Over the Christmas and New Year period the RTBU has been busy pressing for localised management responses to assault hotspots. With threats and assaults on Station Staff at key locations, urgent meetings including Delegates and HSRs with management have been convened.
Dandenong remains a station with significant ongoing issues regarding anti-social activities. At a recent local meeting a number of significant issues were raised triggering the development of detailed list of demands. Key items included the need for radios with duress alarms, increased presence of AOs, PSOs and Police, CCTV upgrades, staffing levels and lack of feedback on INX report status.
A follow-up meeting was set for Metro to provide an update on progress. At this meeting a fortnight later, significant progress was made on a range of issues including improved coordination with Police and agreement over radios to be supplied.
Further report backs are expected soon regarding progress on issues requiring a more detailed response or involvement with other authorities (such as body cameras). Members are encouraged to continue reporting incidents and challenging safety at a local level with the support of the RTBU.
Following another serious and frightening incident involving an assault at Broadmeadows station meetings were also held on site.
The meetings involved the RTBU Delegate, local HSRs and station management and come as a direct result of the Employee Safety Initiative that the RTBU successfully included (along with paid Trauma leave) in the Enterprise Agreement (EA).
Through this process. the critical monitoring function done by the station control room was highlighted in addition to the need for Challenger cards for ease of access into station buildings rather than the problematic Abloy keys currently in use.
As the RTBU continues to tackle this systemic issue on all levels, the sharing of information regarding these and other incidents is an important safety function for HSRs and Delegates to ensure management cannot only seek to treat them as isolated incidents.
How issues of this type are responded to and what the outcomes are continue to me a major focus of our work with the Safe Public Transport working committee and are critical to creating a safer network for both our members and the travelling public
