has clearly become so despondent and distracted by the problem that he is signalling away the train despite one of the carriage doors being wide open.
For the sake of South West Trains passengers, this dispute needs settling before lives are lost!
Paul Whittle
Woking, Surrey
Should Tube staff be able to strike?
I refer to the survey question on personneltoday.com that, "Tube strikes stop nurses and doctors from getting to work and also cost money. Should tube workers be allowed to strike?" (News, 24 April). A bit of loaded question isn't it?
Strikes are an indication of the state of industrial relations - to stop certain workers from taking strike action just serves to mask serious problems and issues.
It also makes it almost impossible for tube workers to highlight safety issues that it is in all our interests to be aware of, private industry included.
So this is a "No" vote!
Anne Wardrobe
Personnel assistant, Institute of Neurology, UCL
Tube strikes are also over safety
Employers should remember that the tube strikes are being implemented not only to safeguard RMT members' jobs, but also to protect the public from the safety risks that the Government's proposed public/private partnership may cause.
Employers should applaud the fact that RMT members were prepared to take a drop in income (no matter how slight) to highlight these very real dangers.
And is it really that big a deal if staff work from home or have an extra day off? You would have thought most people would have appreciated this.
Bruno Davey
Via e-mail
See more letters on this issue at www.personneltoday.com
Idea is to extend HRD, not save cash
I would like to clarify a few points following your article on the new e-learning initiative between the Improvement and Development Agency (IDeA) and the Epic Group (News, 18 April).
This initiative aims to extend the capacity of existing HRD programmes in councils by enabling them to produce their own e-learning content and share i
