The realisation is dawning that urgent action on transport is needed soon if Britain is to keep moving. …
Invest now in a future for rail
WORKERS, DECEMBER 2008 ISSUE
Massive fare increases well in excess of inflation will hit rail passengers once again at the New Year. Tickets will cost between 6 per cent and 11 per cent more, hitting workers already having to contend with the effects of the financial crisis.
Announcing approval for the increases, the Brown Government has the audacity to talk about “value for money” to the many rail users whose everyday experience tells them that trains are getting even more overcrowded. With passenger journeys up by over 45 per cent since rail privatisation, the railways are in many cases simply not a realistic alternative to using Britain’s congested roads, notwithstanding the recent hike in fuel costs.
Brown’s new-look team of transport ministers is beginning to admit that massive investment in the railways is necessary. The prospect of building more high-speed rail lines to match those of countries such as Germany, France and Spain seems to have improved as the realisation dawns that urgent action is needed soon if Britain is to keep moving. A year ago, a new high-speed electrified rail line was opened from the Channel Tunnel to London St Pancras, and this has resulted in a huge increase in passengers carried in and out of the country, despite the recent fire in the Channel Tunnel itself. It shows what investment can deliver.
Running out of capacity
An increase in capacity is desperately needed. As Virgin starts running trains from London to Birmingham and Manchester every 20 minutes, the lack of capacity means that the stops previously made at Watford are to cease. Watford is an important town in its own right as well as a convenient interchange for services to west and south London, Gatwick Airport and Brighton. Now, all those passengers will have to go back to crossing London by tube, an inconvenience that will completely negate the introduction of improved train frequencies.
But the Brown government wants to cut subsidy to the railways by 40 per cent by 2013. It’s not difficult to understand why! Subsidies have increased by 120 per cent since privatisation, and fare income has risen by over 50 per cent. So the railways are swallowing nearly double the income, but with only modest improvements in the service.
Why? Well, British Rail was not nearly as inefficient as many politicians would have us believe. The private rail companies are mostly doing very nicely out of the industry, and their profits are coming straight out of the pockets of the passengers and tax payers. First Group has just announced huge increases in profits, with rail making a large contribution to those profits. This led to a £55 million dividend payout to shareholders.
The squeeze is coming
However, watch out for at least some operators struggling during 2009. With the government squeeze on spending on the railways, and some companies being in difficulties, many rail workers can expect to be faced with employers seeking cuts in staffing, coupled with attacks on pay, pensions and conditions. But during 2008, the rail unions have shown that they are more than capable of dealing with the challenges ahead.
The biggest union, RMT, continues to grow both in membership and effectiveness, its membership and leadership often demonstrating the sort of discipline and class consciousness that is a shining example to all unions. The union can claim a number of important victories during the last year, the most significant of which is returning back into London Underground the infrastructure and other staff forced into the private and now failed Metronet company. RMT also called 12000 maintenance members out on strike in Network Rail in defence of hard won conditions, and scored a major victory for the low paid when it won a campaign to dramatically improve London Underground contract cleaners’ pay.
Recently, RMT recognised the continuing threat the European Union poses to the railways by taking a trainload of protesters to Paris to demand an end to EU-led rail ‘liberalisation’ policies. RMT general secretary Bob Crow rightly pointed out the part that EU directive EEC/91/440 played in the Tories’ rush to privatise British Rail. He criticised further moves by Brussels to roll out their dangerous and failed privatisation model across the continent, splitting control between train operations and rail infrastructure to facilitate competition in rail freight by 2006 and full liberalisation of international passenger services by 2010.
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Demonstrating against rail privatisation at the 2007 TUC.
Photo: Workers |
Rail unions across Europe along with European transport union body ETF demand an end to rail privatisation and a new future for nationalised, democratically controlled, publicly owned railways and more public investment in railways for economic growth and the environment.
Failing to learn the lessons of the privatisation of the national rail network, the Brown Government now wants to privatise the publicly owned Tyne & Wear Metro, a move that flies in the face of logic, and RMT is mounting a vigorous campaign of opposition.
RMT is currently balloting Eurostar train managers in partnership with TSSA, the second largest rail union. The dispute is over the failure of the company to adhere to normal procedures and negotiate over rosters, and transferring weekend working from French and Belgian staff to British colleagues. Threatening disruption of services in the run up to Christmas, RMT and TSSA called on the company to negotiate fair rosters for the staff that have demonstrated a great deal of flexibility and commitment following the disruption caused by the Channel Tunnel fire.
Close cooperation between RMT and TSSA has increased greatly during the year, with a number of other joint ballots being run, and joint campaigning against ticket office closures in London Underground and South West Trains. A recent TSSA strike by around 30 managers in Wales elicited solidarity action from RMT and ASLEF members who refused to cross picket lines, causing massive disruption in South Wales and the Bristol area. Increasing union cooperation and solidarity is a welcome development as rail workers face more vociferous attacks by employers during 2009.
Battle ahead over fares
A looming battleground will be ticket offices. The new franchises which came into being a year ago were let through on the basis that there will be more ticket machines, more smartcards (like the Oyster card now being used in London), and more automatic gates at stations. It is clear that the rail companies want to use these developments to reduce ticketing staff to the absolute minimum. It is already becoming much harder to buy pre-bookable cheap tickets in person at the stations, and passengers travelling there and then are often having to stand in queues behind others who need large amounts of time to buy cheap tickets with the necessary seat reservations for future travel. The unions have been working much more effectively with rail passenger users’ groups to oppose cuts in station staffing.
All the rail unions, along with Unite which has a small number of rail members, have worked together during 2008 to defend the Railways Pension Scheme, a final-salary pension scheme inherited by the industry from British Rail. Battle lines are being drawn for early 2009, with Network Rail, by far the biggest rail employer, leading the charge to undermine the scheme.
Privatisation has justifiably been blamed for undermining safety in the rail industry. Network Rail has been heavily criticised in the recent Rail Accident Investigation Branch report into last year’s Grayrigg train crash, when a train was derailed at nearly 100mph. It is clear that Network Rail failed to give the maintenance workers the resources to carry out essential checks on the points involved, and then sought to blame them for the fatal crash. RMT criticised funding cuts, unrealistic workloads, long hours, excessive reliance on overtime and dubious working practices. It was particularly scathing of the railway police who have kept members under suspicion of manslaughter for nearly a year. As has been the case following past accidents, senior managers responsible for this state of affairs – and who undoubtedly knew how bad things were – have so far got away with it.
Safety notices
Network Rail has at least been served with safety improvement notices relating to the accident. Unions and safety enforcement authorities will need to be even more vigilant next year as cost cutting and staff cuts will almost certainly undermine safety still further.
The government now states that they want to spend much more on infrastructure projects to stimulate the economy. The railways, faced with massive increases in traffic, are crying out for investment. Britain’s rail network compares very unfavourably with that of most European countries, where most of the railways are electrified. Many people are now demanding electricification for key routes like London–Bristol and London–Sheffield, which would facilitate the introduction of faster, more efficient trains. Coupled with a commitment to build new electric railways capable of supporting 200mph trains, the railways could then ensure that many more would use trains instead of cars and even planes, with obvious environmental benefits.
It is notable that the people of California have voted to build a 200 mph electric railway to link San Francisco with Los Angeles. They already have the sort of publicly owned public transport in many places that Britain so desperately needs. Car-loving Americans have recognised that they cannot build more and more massive highways in order to tackle congestion. How long will it be before the penny drops with the Brown Government?