RAILWAYS FOR ALL

RMT helpline 0800 3763706 :: september 2009 :: RMTnews 14 RMT sent a delegation to a conference in the German towns of Dusseldorf and Cologne earlier this year entitled “Next Stop: A Peoples’ Railway”. The conference was organised by a broad alliance from across Europe of trade unionists, political parties and social movements known as ‘Bahn fur Alle’ (Railways for All) that successfully campaigned to stop privatisation of Deutsche Bahn (German railways) last year. However Deutsche Bahn is still under orders to act like a private company. It has taken over UK rail freight company EWS and has savagely cuts jobs and services while aiming to dominate European railways. European rail privatisation would make a bad situation worse in Britain, with the continual undermining of working conditions and agreements. Under EU directives and various rail packages, freight companies are allowed to bid for track use and long distance ‘elite’ use of the network would undermine local services. The German privatisation was stopped by a combination of the credit crunch and German anti-privatisation campaigners. Bahn fur Alle ran an excellent campaign with imaginative protests, academics speaking out, a film, flashmobs and mass media coverage. The campaign clearly highlighted the disastrous example of British Rail privatisation and activists are keen to get ideas from RMT. The biggest German union, IG Metall opposes privatisation, but unfortunately the biggest rail union, Transnet, prefers to go along with their bosses’ plans of private German railways dominating Europe. Rail privatisation is unpopular with most ordinary people, but the German government is committed to it. Sound familiar? The social democratic SPD party majority is also against privatisation, but the party leadership supports it. The conference against rail privatisation and for sustainable transport took place in Cologne, and was preceded by a public meeting in the nearby city of Dusseldorf. RMT was represented by Alex Gordon, Garry Hassell and Olly New from the Executive, Chris Reilly from Reading branch, Tony Jakeman and Mike Bennett both from Bristol Rail branch. The public meeting in Dusseldorf was held in the impressive state parliament buildings. Alex Gordon gave an excellent speech on the British experience of privatisation at both events. Delegates included members of the German Green party who take part in coalitions in several regional governments. As a result some Greens at the conference were surprisingly not opposed to privatisation. They want excellent public transport systems that do not damage the environment but fail to understand the devastating effects of privatisation. Even some trade unionists need to wake up to the fact that privatisation leads to understaffing, underinvestment in unattractive parts of the railways, undermining of safety and the whole ethos of a public railway service. The ongoing process of privatisation, splitting the infrastructure from operating and many other measures as outlined in EU directives, are fundamentally undermining the foundations of public railways. Even in Germany, with its high quality rail system, transport investment is biased to cars and airlines. In the last 30 years motorway mileage has tripled and lanes have been added, while rail tracks have declined by 12 per cent. Roads and airways are publicly subsidised by hundreds of millions of dollars, while railways are facing privatisation. CO2 emissions are enormously up as a result. RAILWAYS FOR ALL Olly New reports on a recent international conference in Germany against the EU-driven privatisation of Europe’s railways PROTEST: RMT members at the demonstration against EU rail directives