There’s rarely a “right” way to whistleblow. Most of the official channels in any bureaucracy exist to both sound nice and simultaneously sweep everything under the rug
Yes: it takes an extraordinary amount of cultural back-pressure to counter out the tendency to protect the organizational hierarchy. This can be slightly better in the public sector when laws require disclosure but it's usually still too easy to obscure matters or, especially, rely on complex organizational structures and outsourcing to diffuse responsibility to the point that it’s hard to hold any one person accountable.
It's notable here that he didn't engage as a representative of the company, but more as an "engineering writer", probably after the newspaper reached out for comment.
But yes, not exactly a fan of people this senior sticking their nose in misconduct matters, but also, if you're employed by a company, you probably shouldn't badmouth their clients in the national papers and not be aware that's risky. It's not exactly whistleblowing.
Raising safety issues is part of a senior engineer's duties (or any engineer, really).
Since railways through Europe are a state monopoly, it's not like there are tons of people in the industry that do not work for said 'client'. Who is supposed to pull the alarm in this case? No One? That's how you end up with Boeing-adjacent engineering.
The situation is much more stupid than that: there's a set of "private" companies, some of which are substantially owned by states and some are not, all of which are quasi-monopolies.
> In September 2023 the government regulator, the Office of Rail and Road (ORR), had issued an improvement notice to Network Rail about overcrowding at the station, warning: “You have failed to implement, so far as reasonably practicable, effective measures to prevent risks to health and safety of passengers (and other persons at the station) during passenger surges and overcrowding events at London Euston Station.”
It's concerning to me that Hendy was the chair of Network Rail from 2015 before becoming Transport Minister, and here he is sacking someone after a comment about his former workplace. Should definitely be an investigation into his motives/incentives IMO
Well, when I was in Euston rail station a few weeks ago, it was very overcrowded. It seemed worse in the day than the night.
Seems like the minister is missing the necessity of acting with integrity and transparency, a lesson they frequently need reminding of. Surely there must be better person the PM could find for the job, that don't feel a need write harassing letters, bullying train companies into firing staff?
but do "correct internal channels" exist, are accessible by the people people in raising concerns (especially potentially anonymously) and are not ignored?
because most times they aren't really usable if they even exist
and raising concerns on such channels can often get you in as much trouble as doing so publicly -- but without you concerns being pretty much guaranteed ignored
