Being a steam engine driver is a dream for many people. One woman’s ambition has ended in acrimony and a shit storm for East Lancashire Railway. Chairman goes off the rails,
A volunteer, Joanne Crompton, has been ‘sacked’ from the East Lancashire Railway (ELR) after she complained about discriminatory treatment and “unacceptable behaviour”. This was made on Twitter after she had no satisfactory response from ELR. Having been with ELR for 10 years and spent a most of this time working as fireman, she was hoping to be included on the steam train driver training programme. Her ambition was to be the railway’s first female steam train driver. Things went off the rails when she pushed to be included in the training. It seems she was effectively side-lined; apparently the manager wanted “to protect the reputation of the railway”.
Additionally there was also a second complaint that she had been sexually harassed by a manager at ELR who allegedly sent her innappropriate text messages.
Using the avenues avilable to her, Joanne made a complaint to the ELR board, who eventually concluded that there was a general problem with training that needed reviewing. Eventually Joanne obviously got fed up with the way she was being treated she aired her dissatifaction on Twitter. “[The general manager] felt that I was bringing the railway into disrepute through social media and that by complaining through the proper channels and highlighting the toxic culture and failures that are affecting areas of the organisation [she] was ‘a drain on resources’.”. Joanne had shown the management of ELR to be inadequate which obviously had caused them embarrasment. Rather than dealing with the issues they chose to ask her not to volunteer anymore.
Time to introduce Mike Kelly, Chair of the ELR board. In response to the growing shit storm he put out the following statement…
“We concluded two independent investigations as a result of grievances raised by Joanne Crompton and have just received an appeal which means we are limited in what we can share.
https://www.eastlancsrailway.org.uk/news/statement-from-mike-kelly-chairman-of-the-east-lancashire-railway-7-april-2023/
The first was about our processes used for all volunteers going through steam driver training. The investigation highlighted a deficiency in the steam driver training assessment and is subject to a review. We are now in the process of doing this, however, this was not a case of discrimination against Joanne, but a general problem that needed fixing.
Our exhaustive independent investigation into Joanne’s second grievance was inconclusive.
We understand that this has been difficult for Joanne – this has also taken an emotional toll on our volunteer community.
We’ve asked Joanne to no longer actively volunteer at the railway. We share her sadness that it has come to this but wish her all the best for the future.”
Confused? It makes no sense that having discovered that there was a problem with the training programme they could not have easily put Joanne onto the training. Obviously this never happened otherwise Joanne would not have been complaining about the toxic culture on Twitter. If the “exhaustive independent investigation” into her second grievance was inconclusive then surely there could not have been any legitimate reason to ‘sack’ her when her frustration with the management boiled over.
As there was a growing number of posts about this on Twitter, Mike Kelly started blanket banning people on social media, a ban that included a very large proportion of the railway press, railway staff and even one train operating company Managing Director. Mike Kelly seems to want the whole issue to go away. He just manages to make it worse.
The actual issue seems to be either management incompetence, or that they wanted to keep the coveted position of engine driver just for the lads. They were ill-prepared for Joanne Compton who opened the door for Mike Kelly to display his incompetence to the wide world.