Page:The Reshaping of British Railways (Beeching Report).pdf/54

 Documentation imposes a heavy burden upon almost every form of railway activity and it is a field in which considerable economies can be found by simplifying procedures.

At centres where large numbers of men are employed it is always possible to improve productivity. One adverse factor of importance is partitioning of duties and multiplicity of staff grades. This is a field in which big improvements can be made, with Union help.

Because of the nature of the business, the efficiency of the railways is influenced by the decisions of a large number of people in charge of widely dispersed local operations, from District Officers down to station masters, yard masters, and others. The arrangements to ensure that all these people become better acquainted with the costs of the operations which they control are being steadily improved with encouraging results.

Savings are also expected in the interest burden, and in bank charges, through the tight control of credit, the better use of funds, and the rationalisation of banking services.

Work study techniques have been applied to a variety of railway activities, but most extensively to permanent way maintenance. In collaboration with the Unions, efforts are constantly being made to extend these techniques over a wider field of work.

The changes proposed in foregoing parts of the Report are expected to lead to very substantial economies and, since staff cost is such a high proportion of total cost, this inevitably means that there must be associated reductions in the number of people employed. The Board is very conscious of the human problems which this will cause, but, as will be seen from what follows, the necessary reductions can be achieved by some acceleration of a process which is already in train, rather than by creation of redundancy upon a completely new scale.

The number of staff employed on the railway in all grades at 29th December 1962, was 474,538, broadly divided as follows:—

Grade Administrative, technical and clerical. Station masters, supervisors and control staff Traffic wages staff Maintenance and construction T. Miscellaneous Number 71,933 22,488 223,346 145,399 11,372 474,538

and the way in which staff has been reduced over a period of years is shown by the following table:—

Year Number of staff

Cumulative reduction on 1948 1948 648,740 No. per cent. 1953 593,768 54.972 8.5 1958 550,123 98,617 15-2 1959 518,863 129,877 20.0 1960 514,500 134,240 20.7 1961 500,434 148,306 22.9 1962 474,538 174,202 26.9