KEEP METRO PUBLIC TAKES CAMPAIGN TO LONDON

C ampaigners to keep Tyne and Wear Metro in the public sector stepped up their campaign last month with a London lobby of the HSBC rail business awards outside the upmarket Grosvenor House Hotel in Park Lane. The Metro was nominated for three awards, yet the Tyne and Wear passenger transport executive – Nexus – has lined up three private-sector bidders to compete for the right to exploit its operations and some infrastructure. This is in spite of the fact that Tyne and Wear Metro was the best performing rail operator in the UK last year, according to Office of Rail Regulation figures, running 95.57 per cent of trains on time in 2007/08, ahead of all privately operated franchises. Nexus says that its figures so far this year are even better, with 96.72 per cent of trains run on time. The network also carried more than 40 million passengers for the first time in 16 years. An opinion poll conducted by ICM Omnibus for Keep Metro Public revealed that only 20 per cent of local people wanted to see the Metro in private hands against the 60 per cent who wanted to see it publicly owned. The Government has agreed to provide £300 million for the “re-invigoration” of the Tyne and Wear Metro, all of which will come from the public purse. Some of this would end up being siphoned off in dividends to shareholders if the service was in private hands. Campaigners distributed leaflets outlining their case to keep the Metro out of the hands of the profiteers. The leaflet asked: “If the Tyne and Wear Metro is so successful, why privatise it?” It went on to show the lack of logic in the fact that Nexus had put the case to keep Metro integrated, yet was inviting private-sector bids to operate passenger services and maintain infrastructure. RMT regional organiser Stan Herschel told RMT News: “Nexus and the government are playing Russian roulette with the future of our Metro, yet there is no earthly reason for the bidding process to take place at all. “Metro has proved time and again that it is run properly and efficiently in the public sector, and it beggars belief that anyone could even think of putting its operations into private hands,” he said. RMT helpline 0800 3763706 :: march 2009 :: RMTnews 4 KEEP METRO PUBLIC TAKES CAMPAIGN TO LONDON N early 10,000 members across London Underground and Transport for London are being balloted for strike action in two separate disputes centred on jobs and pay. The ballot, which closes on April 8, was launched as it emerged that the number of jobs under threat across the Tube and TfL could reach as many as 3,000. RMT is balloting all members at LUL, including former Metronet staff in the separate dispute at TfL. On London Underground, bosses are threatening to tear up an agreement aimed at safeguarding jobs, and has refused to rule out compulsory redundancies. LUL has also refused to budge from an unacceptable five-year pay offer that gives no real-terms increase for four years, and which could even see pay cut, and there have been so many complaints of breaches of disciplinary and attendance procedures they appear co-ordinated. TfL is also threatening compulsory redundancies as part of a £2.4 billion cuts package, and has so far failed to table any pay offer at all. "London Underground seems to think that observing agreements is optional, and its plan to cut jobs is simply unacceptable," RMT general secretary Bob Crow said. "After three months of stonewalling LUL has also tabled what is at best a five- year pay freeze which it knows full well could never be accepted, and its managers appear to have been given the nod to unleash a fresh round of bullying. “LUL's own ‘Valuing Time' study acknowledges that staff productivity is at an all-time high, with passenger numbers up to record-breaking levels of four million a day,” he said. TUBE WORKERS DEMONSTRATE AGAINST JOB CUTS