Ballardie, Ruth and Moore, Sian (2025) Night-work and its impact on workers and their families: the case of RMT workers. Project Report. RMT Union - The National Union of Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers, London, UK.

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Abstract

A substantial international body of work has shown the association between night work and shift work and a wide range of both mental and physical health conditions (Torquati et al., 2019; Moreno et al., 2019; Gurubhagavatula et al., 2021), with impacts on their families and communities (Arlinghaus, et al., 2019). A range of organisational psychosocial risks such as high workloads, reduced supervisor support, workplace violence are frequently increased for night workers (Fischer et al., 2019). However, there is also a tendency to suggest that the impacts of night work on the health of workers can also be explained by lifestyle habits which shifts responsibility from employers and their duty of care onto individual workers. This research aims to look at workers’ experience of night work, including in the context of shift work, the impact on their lives and the factors that may shape worker’s decision-making about night work, as well as how both organisational and labour market changes impact night work. The overall research covers five unions; CWU, RMT, TSSA, Equity and Community. An overall report will bring the findings together, but this report specifically analyses the data collected on the RMT. It is based on interviews with one RMT officer and 15 members working rotating and permanent nightshifts in Network Rail, London Underground (LU) and with one worker with the London Northeastern Railway (LNER), and with the workers in a range of job roles.
The research aimed to:
• Examine the experiences and perceptions of night working, including on-call work, and its impact on the physical and mental health of workers.
• Explore the impact of changes in work, both organisational psychosocial risks including workloads, supervisor and social support, job cuts and vacancies as well as the labour market level, for example outsourcing, on experiences of night working;
• Interrogate workers’ preferences for night work and the factors that may influence workers’ decisions to undertake night work;
• Develop potential union demands in relation to collective bargaining about shiftwork and night work, including in the context of longer-term demands for a shorter working week.

Item Type:	Monograph (Project Report)
Uncontrolled Keywords:	night work, health and safety at work
Subjects:	H Social Sciences > H Social Sciences (General) H Social Sciences > HD Industries. Land use. Labor H Social Sciences > HV Social pathology. Social and public welfare
Faculty / School / Research Centre / Research Group:	Greenwich Business School Greenwich Business School > Centre for Research on Employment and Work (CREW) Greenwich Business School > School of Management and Marketing
Last Modified:	14 May 2025 15:32
URI:	http://gala.gre.ac.uk/id/eprint/50432

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