A railroad worker is not like other workers. A number of them have practically no working hours, but are available for service on weekdays and holidays for as long as 24 hours for any event (bad weather, snow, high temperature, derailment and other unforeseen circumstances) in excess of the established working hours. The service has 176 hours a week at its disposal, which makes it easier for trains to move, regardless of whether their timetable has formally expired. Most railway lines do not have a regulated work schedule, their specialty is fraught with serious risks for themselves and passengers (drivers, conductors), others regulate traffic and the responsibility they bear is enormous. It’s not about writing a document that, even if it’s wrong, can be corrected.

However, depending on the tasks assigned to them, they must also have the necessary qualifications. Therefore, it goes without saying that a young man cannot become, for example, a train driver automatically as the son of a train driver, a conductor as the son of a conductor, or at the request of party and trade union workers (TRAIN, do you hear?). Neither can he be transferred from one specialty to another, from a worker to a driver or assistant with qualifications corresponding to other times. There were rules for all branches and for the duties of the officials of each branch, which were always strictly and diligently observed. But compliance with the regulations required a minimum number of staff, which was inflexible, which could be revised as technology developed, but remained inflexible to new conditions.

But since 2010, the state has been reduced to almost zero by law 3891 on the “reorganization” of the railway. So how are the rules enforced? How is traffic provided? Because you don’t let a train leave from one station if you haven’t ensured its arrival at the next one. How is compliance achieved today?

Mass recruitment in the EfE has been carried out since 1985 and had a pronounced partisan character. The situation was aggravated by a flurry of internal transfers that began in the late 1980s and did not stop under the pretext of meeting domestic needs. This led to a rampant Russfetology and a slight reduction or elimination of important branches, such as the Linear Service, which was the main reservoir of transfers. It is characteristic that almost the majority of OZE employees, without exaggeration, moved to another branch. Instead of turning to the labor market, hiring people with sufficient and up-to-date knowledge, and at the same time renewing its staff according to age, it limited itself to internal transfers of employees with the only qualification of their loyalty to the respective government faction. and outdated knowledge of previous decades.

The truth is that no one, neither the administration nor the unionists, wanted the kits, but they preferred the redeployment to the serious problems that were being created. The administration, because in this way it avoided the procedures through ASEP, which imposed meritocratic criteria and gave the opportunity to the respective government, which appointed him as a bully at will in the area of ​​​​thousands of employees of the organization. Trade unionists because they realized that the arrival of new people and ideas would overthrow the obsolete and aging trade union institution, namely themselves. But part of the workers agreed to all this because the sharp reduction in staff led to an increase in their salaries. Thus, an informal union arose, which led to functional obsolescence.

With the consolidation of the EfE, the staff was reduced to a minimum, specialized employees were transferred to hospitals or in antiquity.

In fact, party Russfetology has reached such a level that actions were not held every year, as required by the charter, but every three or four years retroactively. As a result, vacancies in the hierarchy were created due to the departure of employees, which were filled by the so-called assignment of higher level tasks (AKAV), which was awarded according to additional service criteria and outnumbered regular positions. The AKAV industry was literally set up, with an upsurge in pre-election periods, especially in TRAINOSE in certain sectors. But even when the nomination was finally carried out retroactively, it was made in proportion to the strength of the factions and gave the then trade union and opposition factions and their entourage the opportunity to “justify” themselves for their “struggle” by advancing.

However, when an organization tries to modernize technologically without renewing its human resources, so that the know-how of the new generation is also transferred, but this is especially true of new sectors with the transfer of existing personnel who were still experiencing technologically and cognitively in the Decades of the 80s and 90s- 1990s led to a gap between the operational requirements of new technology and the capabilities of personnel, which led to the risk of accidents.

In 2008 and especially since 2010, in order to consolidate the OFZ, the staff was reduced to a minimum, specialized employees were transferred to hospitals or antiquities, but the spirit of party spirit and customer orientation was inherited in the new emaciated form of the railway, which arose where it continues work how it works. The recruitment announcements in OSE and TRAINOSE are false witnesses. We will return.

We were told that the stationmaster who was given responsibility for the accident, although in adulthood, was a young stationmaster, a transferred stationmaster at the age of 55. Should we concentrate the responsibility for the accident only on the station master, so that the client state can continue its activities unhindered? Because from the moment you personalize responsibility, you are essentially agreeing that the tragedy was due to the incumbent’s malfeasance, not the conditions that have been shaped by the political system for decades. And the head of the station, as the successor, was a derivative of this system.

Mr. Dimitris Makrodimopoulos is a former Chief Engineer of OSE, Civil Engineer of AUTH.