Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Welcome to the our Voices Oral Histories podcast, coordinated by the common Room and presented by Dr. Andy Clark, research associate with the Newcastle Oral History Collective. In this episode, we talk to Bob Ogle, formerly an employee of Parsons engineering on Tyneside. He is a friend of Andy through their pipe music. We started by asking him how he got into engineering.
[00:00:25] Speaker B: Okay, Andy. Well, I left school when I was 14 with absolutely no qualifications. And at 14, I got a job laboring in the fruit market carrying bags of potatoes, where I used to start at 430 in the morning.
That was just a short period of employment until I became 15, when I was fortunate enough to secure an apprenticeship with CE Parsons, who were considered the jewel in the crown of engineering companies in the area.
Parsons produced turbines and generators and also grub. Parsons produced the finest optical telescopes in the world at that time.
So I started as an office boy in 1967 at the age of 15.
Once I became 16, I moved from being an office boy into the apprentice school.
Now, the apprentice school at that time had approximately 120 apprentices. That was the annual intake. Every year.
You went into the apprentice school as an apprentice and you didn't know what you were going to be. And June that year, you were trained in all the potential apprenticeships that existed within your company. So you covered fitting, turning, milling, grinding, welding, sheet metal work, fabrication, electrical work.
So you had a very broad experience within that first year, and it was a very intense year, and it was a real shock to the system. So you started in the apprentice school, most fresh from school and some having previously been office boys within the company.
And in the first few weeks, you are given a big fail and a block of metal. And basically all you did was toughen your hands up for a few weeks and you are failing and cutting blocks of metal until your hands were bleeding with the blisters. They really did toughen you up, and it was a shock to the system.
But having said that, the training you got during that period was absolutely second to none.
It was very strict.
If you wanted to go to a toilet, for example, you had to put your tool check on the instructor's desk, and you are timed how long you were away. So you couldn't spend too long at my toilet.
The quality of work that you produced while you were there was absolutely exceptional. Looking back on it, I quite can't believe how good the things we produced were at that time.
But anyway, you didn't know what you're going to be until you were three quarters through the first year.
And that gave you the opportunity to experience all of the different trades and the company obviously looked at what requirements he needed, and it was always a bulk of fitters or turners were required. And then you are allocated what you are going to be, essentially, for the rest of your life, as long as you stayed in engineering.
But you also, during that first year, and it was a five year apprenticeship that you carried out, you were sent on dear release to technical college, and you also had to go to evening classes at least one night a week, sometimes two nights a week. So you really were put through it. But at the end of the apprenticeship, I think anyone who served apprenticeship at CA Parsons came out with an absolutely fabulous training that would stand them well throughout their whole life.
I wanted to be a turner. That's what I enjoyed doing in the apprentice school, but there wasn't enough vacancies for turners, so they told me I was going to become a fitter.
So I left the school as an electrical fitter.
And then my first department was actually called the Araldate department, and all I was doing was mixing glue for three months, various types of glue that was used in the manufacture of transformers and turbines and generators.
That was different, that's for sure. From then on, I went to a department called the work services, which was maintenance electricians and millwrights, and the millwright is a mechanical fitter who carried out repairs on the machine tools.
I spent nine months in there and really enjoyed that. I enjoyed being electrician.
Anyway, we moved you to different departments every six months or so, so you got a very broad training.
So then I got moved to the transformer shop, which used to build transformers, obviously, and spent a period of time building transformers in there.
After that, my next move was actually back to work services, which pleased me. And they told me then I was staying there. I wasn't going anywhere, because I'd shown good aptitude and attitude there, and I was going to serve me rest of me apprenticeship as an electrician, which I did, and follow me apprenticeship. It was a five year apprenticeship. I then spent another, let me think, 17 years working as an electrician, and I got involved with electronics.
Parsons put me through a degree which was very much electronics and computing based, so I spent five years doing that.
Then on the last year of my degree and following 22 years of service with Parsons, there was a lot of redundancies at that period, and I thought, this is probably an opportunity to try and find another job. So applied for another job elsewhere as an engineering manager, which I was fortunate enough to secure in the flower milling industry.
But the short outcome is, with only a few months left of me degree, I left Parsons and started another engineering career elsewhere.
So I then spent 29 years working in that industry.
And the last ten years of it was actually not in engineering, but in the environment and health and safety.
So in life, you certainly don't know where you're going to end up.
It's so far removed from where I started, it is beyond belief.
But my fondest memories of work will always be back. In the Parsons days, it was a family atmosphere.
It was a pleasure going to work.
Looking back, it was a lot of time wasted because it was a 70 a week job. Work shifts, work half shifts. It was essentially your life.
But as I say, because it was such a happy attitude, you really didn't mind it.
[00:10:18] Speaker C: What was occupational safety like in Parsons at that time?
[00:10:23] Speaker B: Nell? It was terrible. I mean, we've subjected the thousands of people to mesothemiola through poor control of asbestos. The whole factory had mountains and mountains of asbestos.
As an apprentice in the transformer shop, I remember having to cut asbestos sheets with a hacksaw. You weren't told it was harmful. You weren't given any masks.
And the outcome of that now is I've got lung damage through it. But it was not controlled at all.
Thousands of people died who worked at Parsons through lung cancer, through asbestos.
Other chemicals were very poorly controlled. Those sodium hypochlorite, which you got, covenant pcb, polychlorinated bienols, which is one of the most carcinogenic substances known to man.
It was used in transformers and capacitors, which it isn't now.
I can remember working as a young lad in electrical panels where the capacitors had blown up and the panel was coated in the substance. And I was given the task of putting this panel. Right, so you're having to clean this pcb and complain to the manager about it.
And his auntie come down, he wiped his finger across it and licked it and said, there you are. It's harmless.
Of course, he's dead now, but that some nasty, nasty chemicals, and certainly wouldn't be tolerated today, unfortunately.
[00:12:37] Speaker C: Can you talk to us about your own experience of lung damage through industrial injury?
[00:12:42] Speaker B: Yes. I've got pleural plaques, which is a sleeping time bomb.
What it does, it sort of stiffens your lungs so we don't function as efficiently as they should do. And it also shows that you have been exposed to asbestos and that exposure potentially has the risk of leading to mesothemiola further down the line, which is asbestos related lung cancer.
So it's a sleeping time bomb.
It can sit there for dormant for about up to 40 years before the inevitable happens.
[00:13:44] Speaker C: What do you do to monitor that? Are you working with your gp to keep a close eye on it?
[00:13:49] Speaker B: No, we don't.
We diagnosed it from a chest x ray I had, but there's no treatment for it, so they don't bother monitoring because they've got no treatment.
[00:14:13] Speaker C: How do you feel about having worked in that kind of situation that had a demonstrably negative impact on your health and well being?
[00:14:27] Speaker B: Well, you can only feel cheated because it was known about back in the harmful, but they still continue to use it and they still continued to put people at risk had it as well.
My father used to be a docker and he used to unload the ships with the asbestos in the hold. I mean, so he had plural plaques as well. But I mean, he lived. He was in his become involved in.
[00:15:28] Speaker C: Any of the kind of campaigns around securing compensation or recognition for sufferers of illness.
[00:15:38] Speaker B: Well, what's happened with plural plaques is they used to pay compensation for it, but now they do not pay compensation.
The reason for it was, once again the government changed the law because the scale of the claims was just so vast, it was about to bankrupt the insurance industry. So they said that compensation is no longer payable to plural plaques.
Now, I've sort of spent the last ten years of my life fighting people, putting claims into companies for injuries. And I have to say that most claims are successful if someone has been genuinely injured.
But I feel to understand how they don't acknowledge that damage to your lungs is not an injury, it's in the x ray and it's on your lung function.
That's one of the travesties. I mean, appeal went the House of Lords and that got overturned as well, so that certainly is not right.
[00:17:21] Speaker C: No, I know there's been a lot of that on Clyde's side. My dad's been involved in it because he's a benefits advisor as well as having worked in the yards with asbestos. So I know it's something that's been ongoing.
Obviously, you've developed the plaques in terms of other people that, you know, that you work with in Parsons. Is it something that people, you know, have also experienced?
[00:17:46] Speaker B: Yeah. Well, I was a guy I worked with for a lot of years and he actually died of mesothemiola.
Also, the other company I work with in the flower mill, I was mountains of asbestos in there as well.
And 40% of me maintenance crew died of asbestos cancer as well.
It's a terrible, terrible, terrible material and it's a terrible way to die. Lung cancer.
[00:18:30] Speaker C: Do you remember the kind of point when working with asbestos became outlawed because it became completely apparent just how toxic the material was?
[00:18:45] Speaker B: It was never really. I mean, I would see it from maybe being about 25 is when union CFD reps really started getting on the ball with asbestos and making people aware of it. But the company didn't do anything.
It was still the DI left.
I mean it was lagging on the pipes, it was on the walls, it was on the girders, it was everywhere.
And the trouble with asbestos, it's not the asbestos that you see that homes you, it's the airborne particles that are invisible to the naked eye .2 of the micron not getting to the lungs and that's what small particles are kind of get rid of it.
[00:19:49] Speaker C: That's absolutely petrifying. You think that so many people worked with that kind of material for such a long time.
And what kind of impact does it have on you and kind of date? Apart from me giving you easy reads, what's the long term impact of having been exposed to asbestos on your general health and well being?
[00:20:11] Speaker B: Well, there isn't any, Andy. I just put it out in my mind.
I know I don't have lung function, not as good as what it should be, but it is what it is. So I kind of dwell on it. I just make the best of what I've got.
[00:20:32] Speaker C: In your time in working in health and safety, we've touched on asbestos and dust. What are some of the other kind of big changes that have happened over the last 30 years as compared to when you were working, say, in parsons?
[00:20:46] Speaker B: Well, the biggest change with the EHSC in recent years has become a thing called FIFa intervention.
Now for as long as I can remember, we used to work hand in hand with the HSE to make things better and improve things. But once FIFA intervention come in, it all changed, the attitude changed. And instead of working with industry, they're just now a policeman and they're also moving towards this funding model where they've got to be self funding. So to do that we have to issue fines. So to issue a fine, we have to find a material breach of legislation. Well, there's thousands of pieces of legislation to do with health and safety, so it's very easy for an inspector to go into any industrial complex or factory and find something that they can write a letter to you about. Write a letter? That's fee for intervention and they'll charge you for your time on site, they'll charge you for that time in the office writing the letter, and typically it'll cost you 2000 quid to get this letter.
So consequently, I used to always welcome HSE inspectors to our facilities and I used to spend time with them, take them round and discuss things with them. But now I wouldn't do that if I was still working. I would not invite me, a chector to any of our plants.
[00:22:44] Speaker C: What impact do you think that kind of degradation of relationship has on industry?
[00:22:58] Speaker B: I don't think it's been in long enough to cause a problem yet, because we had this relationship for years.
But also the EHSC has been decimated. They do not have the inspectors now that used to have.
Consequently, they're struggling with even coping with the more serious injuries and deaths over.
[00:23:30] Speaker C: The last ten years of your work. When you were working specifically in health and safety, what were some of the kind of biggest incidents or accidents that you had to respond to?
[00:23:41] Speaker B: Amputations.
Sorry, amputations.
The worst one was, I'd only been in the job for three weeks and I was a young lad at one of our mills down in London.
Lost four fingers. He was only 18, and that was pretty awful.
The outcome was, I had to go down.
The EHSC were determined, we're going to prosecute the company, and sent specialist inspectors in to look at our procedures and training and garden arrangements. And they could not find anything wrong with what we were doing. It was purely down to him.
He'd been shown how to do something, he'd been trained, he'd been supervised, it was on nature, and he just chose to do something else.
He paid a terrible consequence.
See, he lost these fingers and the company wanted to sack him and I thought, he's case not to.
I did win to keep him and actually made him a health and safety coordinator and trained him in health and safety, but he only lasted about 18 months and then he just left.
I think the sight of the machines every week was just bringing back bad memories for him.
[00:25:39] Speaker C: Why in that sector was amputation not common, but the most common thing that you had to deal with as a health and safety officer?
[00:25:50] Speaker B: Well, it's people's behavior.
There was an old thing in the industry that production was everything. You had to keep the mills running, get the production out. And people used to open guards to clear chokes and just put hands wherever, shouldn't put them, essentially.
But human behavior, you tell me why people do it. It's something I've never been able to figure out yet, because when you think.
[00:26:38] Speaker C: About health and safety. I think it's fair to say there's a kind of public discourse about health and safety going mad and things like that.
How do you respond when you hear things like that, in terms of the importance of health and safety in the engineering sector?
[00:26:54] Speaker B: Well, what I do is just look at how many people have lost our life last year and it just doesn't affect that person. It's our families and friends.
We've went out to work in the morning and they're never going back home. That's the end of it.
People just need to stop thinking about that for a moment or for that lacks of concentration on a machine for a moment and they've lost a limb.
I mean, we've had things in the past where we've asked people just to tie a hand up for a deer or something, see what it's like to be without your right hand for a deer, see how you'd manage. And I've had guys in who are blinded at work, given their experiences, and truly are horrific.
And if people just could understand what the outcomes of these injuries are, they would thank us for what steps are taken to keep people safe.
Now, the problem is with health and safety. A lot of people who don't know anything about health and safety and don't understand risk implement stupid rules under the guise of health and safety, where no true health and safety professional or HSE inspector would agree with what they're seeing or what they're doing.
I mean, there's risk in everything. There's risk in all jobs. It's managing the risk. And certainly people know the general public should know a lot more about risk now with this Covid academic than they ever did before.
[00:28:57] Speaker A: Our voices is funded by the National Lottery Heritage Fund in association with the common room and Dr. Andy Clark. To find out more about the work of the common room, please visit ww, thecommon.org uk or email program at the common Room UK.
