It was in the late eighties that a conductor had been stabbed and driver Jos Stevens exclaimed to his colleagues at the NS: ‘Do we have to die before we take action?’ Not much later, the Rotterdam staff canteen was full of pamphlets and Stevens became a board member at FNV Spoor. He became a fearless protest leader at the union.
He stood up for overburdened counter employees, foreign material cleaners who threatened to fall out of the boat or mistreated and threatened conductors. His finest hour was the three-day strike at the beginning of this century, when the top of NS wanted to bind train staff to fixed routes: the so-called tour around the church. The actions yielded the desired result: the tour around the church never happened.
Stevens grew up in the Spoorbuurt in The Hague, as the son of a PTT employee. After he started as a TV mechanic, he switched to the Dutch Railways in the 1970s to work as a train driver. ‘He was completely in the right place’, says his wife Ina. ‘A teacher used to say to him: you don’t earn money by looking outside, Jos. She was wrong. He always said with a smile: I see the whole of the Netherlands pass me by and I am paid for it too.’
Bright from the corner
After he joined the FNV Spoor cadre, his motto was: ‘All bosses at the NS are assholes, but they are our assholes.’ FNV colleague Peter den Haan: ‘He felt very involved with the NS family. If something happened that went against his sense of justice, he could be fierce. He hadn’t blown his mouth.’
In the early years in particular, he sometimes forgot that you also have to be able to operate tactically and strategically, says Den Haan. ‘But that was Jos: he spoke from his heart. As a result, he was known as very honest. People felt: he doesn’t stand for himself there.’
He did trade union work for the most part alongside his work as a machinist. There were days when he would go out early in the morning only to come back at night. His wife: ‘I often didn’t even know what he was doing exactly.’ Sometimes she saw him back on the Journal, or on Sonja Barend’s talk show. ‘Then I thought: hey, is that really Jos? He could articulate things well.’
Ten apple pies
He retired in 2015. His last ride ended at Rotterdam Central Station, where his tie was traditionally cut off. Then he went with a select group to the staff room. Among other things, he received a set of pens as a thank you for services rendered.
In the beginning there was still a longing for the railway, his wife noticed. ‘We drove along the track on the A12 and Jos said when a train passed: ‘Look, my work is driving there’. But gradually he enjoyed his freedom more and more. ‘When the neighbor once asked if he wanted to walk his dog at a fixed time, he refused: he didn’t want any more obligations.’
He continued to care about injustice. When staff of the Groene Hart Hospital in Gouda had to deal with threats more and more because of corona, one day he stood on the doorstep with ten apple pies to put their heart to them.
In early September, while on vacation in Italy, he started coughing alarmingly. An examination at the hospital revealed that he had metastatic kidney cancer. On December 28, Jos Stevens passed away, aged 71. His condolence card read, “It’s not the road you take, it’s the trail you leave.”