The LNER Encyclopedia

Loco sheds must have been major local employers in their hey day. Even a medium-sized shed like Lincoln (where I grew up), which had an allocation of 60 to 65 locos at its peak, must have employed at least 200 people, taking into account cleaners, fitters and other support personnel. Imagine how many were employed at sheds like Stratford and York!

I wonder what happened to the local economy in areas where the shed must have been THE major employer - I'm thinking here about places like Woodford, which was in the middle of basically a rural area.

Did British Rail(ways) attempt to find other employment for these men, were they offered redundancy packages, or were they just 'shown the door'?

When you consider the huge contraction in the labour force of the motive power department of B R you can see what a massive job labour force rundown was. In addition of course a spread of experience was needed for the future. It was no good just paying off everyone and then finding shortages a few years down the line. In many places men saw the likely outcomes on manpower of modernisation and rationalisation and left the service. One large shed I knew of did not - I believe - recruit motive power staff for quite some years in the 1960s and 1970s. A passed fireman I knew left the railways after seventeen years in 1961 for a factory job and another was most disgruntled after being put back to second man duties as steam disappeared, due to modernisation, though he was passed as a driver. Many of course transferred and quite a few North Eastern men moved south to the London area, in the early 1960s, including one driver from Heaton, Newcastle, then in his sixties, who transferred to King's Cross! Think also of the large areas eg Leeds, where a number of sheds closed over a relatively short period and links from various sheds had to be integrated and the necessity for wholesale learning of new routes which resulted. At Woodford G C ,with its rural situation many of the young firemen or passed cleaners were there on loan from depots far and wide and were housed in hostel accommodation and went there as they knew there were plenty of firing turns to be had. I think that I am correct in saying that compulsory redundancy payments for employers only came in in the mid-60s, though some may have offered it before this. A neighbour worked at a chemical plant which closed in 1963 and walked out at that time with just his final wages after almost thirty years service! A few years ago I attended a lecture on the subject of labour change by a lecturer in industrial relations and the speaker felt that all in all, and though there were inevitably exceptions, B R probably handled the labour force contraction reasonably humanely in the circumstances. After all it was bound to be a very painful process for many people.

Although I am sure that many redundancies in the 1960s were very hurtful to those concerned, I think that employment for people with a skill was not too hard to come by especially for anyone who lived near a factory. May be not so fulfilling as the railway work.

The reason I mention this is because I remember that there was an employment tax imposed on jobs that were deemed to be of the non-productive type, because of labour shortages. For instance, I had a part time job at a filling station in my student days and the company had to pay this tax on my job. It is almost unbelievable now.

Solario: Yes you are quite correct that after a difficult couple of years for the economy around 1961/62 things picked up and there were jobs to be had, which certainly soaked up some of the redundancies. For example, one reason given - true or false - for the final decision to allow closure of Darlington North Road Works in 1966 was that the new Cummins diesel engine factory in the town was reliant on some of those made redundant to stock its labour force.
As for SET = Selective Employment Tax I'd almost forgotten about that. A daft idea, which did not work and merely pushed up prices. Maybe it was never meant to work -just another wheeze to extract money.