GO-AHEAD FEEDS ON PUBLIC CASH

RMT helpline 0800 3763706 :: october 2008 :: RMTnews 7 Open six days a week - Mon to Fri - 8am until 6pm, Sat - 9.30am to 4pm e-mail: info@rmt.org.uk Legal helpline: 0800 587 7516 - Seven days a week or call the helpline on freephone 0800 376 3706 Visit www.rmt.org.uk to join online JOIN RMT BRITAIN’S SPECIALIST TRANSPORT UNION Problems at work? Call the helpline (Now with two operators and the facilities to translate into 170 languages) Companywatch T ransport privateer Go-Ahead Group declared £145 million profit recently after receiving nearly £200 million in subsidy for its three rail franchises over 2007/08. The company has also profited from imposing inflation-busting fares hikes and untold amounts of public money finding their way into the group’s bus operations from local authorities. As the company reported a 23 per cent rise in operating profits to the end of June and a 16 per cent hike in dividend payouts to shareholders to £81 million, Go-Ahead has declared war on the safety role of guards on the Southeastern franchise. The Go-Ahead subsidiary is attempting to do away with guards and extend driver-only operation on new Hitachi Javelin 395 rolling stock running in and out of London from Kent. The company’s plans, in breach of existing agreements, involve transferring control of powered doors on trains carrying up to 1,000 passengers – 20 per cent more than Eurostars – to drivers and replacing guards with a new non-safety critical post without the training in on-board safety and train protection, route- knowledge and licence that guards must have. A twelve-car train made up of two of the new units, with no walk-through between units, will carry as many as 1,000 passengers through tunnels west of Ebbsfleet that together are at least as long as the Channel tunnel, and RMT’s view is that there should be a fully safety- trained guard in each portion. The first five of 29 Javelin sets have already been delivered and SET intends to run the fleet on routes through Kent that are currently fully guarded. Passengers are also facing inflation-busting fares increases and massive overcrowding in the drive to make even bigger profits. The bottom line is that the only people who benefit from rail franchising bus privatisation are the shareholders who are shovelling public subsidy straight into their bank accounts. Even worse, there is no telling how much more public money Go-Ahead’s bus subsidiaries get, because no-one bothers to keep a central record of the handouts they squeeze from hard-pressed local authorities up and down the country. GO AHEAD’S PRELIMINARY RESULTS FOR THE YEAR ENDED 28 JUNE 2008 • Group operating profit of £144.9 million, up 22.7 per cent from last year. • Rail-operating profit of £77.2 million, up £11.1 million. • Bus-operating profit of £66.2 million, up £10.4 million. SUBSIDY TO GO-AHEAD’S RAIL SUBSIDIARIES IN 2007/08: • South Eastern: £82.3 million • Southern: £65.8 million • London Midland: £44.7 million GO-AHEAD FEEDS ON PUBLIC CASH